Don’t let these common mistakes affect your email marketing metrics.

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It should come to no surprise that email marketing is still one of the most efficient ways to reach your customers. When you consider that email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new subscribers than social media outlets,  it puts email at the front of the digital marketing toolbox.

But with so many other things you need to keep up with, social media, website updates, paid advertisement, print pieces, and much more — how can you make the most out of your email marketing?

Email marketing boasts some pretty impressive numbers. Not only is it more effective at acquiring new leads, but it also provides a great return on investment for your money. Using a marketing automation platform will help you see an even higher ROI. Image courtesy of Medium.

The answer is investing in email marketing automation. The right marketing automation tool will help you know what to send your customers and when to send it. On top of that, you can program your automation platform to actually send the emails to your customers — opening up time for your team to focus on something else.

Here’s a quick look at what we’ll cover in this article:

• Why email marketing automation is worth the investment
• 5 mistakes to avoid when using email marketing automation
• How following each tip can help improve your email automation efforts

Email Marketing Automation

It might just sound like another marketing gimmick that everyone is rushing to invest in. But marketing automation is the real deal. Not only will it help you learn more about your customers through data collection and integration with your customer databases, but it will also save your team valuable time.

An automation system allows you to set certain criteria and when customers hit this criterion the program automatically sends them the email. This takes the manual process of adding customers to the segmented list and sending them a bulk email once a month. It can be done as the customer takes an action and the email can be sent out in a timely manner.

For example, if a new subscriber joins your email list, your automation system will see that it is a new customer and put them into your welcome campaign workflow. There’s nothing your team needs to do once the campaign is set-up but sit back and watch the email metrics come in.

Still not sure if adding marketing automation is right for your company? Well, companies that have implemented marketing automation in their daily practice have experienced a 451% increase in qualified leads. So, if you’re looking to grow your subscriber list and bring in quality leads, marketing automation is the way to go.

Marketing automation promises some pretty impressive statistics. If you find that your current automation program isn’t living up, make sure you’re not making simple mistakes that are costing an increase in leads. Image courtesy of Business 2 Community.

5 Email Mistakes to Avoid

While marketing automation offers plenty of opportunities, it must be done properly. Just like any other new tool, if you don’t take the time to learn how to use it properly it won’t be as effective as intended.

Many people see this shiny new marketing program that promises increased metrics but after a few months, it loses its luster due to incorrect use. Luckily, there are a number of different steps you can take to help your automation efforts succeed.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common mistakes when it comes to implementing a new marketing automation program.

1.   Not Outlining a Strategy

If you don’t have a strategy in place for your marketing automation efforts, you’re already starting out on the right foot. Every successful marketing effort needs to have a plan in place to help it succeed — this is no different when it comes to marketing automation.

Before you even think about sending your first email or setting up a program workflow you need to get a plan in place. This plan should identify exactly what you want to get out of this new technology.

Set specific goals, plan out exactly what tactics you plan to implement, and keep these things in mind when creating your automation plan. Your strategy can also outline content specific details such as segmentation plans and specific content goals to help you develop a comprehensive campaign.

2.   Sending too Many Emails

And that leads us right into the next mistake you’ll want to avoid: sending too many emails. Your subscribers are already receiving a plethora of emails a day, you don’t need to add to their busy inbox with five different emails each day.

The number one reason people choose to unsubscribe from an email list is that they receive too many emails. If you are sending tons of emails through your marketing automation efforts without realizing it, you could be damaging your relationship with your customers. Image courtesy of Marketing Sherpa.

It seems like a no brainer, but marketing automation is so simple that you often don’t realize just how many emails you are sending out. Being able to schedule emails and enroll customers into workflows makes it easy to forget exactly when communication is already planned for your customers.

Sending then another email to promote a one-off sale or discount might sound like a good idea, but if a customer is already scheduled to receive three other emails that day it might be enough to put you on their spam list.

3.   Thinking You Have to Go Big or Go Home

It’s easy to get in the “go big or go home” mindset when implementing a new tactic. You’re investing a lot of time and money into this new program — so why wouldn’t you want to make the first campaign a big deal?

While that is a great mindset, in theory, it may actually be setting you up for failure. A marketing automation platform is a huge investment that offers a number of different benefits to your business. That being said, it can take time to learn all of the different ins and outs of the program.

Taking time to learn what each part of the platform does will allow you to master different areas and then use the program as a whole more effectively. So start small, create one or two emails to test out the system and learn how everything works.

Once you’ve mastered that, then you can start to build on that with the knowledge you’ve picked up. You don’t need to create a six-month content campaign during your first month of implementing the automation platform. Frankly, if that is what you’re planning on doing, you should take a step back and re-evaluate your strategy.

4.   Forgetting to Provide Relevant Content

Content relevance is very important in today’s email marketing world. Utilizing marketing automation offers you a new opportunity to learn about your customers and provide them with the right email content at the right time.

The problem with automation is that many people will create a campaign, set it live, and then forget about it for months at a time. This means that customers may not be getting the most relevant content to their changing needs.

Content relevance is still very important in email marketing. You need to make sure you are providing your customers with the content they want when they want it. When done right, a marketing automation platform should help make this easier, but you need to make sure you’re following best practices. Image courtesy of Forbes.

If you don’t revisit your content to ensure that your customers are receiving the most appropriate content, you’re likely going to see higher unsubscribe rates. Providing your subscribers with the most relevant content will help keep them around, but you also don’t want to provide them with too much content.

5.   Not Testing the Emails You’re Sending

Last but not least, if you are not testing your efforts you are missing out on a huge opportunity to improve your marketing automation. With the help of your marketing automation platform, you will be able to test a variety of things in your email environment.

Use this tool to help improve your efforts and learn more about the preferences of your customers. You can use A/B testing to learn what types of content perform better, find ways to improve subject lines and improve call to action placement.