In recent years, email marketing automation has become an essential tool for businesses to send timely, regular, and personalised emails to their target audience with minimal effort.
But beyond its known benefits, email automation is also effective at collecting customer data, growing an email database, and increasing revenue.
In other words, it can support emerging and seasoned businesses alike in increasing their subscribers and growing their email databases.
Why does growing your email database matter?
There are several reasons why you would want to grow your email list.
Customers love to engage with brands that remember them when they email them about new products, information, or sale announcements.
Today, big brands are utilising this behaviour in combination with the power of email marketing, as it provides them a high ROI.
A growing email list, in this climate, is a way to expand your audience, stay in touch with them, and build a relationship.
Here’s how you can optimise your email marketing campaigns to grow your database.
– Create unique email content
The most essential part of emails—even automated email marketing campaigns—is the email copy itself. You may be automating your marketing efforts, but your emails must remain unique, relevant, and engaging.
The more entertaining, informative, and valuable your emails are, the more your recipients will look to receive and forward them to their networks—a sure way to expose your brand to new audiences and get more subscribers.
For example, you can create an email copy with information about your products or services, case studies, or any other information relevant to someone considering becoming a customer.
In addition to inviting new subscribers, unique email content will also help you retain your current subscribers and have them help you grow your mailing list.
– Encourage engagement with your emails
The importance of encouraging your subscribers to engage with your emails can’t be overlooked.
You can achieve this by asking questions, providing polls or surveys, or making people think about and respond to your emails.
What else can you do to drive engagement with email marketing automation?
- Include a sign-up link in all emails you send. Make it easy for people to subscribe to your email list without visiting your website.
- Include a link to the sign-up page in your email signature. This is a great way to drive traffic to your sign-up page and remind people to sign up for emails.
The more engagement you have with your audience, the more likely they are to refer, recommend, and expose your brand to novel audiences.
– Promote email shares
Your subscribers are one of the most useful resources to promote your brand. By encouraging them to share your emails, you can get them to invite more people to sign up for your content.
For example, you can include social sharing buttons and an “Email to a friend” button on your automated emails. By doing this, you’ll gain access to friends, colleagues, and networks of your current subscribers, which can help grow your email database.
A clear CTA encouraging recipients to subscribe at the end of each email would be beneficial, as it will allow people receiving the forwarded emails to opt in easily.
– Introduce exit pop-ups in your emails
Exit pop-ups are one way to change the mindsets of your prospects.
Unlike usual pop-up ads that many find annoying and distracting, exit intent pop-ups don’t open a new tab or a window.
These pop-ups use automation to sense the time when a visitor is about to take an exit and appear immediately, asking them to consider subscribing one last time.
To further incentivise your prospects, you can offer them resources like eBooks, case studies, guides or even discounts that they can get when they subscribe.
– Segment your email lists
Your recipients are more likely to open emails that address their specific interests. So, using varying types of email subscriptions to send targeted content to different segments of your audience generates more opens and, as a result, more sign-ups.
While good content leads to greater engagement and shares, what’s considered “good” to one person may be less appealing to another.
Every subscriber is looking for something different, so creating multiple subscription types and sending more targeted content to each list increases the probability of a visitor subscribing to one of them.
As they’ve already shown interest in a specific type of content, they’ll be more likely to engage and share similar content in the future.
In addition to the traditional customer segmentation parameters, you can also consider other factors to segment your prospects, such as:
- Is the prospect a total stranger?
- Is the prospect a former client?
- How can you help the prospect?
Studies reveal that segmented email campaigns generate a 50% higher click-through rate than unsegmented campaigns.
This means that instead of aimlessly broadcasting your emails without getting any response from prospects, sending emails to a targeted audience has the potential to reap better results.
Include social sharing buttons
Even in 2022, not many B2B brands have fully understood the importance of being visible on social media platforms. Having a social media presence exceeds simply being present on social media and sharing content.
Instead, leveraging your email campaign to boost your social media presence has potential to improve your database.
Using social sharing buttons in your email messages encourages your audience to share your content on their network, increasing brand visibility.
Optimise your efforts to grow your email database with email marketing automation
Audiences are more likely to be inclined towards a brand that understands their specific needs, provides answers, and offers convenient and effortless communication channels—all of which email marketing automation can guarantee.
Email marketing automation also makes your brand visible to a larger audience, inviting more sign-ups to grow your database.
If you wish to learn more about leveraging email automation to optimise your database improvement efforts, don’t hesitate to schedule a free consultation with our marketing experts today!