How To Create Personalized Automated Emails

As your business seeks to grow, one method to help is to set up an automated sales pipelines online using email. This use of automated “drip marketing” emails can increase efficiency and allow the business to continue to nurture a prospect in the journey to becoming a customer.

However, this new addition needs to be handled with care to be effective. The key is offering value and personalization. No customer wants to feel like they’re hearing from a pushy sales machine.

To find success when communicating with automated emails, you must work to put personalized touches into your email campaigns. In this article, I’ll dive into that in more detail.

What Is Automated Email Marketing?

Automated email marketing, when done right, is like having another salesperson on the job operating 24/7/365 for your business. The typical setup is that marketing drives interested visitors to your website where there is some sort of call-to-action lead capture offer.

This can be a free, downloadable resource of value or something like a discount coupon. The key is to offer enough value the visitor is interested in signing up with their name and email address to access the offer. The incentive is key.

At signup, the visitor is invited to join an email list as they submit to get the resource. With their opt-in to the email list, the email marketing automation begins.

Using online software tools like MailChimp, InfusionSoft, or Salesforce, just to name a few, a company can set up a sequence of emails that go at specified times over the course of days, weeks, or months, and that have related content that works together.

This content conducts the “sales process” with the end user by educating them further, building trust, offering value, and addressing their common questions to help them see how your company product/service can solve their problems.

With that backup, I want to dive into a few key tips for your automated email marketing sequences.

Personalize The Emails

First, drop the generic marketing greetings of “Dear Reader” and related introductions. When you capture their information on your site, you should capture their name and email address.

Any good email marketing system will let you add a macro to insert their first name so that your email can read: Dear <first name>, or “Hello <first name>” where their name is inserted. This is much more personal.

Second, beware of generic signatures and email addresses. Instead of signing off with “The ‘Company’ Team” or some other impersonal signature, choose a spokesperson for the emails to come from. It’s far better to sign an email with a real person’s name and bring a human touch.

Customers will feel like they’re able to connect with a person, and value the interaction more. As well, the “from” email address should be more personal as well. Do not use “marketing@ourbusiness.com” or “email@ourcompany.com”.

Segment To Be More Relevant

Just because emails are automated, doesn’t mean they have to be one size fits all. Demographics or key actions can be used to segment an email list.

An email list can be divided into relevant factors like age, geographic location, gender, web page signed up on, resource signed up for, etc. Emails can then be tailored to best suit each group.

Customers get a sense that you want to meet their individual needs when the emails are relevant to them and related to what they initially signed up for.

Drop The Sales Pitch

Your email sequences must not be high in sales pitches. This is a sure way to have high “unsubscribe” rates. “Save more” and “Buy now” language is a good way to get people turned off and tuned out.

Offer value in the emails! When they sign-up for a resource, the best path forward with your automated emails is to continue to offer them resources. This is education and help, answering common questions.

A builder can explain more about “green building” and “energy efficiencies” in future emails as opposed to “sign with us now” pitches.

Choose The Right Language

Your interaction with a potential customer just learning about your brand should be different than the interaction with an established customer who’s been buying your products for years.

Automated emails should reflect these different relationships. Monitoring a customer’s interest levels and dedication to the brand is important for communication.

Collecting information on response rate and lead conversions from your emails allows you to adjust the emails sent to each customer over time to be more fine-tuned.

Repeat Their Name

Part of making the process of automation more personalized involves using the data that was collected. As noted earlier, when sending an automated email addressed with the customer’s first name this instantly shows more connection than a generic “Hello!”.

Building a database of information on each potential customer and current customers can provide insight, allow for more meaningful communication, and is vital for personalizing the emails that go out. Studies have shown this significantly improves the ultimate sales conversion process, particularly if you repeat their name again in the email.

One way to do this is to start a new paragraph with their name. It’s the second use of it and helps to sharpen the reader’s attention. Finally, consider using their name again in your conclusion or at the final reminder at the end of the email.

It must flow naturally, but when done so it can help make the connection so that the reader feels you are specifically addressing them.

Email is an important tool today for marketers. It is powerful for connecting and communicating with potential customers. The key is personalization and resourcing.

Careful attention to detail and customization is vital for automated emails to be personal and to add value for the recipient. By putting personal touches on an automated campaign, a business can build trust, grow sales, shorten the sales cycle, and stand out by showing its attention to detail.

How’s your email marketing going? Need help? Let us know!