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4 ways to reclaim your time: Essential tips for small business owners

Dan Hughes — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 13:30:59 +0000

Restore harmony

Ready to reclaim your time? Part of the allure of entrepreneurship is owning your time clock— but as a fast-paced freelancer or an ambitious small business owner, time often isn’t on your side.

Without an extensive network of colleagues to fall back on or the support of an organization helping you to deliver on your promises or meet deadlines, the pressure is always on. Throw a bunch of additional plates into the juggling mix (household chores, food shopping, errands, childcare, maintaining friendships, exercise … the list goes on) and you can find yourself stretched to the very limits.

“I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.” ~ Golda Meir

When you lose your grip on time management, every day starts to blend into one giant blur. Your work-life balance is knocked off its axis and leisurely weekends become a thing of the past. After a while, you might start to neglect yourself, feel guilty for not spending time with people, and experience burnout.

It’s not easy to remain productive while striking a decent work-life balance — especially when you’re out there making it on your own. But, there is a way.

If you’re reading this and you seriously need to reclaim your time, stick around because here are four practical time management methods that will restore harmony to your existence.

4 ways to reclaim your time as a small business owner

One of the biggest benefits of being a freelancer or owning a business is the fact that you can work the hours that suit you while taking charge of your professional destiny.

But, as mentioned, the problem is that without the ability to manage your time, you can feel trapped in a perpetual cycle of sleeping restlessly, clawing through your day, and playing catch-up.

Yes, you’re prepared to work hard and go the extra mile. And, no you didn’t decide to become self-employed to have your quality of life thrown out of the virtual window.

It’s, well, time to reclaim your time with these four essential methods:

Discover your ‘pockets of time.’
Set aside allocated time for business admin and development.
Map out your time with room for flexibility.
Work with the right time management tools.

Let’s dive into each strategy.

1. Discover your ‘pockets of time’

To restore a healthy work-life balance, optimize your days with a little something I like to call the “pockets of time” trick.

If you look close enough, you will discover small but consistent pockets of time that offer the potential to take care of your daily duties while increasing your output systematically.

When you start looking for pockets of time, you’ll discover that they’re plentiful.

Start by identifying your time pockets. Some examples include:

That 20 minutes between the morning routine and the school run
The 30-minute train ride to the city
The 10 minutes spent waiting for an online shopping delivery
The extra 15 minutes for an extended lunch break
The 60 minutes when you watch repeats of your favorite Netflix series

Then, document daily or weekly milestones you would like to achieve within each gap.

You might find that these pockets of time are best for making personal phone calls, firming up family plans or getting a few extra steps in rather than actual work-based tasks (remember, this is all about striking a balance).

Even if your schedule only amounts to two hours per week, that’s eight hours per month that you’re using your time more productively and more methodically.

Before long, you’ll be on a path to reclaim your time.

While this streamlining system might take some effort to set up and get going, working with your pockets of time will soon become seamless. Before long, you’ll find that you can move fluently from one task or pursuit to the next, creating a sense of harmony in the process.

2. Set aside allocated time for business admin and development

With your pockets of time firmly in place, you can optimize your weekly schedule further by setting aside a specific morning or evening outside your core work hours to tackle business admin or development. These tasks might include:

Creative planning
Content production
Social media management
Competitive research
Networking
Budgeting and other bookkeeping

The reason for allocating time for admin and personal development a little more rigidly is because it will empower you to invest all of your efforts into specific work tasks or personal errands at the moment, rather than flitting from one task to the next in a crazed frenzy. That’s a strategic approach to reclaiming your time.

Focused time is time well spent — and it will boost your productivity while maintaining your physical as well as mental energy.

When you’re setting aside time for admin and development, choose a time and day you can realistically stick to and that aligns with when you feel the most comfortable.

For instance, if you feel super productive in the mornings, get up a little earlier one day to tackle your admin and development. Conversely, if you feel that you will focus better when everything else is tied up for the day, set up your workstation, grab a snack, and get going in the evening.

3. Map out your time with room for flexibility

At this stage, you will know how to reclaim your time on a fundamental level: you will have discovered pockets of time to leverage; you will have become more fluent in how you tackle tasks, and you will have the framework in place to genuinely focus on whatever you are doing at the moment.

Now, this might seem counterintuitive but it’s critical to create a harmonious schedule: Leave a certain amount of flex to avoid falling behind or spinning back out of control. Here’s how:

Take a moment to examine the week ahead, looking at each day individually.
Allocate “slack time” — a measurement in minutes of how long you can potentially stretch out each pocket of time before having to rearrange your schedule — to each task or segment of your day.
Once you’ve gone through your week with a fine-tooth comb, go back through each day, making sure you’ve arranged your activities so that you have enough time to accomplish them thoroughly. Also, if you find any activity that you feel is redundant, remove it with haste.

