Find out how to use the new functionality and why you should do it
Mail Marketing continues to grow and does so by expanding its functionalities. After the addition of the Filters option, which we announced in a previous article, now it's the turn of the Automations.
We have implemented the "Marketing automation" feature, which allows you to schedule automatic emails in order to induce specific groups of users to take a further action (for example, a second purchase after a certain period of time) or simply to keep them updated on company news. Everything is done automatically, without having to worry about sending individual messages manually.
But let's take a closer look at how it works.
How to activate the Marketing Automation function
First of all, when you log into your Mail Marketing account, click on Campaigns > Marketing Automation. You can then create a new email by clicking on the green "Create new campaign" button.
The process of creating the email is identical to that for the creation of any newsletter from scratch on Mail Marketing: after entering the subject you are asked to choose a template from the predefined ones or create one from scratch, then select the address book of the recipients.
The novelty comes in Step 5, the Sending Planning step. By clicking on "Trigger", you will see various options that allow you to send your emails automatically. More specifically:
1. You can choose how long it takes for an email to be sent after new users have been added to the address book.
By default you will see the option "Hour" but by clicking on it you can change it to "Minute", "Day" or "Month". In the empty field on the left you can enter your preferred number.
You can then decide whether to send the campaign after a few minutes/hours/days or months.
2. You can determine which sections your message should be sent to, depending on how they are uploaded to the platform.
In this case, simply tick the box that corresponds to the action you want to take. These are the alternatives:
- Send if added via API
- Send in case of manual addition
- Send in the case of a mass upload
- Send the campaign once to a contact (recommended)
The first three boxes refer to the type of contact upload (API/Manual or Mass Upload), which you can select when creating your address book.
The fourth box allows you to decide whether to send the campaign to each contact only once, or whether to send the same message several times. In order to avoid boring or annoying the user with numerous identical communications, we recommend that you tick this box. Of course, the choice is subjective, as it depends on the content of the message and the objective you wish to achieve by sending it.
3. You can define the conditions that must be fulfilled in order for the campaign to be sent.
This is where the custom fields come into play, which you can choose by going to Configuration > Custom labels.
The 4 custom fields - each of which will be associated with a specific piece of information about the contact (e.g. date of purchase, product purchased, customer type or any other information that is useful for your objectives) - will then be decisive in establishing the conditions for sending your automated emails.
By clicking on the "Add condition" button you can:
- select the personalised field of your interest
- choose between "contains" or "does not contain", to establish whether or not that field contains a certain value
- enter the value of your interest in the empty field
Let's take a practical example: I want to encourage the purchase of a service dedicated to business customers, but I also have consumer contacts in my address book. In this case, in order to send my automated email only to business customers, I will select:
- Customer type
- Contains
- Business
Once you have chosen the different options, all you have to do is click on the button "Continue" and go to Step 6 Verify and send, to confirm that the email has been sent.
Why you should use Marketing Automation
Now that we have seen how to use the "Marketing Automation" feature in technical terms, let's also look at the main advantages of using it, and therefore understand why you should implement an email automation system.
First of all, this type of email will save you a lot of time because once you have set up your campaigns, they will start automatically without you having to do anything. At the same time, these communications can help you achieve excellent results in terms of revenue and the acquisition of new customers:
- Make your product and/or service better known to the user through emails that tell them about your product. As soon as the user subscribes to your email list, an initial welcome message may be followed by others focusing on best practices or describing the benefits of using your product. In this way your contacts will start to become familiar with what your company offers.
- Turn prospects into customers: again, it can be a good idea to provide free content associated with the products/services you sell. For example, a travel agency could create guides on "The best Italian cities to visit in the summer" or "10 things to do in country X" (for those who have asked for information on a specific country). What matters is that the content is of quality and value to the user, otherwise we risk only annoying them and encouraging them to unsubscribe from the mailing list.
- Increase customer loyalty: you could think of emails that encourage those who have already made at least one purchase to trust you again for further purchases, through special discounts, coupon activation, or by giving them access to exclusive content reserved only for customers.
- Increase sales of products and services through cross-selling and up-selling. If you have related products in your catalogue, you could activate the condition that when a customer buys X product, they are offered a similar one (did you buy a book by a certain author? I offer you other books by the same author or in the same genre) or even lead them to make a more demanding purchase (have you bought a marketing course? I offer you a subscription to several courses on that subject).
- Strengthen brand awareness: you could tell people about the brand with a series of sequential emails, e.g. start a column in which you present your team members. In this way, the user will have a clear perception of how behind that product there are people who are committed to satisfying their requests and this - most likely - will make them feel closer to the company and its values.
- Encourage positive reviews: a satisfied user will be happy to share his experience with others. That's why you might consider sending out an email inviting customers to leave a review on your website or on channels where you have a presence, such as social media.
As you can see, automated emails allow you to "keep alive" the relationship with your (potential) customers and constantly stimulate their interest in your brand. In addition, thanks to Mail Marketing's "Statistics" feature, you will have a detailed report on each campaign (number of emails sent/open rate/click rate/unsubscribed percentage etc.). This will give you a clear picture of how well your contacts like your communications and - above all - which product types are the most successful.
It's time to try out the new feature! Log in to Mail Marketing and create your Marketing Automation campaign.
