Marketing is an essential component of running a business, but using the wrong marketing method is not only a waste of time but also your money.
New and seasoned businesses alike need to understand the buzzwords of the world of marketing—and what such words mean for their businesses—to streamline their marketing efforts and make strategic decisions about their campaigns.
This entails understanding the differences between email marketing and marketing automation and what it truly means for the future of your business.
Marketing automation and email marketing are vital marketing techniques for businesses looking to gain more leads and conversions.
But what’s the takeaway in the age-old argument of email marketing vs marketing automation? Let’s dive in.
What happens in email marketing?
Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that leverages emails to build customer loyalty, trust, and brand awareness.
While certainly faster than the good ol’ snail mail, email marketing is one of the oldest and most traditional forms of marketing, having originated 40 years ago.
It’s also cheaper, faster, and more eco-conscious than snail mail and consumes less effort and time to send bulk emails.
There are, however, best practices that need to be followed to get the most out of your emails:
- Build and maintain a hygienic email list instead of sending these emails to consumers who are not interested
- Follow email marketing ethics, such as providing your subscribers with a clear method to unsubscribe, including the address and name in the email, and using non-deceptive subject lines
- Incorporate information that is relevant and relatable to your recipients
- Stick to a strict, consistent schedule
What happens in marketing automation?
Marketing automation tools—software platforms and technologies designed to automate repetitive marketing tasks—help businesses track their leads, streamline their sales cycles, and manage customer data.
Here’s how marketing automation makes it happen:
- Monitors consumers’ online behaviours by tracking codes
- Retrieves data that is then analysed and used to create behaviour-based market segments
- Transitions leads from the awareness stage to the conversion stage in the sales funnels by categorising buyers based on interests expressed and behavioural measures
- Automates your internal processes, such as your digital asset management, the marketing calendar, and budgeting
Email marketing vs marketing automation: The differences
While both email marketing and marketing automation seem to take the same road, there are differences between the two strategies.
- Level of engagement
Email marketing provides single-channel engagement, whereas marketing automation enables multi-channel engagement through platforms such as emails, social media channels, and websites.
- Capacity of personalisation
Email marketing supplies basic consumer data personalisation, whereas marketing automation provides more complex consumer data personalisation tools.
Overall, while email marketing can accelerate your communication with your target audience, marketing automation can take your email marketing and other marketing efforts to the next level.
What you can do when you combine email marketing and marketing automation?
- Automate your email marketing efforts
The most significant advantage of employing an automated email marketing strategy is that it can function almost completely autonomously. This means minimal effort on your part and a reduction in your overhead costs.
Once you divide the email criteria and implement a delivery schedule, your emails can be sent independently without the need for constant human interference.
- Deliver hyper-personalised content
Promotional emails that don’t address the customer’s needs or aren’t relevant to them are most likely to be considered spam.
This is why personalised emails—with content that fits individual customer preferences—are vital to building better communication with your audience and encouraging their engagement.
Automated email marketing utilises customisation tools to perform tasks like filling in the customer name and location to make promotional emails more distinctive and unique.
Hyper-personalised emails can also significantly increase click-throughs and open rates. According to HubSpot, marketers who used segmented campaigns noted a 760% increase in revenue.
An automated customer relationship management (CRM) platform offers 360-degree insight into your clients’ buyer history and uses that information to segregate them into categories based on their purchases and subscriptions.
You can then set up specific emails to be sent to these categories and deliver an enhanced and personalised experience to your clients.
- Produce consistent and error-free email campaigns
You can’t afford to have errors in your marketing campaigns in today’s cutthroat environment. When a promotional email contains easily avoidable errors, customers may lose trust and interest in your brand.
This can range from errors in email design to a lack of consistency in your messaging.
Marketing automation significantly reduces the number of errors in an email campaign—from the moment you address the recipient to when you schedule it to be sent—and produces more organised and consistent emails.
Receiving timely and professional emails periodically will not only build your brand’s reliability but will also help you become your customers’ preferred brand.
Email marketing vs marketing automation—a combo is the way of the pros
Using automated email marketing software to complete your repetitive, time-consuming tasks can save you time and resources. They enable you to assign your staff to more important, strategic tasks that require immediate attention.
Instead of sticking to solely traditional email marketing, combining the power of both email marketing and marketing automation can help you optimise your resources and obtain the best marketing results.
To learn more about the combined power of email marketing and marketing automation, schedule a free consultation with Launchy experts today!