Email marketing automation workflows for 2019

As email continues to grow in importance, the use of email marketing continues to expand. Especially as ecommerce continues to rise in importance both for Internet companies and for traditional giants, it is vital that email automation becomes one of your organization's primary modes of marketing to current and potential customers. Automation workflows are one of the most effective email marketing tools today. An automation workflow is when you can give your customers unique and dynamic emails that cater to their specific needs based on data collected. The following are some of the available tools to spruce up your email marketing automation. Your Customers are Unique Your customers are not the same. That is a true statement that would be hard to debate. Since your customers are not the same, it is important to learn how to market to each of them in a way that would be the most effective. The idea of segmentation is that you can separate your subscribers and customers into groups, or segments, based on the data you have available. For instance, you may have a group of people in your database that, while they were active users on your site at one time, now show no connectivity to your organization. These customers should receive different communication and be marketed to differently than those customers who follow everything that you do. The old method of sending out one newsletter each month and hoping that it would effectively communicate to every customer is no longer valid. In today's competitive marketplace, customers need to know that you know them as individuals. Collecting the Correct Information Collecting correct and good information is your organization's first step in a strong email marketing campaign. In fact, your attempt at email automation will fail quickly if you are not working with the right information. Data collection starts at your customer's first signup and continues throughout the life of the relationship. Data collection includes knowing which pages on your site are most visited, what products have been purchased, how much time is spent on a particular product or subject, etc. Data collection should be done on every individual customer and then aggregate information should be collected to help with segmentation and targeted marketing campaigns. Using More tha One Channel The ability to communicate using more than one channel is key. Electronic communication in today's world goes much deeper than simply checking your email every day. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, email, SMS, snapchat, and many other social media and communication apps exist today so that people are always connected somewhere. If you only communicate with and market to people through email, you are missing out on a lot of other communication channels that can be equally or more effective. Communicating After the Sale It is cheaper and easier to keep an existing customer than it is to find a new one. This is a fact that has been known in marketing and sales circles for years. With this being the case, and with ecommerce continuing to grow in importance, focusing email automation marketing on customers after the initial purchase or subscription is vital. Some of the keys here are reactivation emails if a customer has not made a purchase in the past 60 days, immediate emails with similar and complementary products, and thanking a customer and asking them to buy into the vision of your company even after the sale are key. The first sale should not be the end of the communication road but the beginning. Conclusion Email marketing will only gain in importance in the future. It is up to you and your organization to plan for this eventuality by using automation workflows to reach your customers in new and unique ways. While the tools listed above are great, they only become effective with the right marketing strategy.