Introduction
You can’t be successful if you don’t make time for your business. You can’t be successful if you don’t spend your time doing what you love. You’re a success when you don’t have to run the business; you’re a success when you can spend your time doing what you love.
In the last post, I explained some elements and how they depend on each other to run a successful online business. If you haven’t read it, you can find it here: https://prashantchaudhari.com/2022/01/how-to-use-internet-technologies-for-your-success-part-2/.
Let’s look at the few more elements in this post that help you automate your business.
Build Your Tribe
In the first part of this series (https://prashantchaudhari.com/2022/01/how-to-use-internet-technologies-for-your-success-part-1/), we saw that your target audience doesn’t exist in a vacuum. They congregate on various islands – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc.
You need to record people (in your email list) interested in your products and services from the billions of people on the internet.
If you have an extensive database of qualified people, you have a better chance of finding a customer. The more people that sign up and join your list, the better your chances of closing deals.
It’s great to get a lot of traffic through a social media network. Unfortunately, you can’t control how much traffic they send your way. Some algorithms decide what content gets seen and what gets buried, but the amount of traffic you receive may fluctuate over time. It may be hard to predict, but you can’t rely on social media for traffic because you can’t control it, and they may change the rules anytime.
When you build a mailing list of prospective customers, you own their interests. They’re already engaged with you.
To start creating your email list, offer something valuable to your audience in exchange for their email address. It can be a report, a PDF, checklist, templates, worksheets, a video, or a miniature course!
Email Marketing
Email marketing is simply the practice of communicating with your subscribers via email, and the goal is to get them to take some kind of action—for example, make a purchase, sign up for a trial, request a quote, or subscribe to a blog post.
More than any other channel, email allows you to get in touch with your consumers at all times and anywhere. It also provides the best opportunity to engage with your customers on a one-on-one basis, which leads to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
These emails can take many forms, including text and image-based messages. Most businesses use email to connect with existing clients, attract new ones, and help them stay top of mind for their products and services. The benefits of email marketing are numerous and include improved brand awareness, more sales conversions, and increased revenue.
Email Automation
You can automate your email marketing with the help of email marketing automation. It is a process of sending emails to your subscribers, customers, prospects, or leads. It allows you to send them emails based on actions they took previously, whether it was opening your emails, clicking on links, or viewing an image.
You can automate your emails by scheduling them to go out to your subscribers at specific intervals. You can also set it up to send out emails to people who are new to your business or those who haven’t purchased from you in a while.
With email automation, you can send out emails when you won’t be able to. You can also set up emails to be sent automatically to prevent them from being forgotten. The platform will also provide you with detailed analytics that helps you make better decisions and optimize your marketing campaigns.
Besides sending emails to your list, email automation software provides advanced features for segmenting your “subscribers” based on various parameters like gender, location, and purchased products. There are features to categorize your contacts by their behavior – how often they open your email, how often they click on the links in your emails, the time of the day they open your emails, etc. You can also send emails to individuals based on events in their lives like birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
Some email automation software also provides advanced functions related to sending emails. For example, suppose the person doesn’t open your email in a specified time frame. In that case, they will get another email, or the software will analyze and decide the best time (when the probability of opening your email is high) for sending an email to each individual.
The most important use of email automation software is to create “email sequences” for a specific purpose – like onboarding sequence, educating them about your products or their problem, launching new products, etc. The sequences consist of any number of emails that are sent at specific intervals starting from the point of trigger like, when they subscribe to your list, when they buy some product, etc.
An email automation software can send your audiences to your various sales funnels!
How to Get Started with an Email Marketing Automation Platform?
With all the different platforms available today, it can be overwhelming to decide which one is right for your business.
The best way to get started with an automated email marketing campaign is by identifying your goals and priorities. You need to know what you want your email automation platform to do for you before purchasing it because there are many features and functionalities available on different platforms.
The next step would be choosing the right platform for your business needs and budget, depending on the number of contacts, emails, and frequency of emails you want to send.
For your reference, I have listed a few platforms below. Each platform provides excellent features and special pricing. You can choose as per your requirement and budget.
ActiveCampaign (activecampaign.com)
ConvertKit (convertkit.com)
Drip (drip.com)
Infusionsoft (infusionsoft.com)
Mailchimp (mailchimp.com)
Mailjet (mailjet.com)
MailerLite (mailerlite.com)
Sendinblue (sendinblue.com)
Conclusion
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to promote your business online. With email marketing automation, you can manage your customer’s experience, increase sales, and save a lot of time.
You can not succeed without email marketing. When your email list grows, you’re on the way to a very successful online business.
Remember, your email list is the traffic that you own. Having an email list of qualified prospects and customers ensures that you can reach your audience at any time. Your email list is your community of loyal fans of your brand.
You must provide value to them consistently. Email automation software helps you quickly create beautiful emails and regularly keep in touch with your community effortlessly.
