We pretty much all use email every day. It’s a technology we are all familiar with, and one that we are comfortable using.

Email doesn’t have to be just a single ‘fire and forget’ exercise though, where we send a single email and wait for the response.

it can also be used to great effect by using automation. Automations are sending a series of emails to fulfil various different tasks and help guide people through sales funnels, purchasing products or even setting up systems.

Read on to find out our top 5 uses for email automation, and discover how useful they could also be to your business, no matter the size.

Keeping people informed

The most often thought about use for email automation is sending out newsletters.

Chances are you may be reading this blog because of following a link from one of our monthly newsletters.

Newsletters are a great way of reaching out to people and letting them know the latest news, about special offers, or directing people to information that you feel may be useful for them.

The great thing about using newsletters is the nature of email automation. Subscribing to a newsletter is an opt-in process, which means for people to be on your distribution list they need to have chosen to be there.

This means that you are sending out your newsletters to a group of people that want to hear your news. This is golden.

Selling and upselling

If you have a website and you’re selling products or services online then email automation is simply a must-have thing.

While it is possible to do it manually, i.e., ask someone to give you a call for example if they want to purchase something, doing it via an automation can vastly reduce the amount of work needed on your end.

You can send out emails automatically to say you have received their order, that it has been dispatched and is on the way, you can even offer them the option of joining your mailing list if they’d like to.

After they receive the item, you can send out another email saying thanks, and asking if they liked what they received for them to leave a review.

A word-of-mouth review is a very valuable sales tool and something that other purchasers often look for or are even convinced by.

You can also make recommendations for other products or services in any follow-up emails. This is called upselling and by doing this you offering people something of interest they may not have previously discovered or considered.

All of this can be set up to run automatically.

Just imagine the amount of effort to do all of this manually, let alone the risk of missing something or sending out the wrong thing if you’re trying to manage the whole process by hand.

Client onboarding

Quite often when helping people out there is a fair bit of information to gather.

Take us here at ProfitAbility Virtual Assistance for example. We help out small businesses across a range of different areas, each of which requires its own unique set of information.

When we take on a client to help with their bookkeeping for example.

We need information specific to how they are doing things currently which can include the platform they are using (if any) along with some other bits and pieces.

Or take the example of when we help people with their social media.

In this case, there are a few things we ask to get things going for them. Which platforms would they like to use, how many posts per week etc…

A typical email automation has a few emails which will guide people through a process and let them know important and useful information along the way.

As an example, an email sequence can look a little like this,

• Welcome email, check they have filled out a registration form
• Instructions for creating any software permissions that may be needed.
• Meet the team. Introduce ourselves and let people know who does what and who they can get in touch with if they need to.
• A thanks for using our services and an invitation to leave a review.

The above is just an example, but I hope it illustrates the sort of things that can be done. Really the possibilities are endless, and configurable to meet your specific needs.

Special announcements

Your email solution can split your contacts into different lists, something which can be super useful.

Expanding on the example above. We have bookkeeping clients and social media clients.

If we have a bookkeeping promotion or something of interest we want to let our bookkeeping clients know about, we can use our bookkeeping list to send out the information to just that group.

And of course, this could also be a simple automation as well, with a follow-up email or two if needed.

Groups like this can be configured any way you need, so for example it is possible to have people in multiple interest groups.

Getting smart with email marketing

Automations can also be smart.

By that I mean the automation can keep an eye on what is happening with someone that has been sent an email, and depending on what actions have or haven’t been taken by the person choose what to do next.

This can be super useful if, for example, you are waiting on some information from them in order to supply the service they have asked for.

The automation can detect there has been no action at their end of things and send a polite reminder.

Not only is this useful for you, but it’s also useful for the person at the other end. Quite often people are busy and a reminder is just what’s needed.

Decisions within automatons can be based on a number of criteria including time and actions taken.

This gives you, as the author of the automation, full control over how you would like to engage with people, making sure you get the right information to them at the correct part of their process.

Email automation solutions

There are several different solutions on the market, each offering various levels of service and features.

The Top Email Marketing Services Ranked

At ProfitAbility Virtual Assistance we use ActiveCampaign, a solution we have found extremely powerful and flexible.

While there are other solutions on the market that may seem cheaper at first, we have found that we have been able to scale with ActiveCampaign due to the wide array of features available.

If you’d like to have a look at ActiveCampaing for yourself and receive the latest discount offer for subscriptions then click on the button below…

Email automation and beyond…

This article has focused on the automation side of email marketing, but there’s a lot more you can also do with a decent email marketing solution.

With a good solution, you will have a great email editor to hand, be able to design forms that can be used on your website and directly integrated into your automations and use the power of the system as a CRM (customer relationship manager)

Summary – 5 reasons for using email automation in your business

I hope you’ve found this article useful and I’ve been able to give a least a glimpse of the power and possibilities email automation can bring to your business.

If you’d like to find out more about how ProfitAbility Virtual Assistance could help you use the buttons below to take a look at our virtual assistant services or get in touch for a chat. We’d love to hear from you!

Here’s the link again if you’d like to have a look at ActiveCampaing for yourself and receive the latest discount offer for subscriptions. This is an affiliate link, but ProfitAbility Virtual Assistance does not take any commission, instead choosing to pass on any discounts directly to you.