Is Automated Email a "List Killer"?

In today's business world, automated emails are entirely necessary. But are they a necessary evil—one that will compromise the strength of your emails lists, as some have claimed? In this post, we offer some quick best practices when it comes to your automated email strategy.

Rule # 1: Track all activity

The best way to engage your customer is to understand your customer. Tracking what subscribers do with the emails you send them gives you a great idea of the engagement level of your leads.

Are your subscribers clicking on your links and your calls to action? Or, are they ignoring your emails all together? There are a multitude of automated emailing services that provide businesses with valuable analytics to keep track of how your contact list is responding.

Rule # 2: Tweak your weak emailing strategies

With so many marketing tools to date, people sometimes underestimate the power that still exists in email marketing. Don’t throw it on the backburner and blindly send out bland, redundant emails hoping someone will read it. If your approach isn’t working, fix it.

There are many ways of fine-tuning an email to make the format and email copy more enjoyable to the reader. Start with removing images that stagnate the time it takes an email to download. Come up with creative subject lines. Experiment with changing the delivery times and frequency of emails you send. And when the CTR (click through rate) increases, take note.

Rule #3:  Market to each group separately

Once you have a good grasp on what your data is telling you about each subscriber, break them in to groups and send your emails accordingly.

It’s important not to be worried about "unsubscribe" rates in the beginning if you categorize them in the wrong group. If you’re consistent with analysis, you'll get the formula down to retain subscribers. Sometimes, people who are not fully engaged in the brand right away might be later. And vice versa.

Rule #4: Less is more

Customers like feeling like they matter, but no one wants to feel like they’re being harassed.

It’s like working at a retail store. If you’re not there to answer questions or nurture a lead, the customer will leave. But if you follow your customer around trying to convince them to buy everything in the store, they’ll be out of there even faster, maybe never to return.

Whatever you do, don’t be overly aggressive or fill your subscriber’s already flooded inboxes with nonstop emails. Your leads don’t need to hear from you every day in order to convert.

Rule # 5:  The quest to build your list should never end

As stated before, don’t underestimate the power of email marketing. Every business needs a list. Keeping that list updated while keeping your clients and/or potential clients informed is an integral part of making this type of marketing effective.

Utilize paid search marketing, search engine optimization, and social media marketing to drive traffic to your landing pages, and soon you’ll have an ever evolving list of subscribers that can significantly capture an audience and grow your business.

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Services that ensure deliverability and monitor what happens to email once you press send will help increase the success rate of any email campaign. When properly maintained, email marketing will serve less as a necessary evil and more as a necessary tool. What are some other strategies your company might adopt to prevent subscribers from dropping you like a bad habit? Leave your ideas in the comment section below!