[April 27, 2015]

StreamSend: 12 Ways Automated Email Can Drive Sales

StreamSend, the email marketing service provider, shares 12 ways businesses can use "triggered" email marketing automation to build strong customer connections and increase sales.

"Automated emails get 119% better click rates than broadcast emails," said Dan Forootan, president of StreamSend Email Marketing. "The ability to reach prospects with highly valued and timed automated messages can make an enormous difference in conversion rates - boosting them as high as 50%."

1. Smart Triggers
Subscriber and customer welcomes, anniversary dates, post-purchase, birthdays and website activity follow-up -- also known as email remarketing, all present opportunity for triggered communications. And they work: the average open rate for welcome emails is 50%, making them 86% more effective than newsletters.

2. Email Remarketing
Start by defining goals and the types of email remarketing campaigns, such as: cart abandonment reminders -- purchase association emails -- benefit-driven landing pages and triggers -- welcome emails introducing products or services -- product trial upgrade emails -- requests for reviews -- satisfaction survey with new clients.

3. Relevance = $
Relevant emails drive 18x more revenue than broadcast emails. Customize plans for the various segments of your clients' database: existing customers, existing prospects, past or inactive customers, new leads, people who bought what, people who abandoed a shopping cart, etc. Expect unsubscribes if the messages are not timely and relevant.

4. Right on Time
Email automation really shines at timing, from auto-responders that upsell acquired leads when they are "hot" to using lifecycle campaigns to educate prospects about relevant products and services. Automatically re-target your most engaged subscribers with triggered email based on clicks.

5. Keep a Smart Pace
Let prospects and customers to choose how often they want to hear from your clients. It's a courtesy that is appreciated and keeps unsubscribe rates low. Establish a communications preference center.

6. Send Smart
Use smart message delivery options to create a campaign once and deliver it to email, social and the web in one "send."

7. Get Personal
Make a personal connection and send your emails from a real person, not some marketing entity. The less recipients feel like just one more name on a list, the better. Pick relevant company representatives, preferably experts, that can vary according to the emails' audience.

8. Keep Score
Lead scoring -- qualifying and passing leads to sales -- can keep you on track with email marketing automation. Not only can you measure responses, you can adjust messages for the different stages of buyer interest and produce more timely, viable leads as a result.

9. Data Dive
Don't overlook existing data that can tell you everything from recipients' gender to behavior that indicates product interest. Knowing these details lets you treat them as individuals. Valuable data can also be collected by sending clients a survey after they have cancelled their service. Automation can produce the data you need to continually improve relevance - and campaign results.

10. Segment
Marketing automation makes segmentation easy, dividing audiences by age, industry, gender, geography, job and much more. Being able to recognize these groups not only avoids message missteps, it's one more way to increase automation efficiency. Triggers can automatically segment leads and send targeted follow-up emails.

11. Keep them Engaged
Leverage transactional emails to introduce clients and prospects to new products and services based on interest. Increase engagement by leveraging dynamic content for your emails.

12. Deliver Content that Counts
Use RSS emails to create an automated email that will automatically send your blog posts to prospects and clients. Use share boards to automatically send curated content from around the web.

Learn more about email marketing automation, remarketing and other ways to put the power of email marketing to work for your business -- check out StreamSend's Agency Email Marketing Guide, plus see a video on trigger marketing here.

StreamSend
StreamSend offers an easy-to-use, affordable and reliable email marketing service designed to help businesses maximize the reach of their marketing budget when sending an email newsletter or using Social Media. StreamSend offers a number of industry-leading standard pricing plans, private-label and affiliate programs and hands-on personal client service. Started in 1998, StreamSend is a leader in Email Marketing.

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