If you are trying to scale your company, it is essential to incorporate automation into your sales process. By automating certain tasks for your sales reps, such as the monotonous task of crafting custom emails for each lead to fit different situations, you can save the time of your team members, cut company costs, and enhance your relationships with customers. One way you can automate some of the tasks performed by your sales team is by implementing email workflows.
An email workflow is a series of emails that are automatically delivered to a customer, or lead, when triggered by a predefined event. A trigger could be based on the customer’s behavior; for example, if a customer fills out a contact form on your company’s website, that behavior could be a trigger that activates a series of welcome emails introducing them to your brand and products.
Some other examples of behaviors and events that could trigger a workflow include:
· A customer browsing through your website
· A customer making a purchase
· A customer abandoning their shopping cart
· A customer’s special occasion
Like all automation tactics, email workflows can help save time and reduce costs.
Without email workflows, it is likely that your sales reps are spending hours each day manually typing up outreach messages and responses to each customer on their client list. Email workflows allow your reps to automate tedious tasks such as building email lists, scheduling, and sending emails. Your sales reps can then spend their time on deeper, more engaging work, and you can cut costs as your company scales by reducing money spent on redundant labor.
Beyond saving time for your sales reps and cutting business costs, automated email workflows are advantageous for any growing company because they allow you to:
1. Segment and target customers based on key attributes
2. Build relationships with potential customers prior to sales interactions
3. Enforce quality standards across sales communications, and
4. Improve customer retention by reengaging them
Continue reading to learn about each of these benefits and to gain some tips and tricks that will help you start building out email automation for your sales org today.
One key advantage of using email workflows in your sales process is their advanced targeting capabilities. With workflows, you can target certain groups at specific times with email campaigns customized to the wants and needs of that group’s members.
To make the most out of automated email targeting, you can link your CRM database to your email automation software. This integration allows you to use your customers’ purchase history and other helpful insights to segment your email recipients into groups with shared attributes.
For instance, let’s say you have an e-commerce site that sells sandals and sunglasses, and you are getting ready to release a new line of sunglasses. To promote these sunglasses, you want to engage previous sunglass buyers as well as those who have only previously bought your footwear. So, you design two unique email campaigns: one that suggests to previous sunglass-buyers to try out a different pair of shades, and one that encourages previous shoe-purchasers to browse your expanding eyewear selection.
You can use your email automation tool to build these two email workflows and then send them to the right audiences. Based on the information about what customers have previously bought, your automation software can help you segment your contact list into two groups and send the appropriate campaign out to each one.
Beyond purchase history, some other attributes that you can use to segment your client lists include:
· Demographic insights, such as gender, age group, region, and language
· Behavioral insights, such as browsing history or user activity on your side
Another benefit to using email workflows in your sales process is that it allows your sales reps to “nurture” leads—that is, to develop a relationship with a potential customer before announcing new products or promotions.
If you have synced your CRM to your email automation software, as described above, you can use demographic data and other insights to personalize the emails that each customer on your contact list receives. For instance, you can send customized product recommendations to a customer who has spent time browsing your e-commerce site, showcasing items similar or related to the ones they were looking at at an earlier time.
After receiving outreach that is geared towards their personal tastes, customers will be more receptive to having conversations with members of your sales team. They will go into the interactions already being familiar with your company’s brand, which will help your sales reps build trust with them and encourage buying loyalty.
A third advantage that comes with implementing email workflows in your sales process is that automated content can help you enforce quality standards across the communications coming from your sales organization.
When sales representatives are manually typing up each email to every customer on their contact list, the monotony of this work will likely cause them to make the occasional error. While many typos may go unnoticed, some—such as the misspelling of a customer’s name—can damage the relationship between the salesperson and the customer. When you automate the email process, you reduce the likeliness of error caused by human oversight. What’s more, you can spare your sales reps the tedious task of combing their correspondences for grammar errors or spelling mistakes, helping them save their energy for what they’re best at: closing leads and driving revenue to your business.
A final benefit that comes with incorporating email workflows into your sales process is that doing so can help you retain past customers with strategically rolled out win-back workflows.
It is a known fact in the business world that it is easier to resell to an existing customer than it is to bring in a new one. That said, the only way to bring in that additional sale is by re-engaging the existing customer at the right time. A simple way to re-engage past customers is to roll out an automated win-back workflow. Win-back workflows, implemented on the right audience at a strategic time, can help you re-capture the attention of a customer who has already built a relationship with your brand.
Here are some components that you may want to include in your win-back emails to make them the most effective.
If email correspondence is an integral part of your company’s sales process, you must help your teams automate parts of this work if you want to scale your business. Email workflows are a form of automation you can implement to make sales communications more efficient and effective.
If you are ready to set up email automation for your sales org, here are some tips and tricks to keep in mind as you get started.
1. Choose the right email automation software
You will have the most success with email automation if you select an automation tool with a proven track record for helping sales teams scale. Here are some of the most popular tools that companies are using for email automation today:
2. Target your campaigns strategically
When getting started on your first campaign, you might be tempted to cast a wide net and create content that will engage as many customers as possible. While there are benefits to this approach, it is more strategic to start with small, targeted campaigns designed for specific audiences. When you select an audience group based on shared attributes, you can personalize the content of the emails sent to them so that it caters to their preferences.
3. Use data to measure your campaigns’ success and tweak accordingly
When you send out a new campaign, it is important to collect data that can tell you how the emails are performing. Set up clear success criteria from the beginning so that you don’t end up clogging up peoples’ inboxes with unhelpful content. If your emails aren’t getting opened or facilitating conversions after a certain period of time, go back to your campaign strategy and make iterative changes.
By incorporating automated email workflows into your sales process, you can help your company build strong relationships with customers and develop and maintain a cost-effective strategy for growing your business. The email automation experts at Zyme.ai are here to help you develop this strategy. If you have any questions or need help setting up your workflows, you can contact us at hello@zyme.ai.
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If you are trying to scale your company, it is essential to incorporate automation into your sales process. By automating certain tasks for your sales reps you can save the time of your team members, cut company costs, and enhance your relationships with customers.
