When it comes to digital marketing, automation has become the key to a campaign’s success. Email marketing automation helps you find your audience and serve them only the content they want.
Helpful tools for effective email marketing
Email marketing automation tools help email marketers generate leads or turn strangers into customers. With automation, email marketers can send personalized messages to each subscriber.
Email marketing automation uses software, programs, and technology to automatically manage email marketing processes. Email marketing automation makes the email marketing process straightforward and smoother. It ensures your campaign stays organized and on track, and it happens in the background so you can complete and focus on other tasks if necessary.
Automation has positively affected our lives in countless ways. Whether or not it’s driving a car instead of walking, managing your money by using software rather than manually balancing your checkbook, washing your clothes in a machine rather than by hand, or anything else you do in your everyday life.
Automation makes things simpler. It’s the same with email marketing. As a digital marketer, you’ll want to become acquainted with these automation tools, because they’re integral to the success of your marketing campaign.
With automation, you can track emails automatically. And the real key to automation success is just how to target your emails automatically. And the real key to automation success is just how targeted your emails can be.
Using automation, you can efficiently build up your list and segment that list. Then send automatic welcome and acquisition emails to new subscribers. Follow up with newsletters, promotional emails, and retention emails using templates. The best part is it is easy to track the engagement and behavior of each subscriber.
Depending on which software you use, all of those capabilities, actions, insights, and more will live in the same place, your marketing automation tool.
How to choose an email marketing tool
Like many other jobs, email marketing comes with its challenges. How would you decide on templates for your campaign? A design? What type of tone do your emails need to have? How will you manage every aspect of an email marketing campaign, from sending a large volume of targeted emails to tracking your insights?
Luckily, some tools are created to streamline this process for email marketers. Email marketing automation tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Salesforce are all great options for sending emails. Although you will still have to remain engaged in your automation processes, for the most part, these tools will do a lot of the work for you in the background, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your campaign, like planning strategy and writing engaging copy.
HubSpot is one of the most commonly used email marketing automation tools, mostly due to the non-cost version which offers robust features. Through personalization, you can offer different experiences based on your personas and key audiences. Since it’s so customizable, HubSpot allows for intuitive and effective A/B testing and email marketing, which is invaluable when it comes to finding out what kind of emails your customers engage with.
Mailchimp is another popular marketing automation tool because of its user interface and robust email template editor, making the automation process effective. Mailchimp’s automation tools include pre-built journeys, which offer customizable workflows for some of the most common marketing automation use cases.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is an industry leader in many ways. When it comes to email marketing automation, the Salesforce platform is well-liked because it offers powerful customization. It’s a little more expert level than the others, but with that comes more capabilities like customizing your interface.
That’s a very high level look at a few different email marketing automation tools. Keep reading for the break down of each.
Send emails in HubSpot
HubSpot allows users to manage all their marketing channel activity in one place. When it comes to email marketing, you can use HubSpot for many different email marketing tasks. The actionable steps in the email marketing campaign process with HubSpot are the following:
- Set a goal for your business
- Manage your contact database and segment those contacts
- Create personalized and targeted emails
- Decide when each user should receive those emails by selecting the delay time between email sends
- Test emails
- Analyze your email performance
HubSpot offers email marketing tools at no cost. Set up an account and start exploring.
Crafting an email
Creating an email that will engage your subscribers is a huge part of a successful campaign. Tools like HubSpot help to make that process easier. Next, you’ll learn about HubSpot features that can help you write an effective email.
Creating the email
Once you’ve created your HubSpot account and logged in, navigate to Marketing > Email. Then, click Create email, and select a template. Using a template allows you to have a professionally designed, uniform look for each of your emails. If you opt to use a template, you can customize it by adding elements from the Content panel on the left side of the page. Drag and drop images, buttons, social media icons, text, videos, and more.
