Lately, I have received requests from some customers who asked me what I thought of the automated emails and how to proceed.
From a certain point of view, I was pleased with this request, because it shows that many companies are changing and are asking themselves questions to which today’s technology can give easy answers…
As a matter of fact, there are user-friendly software tools (your secretary can learn them in no time) that allow you to create these automated emails.
But there are at least 4 important thing you should consider.
1) Why do you want to use automatic emails? “Uhm because … they are free!”
It is not really like this.
Considering that we are in a period where the opening rate of emails is at the lowest ever, you send the emails but then no one opens/reads them.
And even the story that they are free is not really true.
Writing a text that makes sense, choosing and filtering the addresses to send it to, sketching a decent graphic layout: this requires time, and time is money.
So e-mails may seem cheaper than other marketing tools, but they’re not free.
In addition, are you able to enter the information that really allows you to monitor the level of interest your e-mails generate in the reader?
2) To whom will you send them?
To everybody? I hope not!
Having a software tool that sends the e-mail is the most trivial problem; the serious one is called segmentation or profiling.
How are your customers listed?
Do you want to send a different email to each province?
To those who have 78 wood windows?
By age bracket?
To an architect or to Miss Smith?
To those who have purchased in the last 2 years?
To the customers you met 3 to 6 months ago but have not yet placed an order?
Do you have a database where you keep your actual and potential customers classified?
If not, you’re doing something wrong.
These 2 points are important, but there are 2 other points that must be taken into serious account to avoid wasting money and time.
1) How to write these emails?
Linked to the previous point there is another huge problem, which in technical terms is called awareness.
There are whole books that deal with this aspect, but I will make it short.
If you have to describe a situation or object to your wife, to a child, to a friend, to your grandfather or to a partner… do you use the same words?
Each client has their own level of awareness (classifiable in 5 different ways) that anyone writing up should have clear in their head.
Otherwise, you risk throwing words to the wind and it is as if you were writing to a German person in Chinese language. Your email will be trashed after a few seconds.
Just to give you an example, when I prepare an email for an event in which my company participates, for example a trade fair, I send these emails:
– an email to end customers, where I say certain things in a certain language
– an email for machine dealers, where I put pressure on other points
– an email to my dealers around the world, where I once again use a completely different language
In addition, each one of these e-mails is translated into 6 languages to be closer to the reader.
So you can understand that if you say “Green light to automated emails à gogo!” you are probabily seriously underestimating the problem.
2) Are the emails you send useful?
Many people ask me, how many emails can I send in order not to bother customers?
I think that if they are useful emails that really teach something interesting to the customer, they are never too many.
If, on the other hand, they always and only contain commercial proposals, if they are boring and even roughly written, the third one could ruin your communication forever.
So you have to be very careful with your emails.
So if you are thinking “Don’t worry, they are bullshit! Just send e-mails, then they work for you even when you’re on holiday or sleeping”.
I’m sorry but it’s not bullshit if you don’t think carefully about what you’re doing; if there’s no clear vision (and even some experience) about how you want to achieve a goal, you’ll spend time and money and you’ll get NOTHING in return!
So please like all things, turn on your brain, give an answer to the questions I suggested, and only then, learn using a software tool that AUTOMATICALLY does the work that your mind has planned in detail.