Marketing automation Part-1 (Email marketing)

The concept of marketing automation is relatively new and trendy. It means,

Marketing automation is the use of software and web-based services to execute, manage and automate marketing tasks and processes. It replaces manual and repetitive marketing processes [emails, social media, certain website actions] with purpose-built software and applications geared toward performance.

It’s estimated that 49% of companies currently use automation as part of their marketing strategy, with the percentage ticking up to 55% for B2Bs. It’s no wonder, then, that marketing automation adoption continues to grow, expected to top $25 billion by 2023.

There are three basic categories of marketing automation:

Marketing intelligence:

Data and analytics-driven approaches, most of the time focus on customer behavioral data and patterns. Benefit with upselling, cross-selling strategy.

Business Development:

Focusing on customer conversion from top to bottom of the funnel. The most common practices are content-driven, email, SMM, SEO.

Workflow automation:

Generally refers to internal processes like budgeting, the marketing calendar, digital asset management, and everything else that large enterprises need to run sizable complex marketing departments.

Email marketing

Old but effective, highest ROI rating channel of marketing. More than 280B emails are sent daily. This figure is expected to reach 333B by 2021.

Email marketing consumes a large number of time from goal determination to email tracking.

Common steps of email marketing:

1. Goal determination
2. Platform determination.
3. Build and segment email list
4. Design and create campaigns depends on segments.
5. Enable responder and tracking.
6. Analysis data for further campaign.

After goal determination, the most important step is platform determination. Modern email marketing platform provides large scale automation and detailed services. There were 100s of platforms, after testing a few of them, I have selected the top 2, depends on their feature list and support.

AWeber:

Aweber has its reputation as the best customer support and reliable software. Has features like:

automation email creation from a blogpost,

Drag and drop editor,

HTML template, email sequence flow,

Team collaboration,

Auto-respond,

Split test,

Tracking

Subs management

Emai DR

API service (Most useful for a developer)

Click to get 1-month free trial or 19$/month.

Disclosure: Bear in mind that this links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases.

MailerLite:

It is more user-friendly than the previous one. Very intuitive interface, lack services but very suitable for small campaigns. Customer support is really good and also provides a free plan.

Feature:

Drag and drop campaign creator.

Auto segmentation

Email tracking

Campaign flow.

Activity and history analysis

Split test

API

Personal rating: 4/5

Click to get 14-days free trial or 0–50$/month

Disclosure: Bear in mind that this links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases.

Honorable mentioned:

1. Mailchimp
2. BombBomb

Email automation techniques can save time and make the campaign more manageable. By monitoring and measuring the email campaigns, you would be aware of the prospect’s lifecycle stage, and provide them with information that is likely to help them make the decision. It is patience and constant engagement that will get you the next customer from a lead.

Upcoming Part 2:

Marketing Automation(Social media automation), Date: 3rd Jan 2020