Here are some additional tips that will empower you to add a certain amount of flex to your schedule … and take big strides toward fully reclaiming your time as a small business owner:

Set deadline delivery dates for clients or customers to complete the task one to three days earlier. That way you’ll leave yourself plenty of contingency time if something crops up — and if you deliver on your promises early, you will do wonders for your brand reputation.
Outsource certain aspects of your admin or work duties to other services or freelancers if possible. If you work with the right partners or people, you will enjoy a healthy return on investment (ROI) over time.
Have backup options in place (childcare options, trusted friends or family to help you out, and automated emergency email responses, for example) in case you are thrown a curveball, so you can solve any issues without stressing out too much and affecting other days in your working week.

Bonus tip: With your schedule ironed out, revisit all of your activities, commitments, and tasks, color-coding them according to priority. Doing this will empower you to make further tweaks to your schedule and optimize your agenda for optimum productivity.

Plus, this simple yet effective color-coded system will provide a practical key for all future scheduling commitments while guiding you to success when unexpected events, occurrences or setbacks (if something throws your schedule out, you’ll be able to refer to your color key to rearrange or postpone certain commitments to get more pressing matters with a cool, calm approach) unfold.

Note: When prioritizing your schedule, remember to attack it logically. Make sure that you prioritize your commitments according to their importance rather than what you like doing best. For example, while it’s vital to set aside an hour for a leisure activity if a project or proposal deadline is looming, that must come first — meaning you must color code it accordingly.

4. Work with the right time management tools

When considering how to reclaim your time, it’s always worth remembering that we live in a digital age where tools and technologies exist to make freelancers’ and business owners’ lives easier.

To help you roll out your optimized time management methods effectively, there are a wealth of effective tools that can help you get things done more quickly without compromising on professionalism or quality, including:

Take the time to research and compare these various types of time management-based tools and choose which ones you feel will offer the most value based on your specific business goals and needs.

Weave them into your weekly schedule, refining the way you use them until they integrate into your brand new schedule seamlessly. Eventually, you will discover that you’re able to tackle your to-do list more efficiently (and with a newfound sense of gusto) while striking that all-important healthy work-life balance.

Activities to help you understand how to reclaim your time

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.” ~ Alan Lakein

Plan to streamline

Set aside time to set up your streamlining schedules, planning two weeks. Commit to your schedule and color key. At the end of the two weeks, reflect on how your life has changed as a result of your efforts.

Declutter to focus

Go through your home one room at a time and start cleansing. Sell or donate any items you don’t need and de-clutter your drawers, shelves, cupboards, etc. Doing so will reduce everyday distractions and help you focus on your streamlining efforts on a sustainable basis.

Look ahead to an important annual event

Whether it’s a major holiday or a big family birthday, volunteer to take the lead and organize the event, putting your newfound time management skills to the test. Doing so will also give you more control of times, dates and itineraries while incentivizing you to put plans in place so you can enjoy your time off as intended.

Clocking off

”Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” ~Jim Rohn

Even with the best mindset and the slickest of tool-backed time management schedules, things happen. Not every week will go your way and your work-life balance may suffer at times.

But, by following the steps above, you will know how to reclaim your time and get back on track swiftly, turning what was once a permanent state of stress into a temporary blip. The power is in your hands: the time to take charge of your schedule is now.

Need some tech to take the next step? Check out these affordable Microsoft 365 packages.

Email automation 101 — 5 steps to automate email marketing

Dan Hughes — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 13:30:41 +0000

This post was originally published on Sept. 20, 2019, and was updated on June 2, 2021.

Regardless of your niche, industry or sector, email is one of the most powerful marketing channels available to today’s business owners, offering an ROI of $44 for every $1 spent. Ultimately, however, your email marketing success depends on how it’s done. When it comes to squeezing the most juice from your email marketing efforts, embracing the power of email automation is essential.

This guide will walk you through the basics of email automation and show you how to automate your email marketing. We’ll cover:

What is email automation?
Overview of five steps to automate email marketing.
Understand your audience.
- Start segmenting your customers.
- Build buyer personas.
Plan your email marketing goals and strategy.
- Questions to help define your email marketing goals.
- Iterative marketing with email.
Choose your email automation software.
- What to look for in email automation software.
- The best email automation tools.
Welcome new subscribers.
- Creating a Welcome series email marketing campaign.
- Creating a Repurchase series email marketing campaign.
Offer enticing email autoresponders.
- How to create an effective autoresponder email campaign.
- 7 automated email response strategies.
Practical tips for successful email automation.
Conclusion and next steps.

