How to Automate and Test Email Marketing

How to Automate and Test Email Marketing

 

As we come to the end of the the series, we have one last chapter to cover before we conclude. How to automate and test your email marketing efforts?

 

The Power of Automation

You have to think a little differently when starting and running an online business. If you have a huge company and a 5000 strong workforce to delegate jobs around as you see fit, automation could show great results in thinning down your workforce and reducing headcount.

Alternatively, you are a solo business owner or have a small team and have to wear many department hats, automation could be the key to strengthening your business without employing more people.

The same goes for solo business owners. Automaton, saves valuable time, so you can stay solo. Ultimately, automation helps and saves time!

 

Automation and Reducing Tasks = More Time to Grow

From small businesses to big businesses, if you can automate something, you effectively remove the need to manually complete a task. As a result, removing a person or a time constricted task and placing that time or person elsewhere, you Increase automation and productivity hugely.

How do we Automate Email Marketing?

If you can do it, automate the emails you send. Looking back to the email marketing software we have discussed in this series, there are some great tools to automate email delivery.

The most popular tools in my business, that I quite frankly can’t do without  are:

Get Response and Aweber

However there are a more to mention such as:

  • Klaviyo
  • Mailchimp
  • ConvertKit
  • Autopilot
  • Constant Contact

 

What is an Automated Email Campaign?

An automated email campaign, is a series of emails that you program into your auto responder service to be sent automatically. Each email can be triggered by the actions of your subscribers or the series time frame.

Similarly, as we have also discussed in this series, you can combine automation with one-off email broadcasts that are sent manually to your subscribers.

 

Automation vs 1 Time Blasts

Automation

As discussed, automation, or adding to an auto responder series consists of building a series of emails into an automated process of delivery.

You can see below, a simple example of how this works:

  1. The lead opts in via a lead magnet opt-in from your landing page
  2. Day 1 or immediately – Welcome email sent
  3. Day 2 – Possible offer or freebie sent
  4. Day 3 – Anther email sent about the offer or freebie
  5. Day 4 – Final followup about the freebie or offer
  6. Day 5 – A new offer or push email to another list high ticket or freebie (discussed in segmentation)
  7. Day 6 – Followup
  8. Day 7 – Offer

You can see from the above example a series of emails generated over a 7 day period promoting offers, high ticket products or freebies or something else.

Depending on the nature of your business, the choice is yours what you send but you can see here how utilising auto responder tools can automate your entire sales funnel, with a hands off approach.

Once the opt-in has been added to your landing page and you’ve setup your auto responder series, all you have to do is send traffic, the rest is automated.

This action is called ‘Set and Forget’ and allows you to focus on the more important side of your business. Traffic, sales and marketing.

 

The 1 Time Blast

A 1 time email blast is exactly what it says on the tin. A single email programmed to blast your subscribers when you want the email to be sent.

However, there is still an element of automation you can use to target specifics. You can program when to send the email, or more importantly when it hits the inbox of your subscriber.

Here’s an example:

  • You have a big promotion…let’s call it – ‘Promo X’ – an affiliate marketing promotion of a big product and you’re getting 50% commissions across the funnel.
  • You can’t add this to an auto responder series, because the people on your list are all at different points in the auto responder?
  • You manually compile a 1 time email blast to go out a specific time.
  • Let’s assume that after testing and monitoring open rates and click throughs, your business has an optimum reach at 11pm Easter Time. You know this because you have tracked, checked and tested your emails over the past few months.
  • With this time in mind, compile and email and setup it to full broadcast at 11pm. Alternatively, if the product you are promoting has a launch time of 3pm, you would set the email to go at the launch time, and maybe another email to go at 11pm.

The result of a 1 time blast allow you to hit your whole list at once and having a vastly larger response rate than an auto responder series. 1 time blasts are great for alerting your subscribers in real time.

 

Can I Email my List More Than Once Per Day?

Inboxes are flooded with emails, and it’s a good bet your subscribers are on more than one list for the same niche. You are probably not alone, unless the business niche you are in is very vague or unusual? Frogs that balance on turnips maybe? (I don’t know…)

Therefore, in the case of affiliate marketing campaigns, it’s not unusual to send 2 sometimes 3 emails in one day about the same product or subject. However when you do this, try to mix it up by changing the titles and content. Sending the same email time after time will earn you a one way ticket to the spam box.

Personally I find 2/3 emails per day excessive. However, as you move forward with email marketing within your own business, you will find your own metrics and how the subscribers on your mailing lists react. If the unsubscribes go up, then find out why. If your open rates reduce, find out why. Have you been mailing too much maybe? Analyse your metrics.

 

Testing Your Email Marketing

To find out what the people on your mailing list like or don’t, you have to complete some analysis and testing.

*Tip – make analysis and testing a habit you do before and after sending an email.

Of all the software tools we have talked about during this entire course, they all have excellent analysis tools, to allow you to monitor the performance of your emails.

The most common metrics are:

  • Open rates
  • Click though rates
  • Bounce rate
  • Unsubscribes
  • Subscribes
  • Un-opens
  • Sales tracking on opens

What you see above are the most common metrics and the ones you should pay the most attention to within your email marketing efforts.

During, and after each email campaign sent, the above metrics and more should be ready available to you. The best time to compare results is approximately, 24 to 36 hours after the email has been broadcast.

Giving this amount of time allows the emails to hit the inboxes of your clients and also time for the emails to be actioned or deleted, spammed or unsubscribed.

Whatever you business niche, always make the effort to check your metrics and monitor your list. Doing so could really make a difference to your business and allow you to make necessary changes, such as cleaning your list, removing bad emails, increasing subscribers, sending more/less emails, changing an auto responder and broadcasting better performing emails.

Remember – Metrics don’t lie, so remember to test test test to get the best conversions, clicks and engagements you possibly can.

 

Are You Enjoying The Email Marketing for Beginners Series?

Finally, I hope you are enjoyed ‘How to Automate and Test Email Marketing’. If want to learn more or skip to the next part. Check below you can find the links to the full 10 part series:

  1. Introduction
  2. How to Write The Perfect Email
  3. 50 Email Marketing Headlines to Make You a Legend
  4. Tools to Building Your Subscriber List
  5. How and Where to Build Your Email List
  6. What is Email Segmentation and How to Use it
  7. How to Avoid The Spam Filters
  8. Impressive Email Marketing Style
  9. How to Automate and Test Email Marketing
  10. Beginners Email Marketing Conclusion

 

Comments – Over to You

Please comment on your thoughts below. I would love to hear what you think about ‘How to Automate and Test Email Marketing’. Is there anything you would add or any tips you se yourself that would help others?

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