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Posted On: 19th September 2023
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Updated On: 25th June 2024

Email Marketing Automation: A Beginner’s Guide

Email marketing is nothing new. But, as we’ve covered previously, this ‘old school’ marketing channel remains one of the most widely used (and effective) out there. And, like everything else in the digital marketing sphere, it continues to evolve on a constant basis; with so many different providers out there now vying for your attention, the email marketing space is more competitive than it’s ever been.

All of this competition presents the perfect breeding ground for innovation – and there’s plenty of that going on in email marketing too. Automation is a great example, serving as a reminder that it’s very much possible to teach an old dog new tricks. 

Whether you’re entirely new to email marketing or simply want to take your campaign to the next level by trialing automation, this beginner’s guide will give you all of the information you need to get started. First, let’s start with the basics.

What is email marketing automation?

Email marketing automation is seen as the perfect next step for those already running a moderately successful email marketing campaign. If your regular emails are beginning to generate results, automation should be able to help nudge those results in the right direction, generating a greater number of leads and helping your business grow. 

This game-changing approach will help you work out when to send emails, what information they should contain, and who should receive them. In essence, it takes the guesswork out of your email marketing campaign.

How does it work?

Automation works based on data, which is why it can’t always be successfully implemented from the get-go; the more historical data you have about your subscribers and their interests, the better automation is likely to work.

This is because it uses that information to decide who to send emails to and when. Say you operate a beauty brand, and you’d like to promote a new line of skincare products. Once you have prepared the email (writing the content and finalising the design, as you normally would), automation will decide who to send that email to, based on who has previously expressed interest in skincare products. It can also decide when to send that email to them to generate the highest possible open rate.

The uses for automation don’t end there. It can also be used to send the likes of welcome emails, birthday messages, event reminders, abandoned basket reminders and so much more – it’s not just used to help promote new products or services. 

What are the benefits?

In short, the main advantage of automation is that it can save you a lot of time. Think about it – if you had to manually send every welcome email yourself – or manually input each and every potentially interested newsletter subscriber into a custom mailing list every time you wanted to send an email, you’d barely have time to do anything else.

Overseeing the entire process manually might work when your business is small, but as it grows and your email marketing campaign starts to generate results, automation begins to make a whole lot of sense.

It’s not like you’ll be surrendering complete control, either: you’ll still be able to design and construct the email just as you always have. Only now, you won’t have to worry about who to send it to and when. 

To get the most out of automation, you will have to plan ahead – it pays to be organised. But the payoff is totally worth it: there’s no better way to take your email campaign to the next level! Ready to see how your business could benefit from email marketing and automation? Find out more