Automations: How To Build Quality Lists & Increase Customer Retention Rates
As technology advances, business owners and marketers are looking for ways to build systems that will replace manual work. Enter automations.
More and more marketing and social channels are using automations to improve their customer experience.. From Facebook and Instagram chatbots, to email and text drip campaigns (or as we call them automations).
The big appeal with automation is that you can build a system, and it will run around the clock generating responses, leads, and revenue literally while you sleep.
And while that is true, when it comes to email, your automations go BEYOND revenue-driven systems. Your strategies should be designed to build a quality list first (before even driving revenue), but how is that done?
Here are the 3 email elements every automation strategy MUST have in place in order to build a quality list:
1) Setting up your domain reputation high
Typically, you’re driving leads from a front end marketing channel like advertising or social media to your email list(s) through sign ups or purchases. Once someone signs up to your email list or makes a purchase (while consenting to receive marketing emails), you will trigger an automation email based on that specific behavior.
For example, someone signs up to your email list to receive a discount. They type in their email and hit submit. That form is connected to an email list inside your email service provider, ESP (mailchimp, aweber, klaviyo), which in turn triggers the start of an automation (in this case, the welcome series/flow). That user would check that email, open it, and click it to use their discount.
Once they interact with your email (a simple open or click), feedback is sent to the inbox service providers, ISPs (gmail, yahoo, outlook), letting them know you are a reputable domain with high engagement. This helps build your domain reputation. The higher engagement you can create on the first emails in your automations, the higher your domain reputation will be, helping you stay out of the spam folder.
TIP: HOW TO CONTROL THE QUALITY OF YOUR USER’S EMAILS AND BUILD A HIGH REP
When you create lead gen or opt-in forms to collect emails in exchange for an incentive, never give the incentive at the thank you page (shown to the user after they hit submit on the form). By sending the information to your contact’s emails, you are forcing them to give you a valid email address (reducing low quality, spammy email addresses), plus increasing your engagement/interaction on the first email being sent out to your users. We call this “email conditioning.”
Always use the thank you page as an instruction page. Tell them what to do next. For example: “Congrats on joining our community! Check your inbox now for your first incentive. It may take up to 5 minutes to reach your email. If you are a gmail user and didn’t receive our email, check your promo tab. To receive future emails right to your inbox, simply drag our email from promo to inbox.”
2) Collecting contact information based on behavior
Once you capture your contact’s emails, your automation is your playground! Use your automation to learn about your user’s interests through targeted messaging, data collecting buttons, forms, and replies. The more information you can retrieve from your audience, the better segmentations you can create for future offers, content, and messaging.
3) Split Testing
Automations are the BEST place to start split testing your messaging and offers. When a contact enters your automations, you are responsible for nurturing your prospects and figuring out what type of messaging and offers convert best. Most business owners simplify their automations while using their daily campaigns and broadcasts to split test offers. But why wait when you can start engaging your contacts at a “warmer” level?
Typically your first 3-5 emails with your new contacts are your highest engagement, and most of the time they are found inside of your automations. For example, your welcome series might have five nurturing emails. If a contact signs up to your newsletter, they will most likely receive these five emails first (before a daily/weekly campaign will go out). In those first five emails, it’s in your best interest to test and collect as much data as possible about your contacts. Once a contact finishes that automation, you should have enough data on their interactive behavior with your brand/business to determine which type of list they should end up on (highly engaged, semi-engaged, unengaged).