When dropped into the email editor tool, each element can be customized and tailored to look the way you want. To move items after they’ve been placed in the email editor panel, hover over them and click on the blue edge. Then, drag them to new positions.
Try out and explore these features to get an understanding of the customizable elements. For example, if you want to add a button that prompts readers to “Download the app,” you can adjust the copy, the length of the button, the spacing around the button, and much more.
Next, click the Design panel and change color schemes, fonts, headings, spacing, and other elements. To prompt the Section settings panel to appear, click the gray area just outside the email content. This will allow you to add various columns, and customize spacing and patterns for that section of your email.
While several elements are customized in the left panel, text is customizable through the toolbar at the tope of the page.
Visit this page for more on personalization, editing email footers, advance settings, and more.
Previewing and sending the email
Before you send your email, preview it by clicking the Actions dropdown menu, and select Preview. In the Devices tab, you can preview the email on desktop and mobile. You can even opt to view the email as each particular contact. To do that, click the Preview as specific contact dropdown. Read all about sending test emails and setting up A/B tests, visit this page. After you’ve tested your email, you’re ready to send it. At the top of the screen, click the Send or schedule button. Click the Send to dropdown and add the list(s) you wish to send the email to. To ensure you exclude subscribers you don’t want the email to go to, add them to the Don’t send to dropdown. You can either Send your email now or you can Schedule for later.
Additional Resources:
Send emails in Mailchimp
Let’s learn about how to send emails in Mailchimp. To begin with, what is Mailchimp?
Capabilities in Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform that allows businesses to reach out to their target audiences via email campaigns. Mailchimp is an industry-leading tool for many reasons. It allows marketers to grow, manage, and segment their audience for more targeted marketing. Mailchimp also offers a customizable email builder that comes with a variety of templates and design tools. Finally, Mailchimp offers advanced reporting tools that help track campaign performance results.
Crafting an email
Creating an email that your subscribers will engage with is a huge part of a successful campaign, and tools like Mailchimp help to make that process easier. In Mailchimp, you can create a Regular email. Then, using a campaign building checklist, you’ll add recipients, adjust your settings, and choose your template. But first, you will want to sign up for a free account here.
Creating the email
Once you’ve created your Mailchimp account, click the Create button. Then, select Email. Choose Regular, Plain Text, or Template. Enter your campaign name when prompted.
This name will only appear in Mailchimp, and will not be seen externally by any of your contacts. Click Begin to start creating. A checklist will become available at this step will help guide you through each step.
Click Add recipients to select the audience you want to send this email. Select your chosen Audience in the dropdown menu, and if you want to add a certain segment or tag, feel free to do that from the dropdown menu that says Segment or Tag. Personalize this email by clicking the Personalize the “to” field.
To adjust the From email that will appear in your readers’ inboxes, click on Edit From. Feel free to change the name and email address that appears in the Name and Email Address fields if you need to. Save those settings and move on to the Subject section.
In the Subject section, you can adjust the subject line and preview text. Click save.
Next, you’ll want to design your email. Click Design Email. Mailchimp has several predesigned templates that you can choose from by clicking into the Layouts panel. When you choose one, you’ll be able to customize the template for your brand and message. Add a new image by clicking the Image button in the design panel on the left side, and add elements like text boxes, videos, images, new buttons and more, by hovering over the Plus signs in your template.
Preview and send the email
Preview your email by clicking Preview. Toggle between the images of the computer monitor and the phone to preview it on desktop and mobile.
Click Continue and you’ll be taken back to the checklist screen. Make sure there are green checklists next to each step to ensure you’re ready to send. Feel free to scroll down and examine any other settings that you may want to change.
After you’ve completed the To, From, Subject, and Content sections of your email, you can opt to schedule your post or send it now. Do so by clicking either the Schedule or Send button. Please note that the schedule feature is only included with Mailchimp’s Essentials plan or higher.
For more information on Mailchimp’s email capacities, visit the additional resources below.
Additional Resources:
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