Don’t Press the Email Automation Button without Considering These 7 Tips

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Direct, one-on-one communication between you and your customers helps develop community, nurture customer loyalty, boost retention, and increase sales. It’s these traits that make email marketing alone a great tool to connect with customers. Finding the right CRM (customer relationship management) and email marketing platform can prove to be a fast and cost-effective solution for any small business owner. And by adding email marketing automation to your efforts, you can launch your email marketing to the next level — and alleviate your time spent on marketing along the way.

Email marketing automation (or email drip campaigns) is a practical solution that lets you send a series of messages in predetermined intervals that lead your customers to engage in a desired action. If you need more appointments on the books, or to educate leads, then it’s time to propel your email marketing program with these seven tips:

No. 1: Find out if your Email Marketing platform supports drip campaigns
Not all email marketing platforms are created equal. No matter how robust the offerings may seem, make sure you’re getting the most out of your platform’s offerings and at the best cost. A simple upgrade may be preventing you from reaching your clients and increasing sales; so, make sure your software provider has this feature.

Don’t have an email marketing software? Impact can turn that frown upside down! Currently, Impact Partnership provides email marketing automation service to advisors through our partnership with Infusionsoft. Infusionsoft can merge your CRM and email marketing into one platform, alleviating the struggle of working between two systems (like Redtail or MailChimp). With the powerful interface of Infusionsoft, you can pull all your stored information from your clients’ contact records and target them based on their interests or needs. Impact works directly with advisors and their teams to get the program running, and we can even design custom campaigns. Make sure to reach out to your Sales or Marketing Manager for more information on how to get started.

*Please note: There is a difference between an email marketing software and a CRM that can send single emails. If you’re currently emailing from a CRM software, make sure it can send drip campaigns as many CRMs offer email marketing for newsletters but can’t create a map of custom emails.

No. 2: Establish your goals
What would you like to accomplish? Think about a few of these questions below to help you get started:

  • Are you seeking to revive a current database of prospects?
  • Do you want to connect webforms on your website to a customized drip campaign?
  • Want to reduce the time spent on those follow-up emails that go out to event registrants?
  • Are there any books or white papers you could offer?
  • How many leads are you currently collecting from events, web forms, etc.?
  • What’s your monthly website traffic?

Understanding how your contacts will funnel into the drip campaign, the information they’re seeking, and the intention of the campaign prior to getting started will go a long way. The more specific you can narrow down your goals, the easier it is to streamline your strategy and measure the results.

No. 3: Don’t knock down spam’s door
The frequency and quantity of delivered emails are just as important as the content within those emails. Since email marketing is very personal, with direct one-on-one discourse, it’s easy to cross that threshold of being too invasive, so consider the deliverability and how you can provide the best experience for your customers. Emails that are delivered too frequently can get flagged as spam, and simultaneously, a drip campaign that lasts too long may no longer be relevant to the customers’ needs. Think about how many emails it will take to get your point across and push for that desired action — a consultation, a book request, or an event sign-up. Think also about how much time should lapse before the customer gets fatigued and the conditional actions for a sequence. Should someone get removed from a drip campaign if they called for a consultation? Or does the information still benefit them after the goal was met?

No. 4: Content is king
Now that your goals and deliverability are established, it’s time to get the content right! Ease your customers through the drip campaign, and don’t be afraid to showcase your personality or know-how. The more comfortable a lead is with you, the easier it is to close. Showing that you are the subject matter expert with solutions to their pain points will help increase the response rate. If developing copy isn’t your forte, then click here to see our content infographic. We have a team of copywriters to help with content creation so make sure to contact your Sales or Marketing Manager for more information on how to get started.

No. 5: It’s time to fall in love with compliance
Don’t jeopardize your practice with a non-compliant email! Take advantage of Impact’s team of professionals to help you build your business and keep you in the green. Read our article on the do’s and don’ts of compliance here.

No. 6: Testing, testing, 1-2-3.
Though we all make mistakes, an email to the wrong audience or glitchy delay timers can appear unprofessional. Additionally, having the timers set wrong could cause clients to mark you as spam, decreasing the deliverability of your email list. Before you unleash a drip campaign to your audience, test it out to make sure the emails read well and deliver in a timely fashion.

No. 7: Analyze data
This is the fun part. Now that your campaign is live, keep a spreadsheet of the open-rates, click-through rates, and response rates. Also, compare the leads that were generated/closed prior to the drip campaigns with the leads generated/closed from the drip campaigns. A nice comparison chart measuring development can help guide you toward what steps to take next.

Reach out to your Sales or Marketing Manager at Impact to launch email automation.

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Stephen Odom, CEO of The Impact Partnership

STEPHEN ODOM

Chief Executive Officer

Stephen started in the insurance marketing business in 2001 as a new business consultant. In 2002 he was promoted to Director of Sales and built a 200 million book of business from scratch. By 2005, he was one of the top wholesalers in the country, working with some of the top financial advisors and insurance agents across the USA. In 2008, Stephen was promoted to Co-President of one of the largest IMOs in the country.

In 2011, Stephen continued his entrepreneurship path and co-founded The Impact Partnership, an INC 5000 company. Stephen is responsible for the strategic vision of Impact and is laser-focused on creating a culture of growth for both internal teammates and our amazing customers.

Stephen lives in Kennesaw, GA, with his wife of more than 20 years, Kendra. They are blessed with three beautiful children Katie, Tyler, Anna Brooke, and Laya, their German Shepherd and Luna, their BernieDoodle.