Ready to get started? Let’s go!

What is email automation?

Email automation offers a viable means of accelerating the success of your business, driving engagement, boosting your brand awareness, and expanding your bottom line in the process.

At its core, email automation empowers marketers or business owners with the ability to send scheduled or action-triggered emails to their target subscribers with relevant information, content, offers and information.

Email automation can increase email open rates and click-through rates. Plus, its intuitive nature means busy entrepreneurs can enjoy the results of email marketing efforts while gaining more time to take on other essential business activities.

A real win-win situation.

According to recent findings, 75% of leading marketers use at least one type of marketing automation tool. Plus, customized email automation workflows earn the highest click-through rates.

Studies like this attest to the unrivaled power of learning how to automate email marketing.

Let’s take a deep dive into how you can harness the power of email marketing automation to build campaigns that get real results in five simple steps.

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5 steps to automate email marketing

Now that you understand what email automation is and how it can boost your business success, let’s look at how you can make it happen?

This essential, five-step guide explains how to implement email automation in a practical sense, covering the following key topics:

Understanding your audience.
Planning your goals and strategy.
Choosing email automation software.
Welcoming new subscribers.
Offering enticing email autoresponders.

By the end, you’ll be able to use email automation and all it has to offer to make your enterprise a more powerful, more productive, more profitable business machine.

Ready? Let’s begin

1. Understand your audience

Let’s start with the basics. Before you start worrying about fancy, high-tech email solutions, it’s crucial to have a crystal-clear understanding of the audience whose attention you’ll be trying to snag.

Establishing your target audience is incredibly important to success as it will allow you to direct your email marketing efforts and create content that resonates with consumers based on their specific needs, goals and pain points.

Put simply: If you don’t know who you’re selling to how can you sell anything at all?

The answer? Well, you can’t. Not really.

With this in mind, let’s look at how you can understand your audience on a deeper, more meaningful level and boost your email automation success.

Start segmenting your customers

Professional marketers know how important it is to present leads with the right offers at the right time. Which is why understanding your audience is essential to catching them during the perfect stage in their buyer journey.

When it comes to email marketing, if you’re concerned with conversions, blasting a deal or offer to thousands of potential customers hoping that some of them will find it intriguing will not cut the mustard.

To get results you need to focus your campaign on the people who are most likely to convert into sales.

This means cooking up a solid customer segmentation strategy.

Tactics for segmenting your email list can vary and depend on what data is available to you. It’s possible to use things like your subscribers’ age, gender and location to create high-converting email offers.

Let’s take a look at the most effective strategies to help you get started with segmenting lists and increasing conversions.

Segment by location

Segmenting your email list by where people live is a great way to target a specific group. The strategy is especially effective when location plays a big role in the consumer’s purchasing decision.

For example, if a business is holding a special event at one of its brick-and-mortar locations, it makes sense to target your email to people who live close enough to the business to be able to attend. If you’re holding the event in Florida, it doesn’t make sense to target people who live in California. You can end up annoying the people who live too far away from the event to attend it.

You also might segment email subscribers by location when sending time-based emails.

If you send emails worldwide, you don’t want to send them all at once. If you do, some people may end up getting your email at an inappropriate time, and they’re very unlikely to open it. If you take time zones into consideration, you can send out email blasts when they are the most likely to be read.

Segment by gender

It’s no secret that men and women have different shopping habits, and you can leverage these differences when you segment your email list by gender.

If you have a range of products that cater to either men or women, then segmenting email blasts by gender makes a lot of sense.

This strategy also works for gender-neutral offers. Many people use it because men and women tend to respond differently to colors, words and images, so when you segment by gender, you can send an email that connects with their desires, and this leads to a boost in conversion rates.

Segment by age

People of all ages check email regularly, but depending on their age group, they are very likely to respond to emails differently. A 22-year-old recent grad is going to react differently than an 80-year-old grandmother.

If you segment your emails accordingly, you can target consumers who are more likely to buy your products.

Segment unresponsive leads

Prospects don’t respond to offers for a variety of reasons, but that doesn’t mean that you should give up on them.

Cold leads have value and it’s very possible that leads of this nature weren’t in the position to buy anything at the time.

If you stay in touch, it’s possible to catch these people when they actually decide to buy something.

Segment unresponsive leads so you can slowly drip them offers and helpful emails that you think might interest them. This consistent contact keeps you on their mind, and it makes them more likely to buy from you when they find themselves needing a product or service.

Email marketing segmentation takes a little time to master, but once you get it, you can send out more tailored emails. Your conversion rates will increase as people become more responsive to the relevant emails that you send them. In fact, effective customer segmentation boosts email open rates by 46%.

Once you’ve segmented your audience, you’ll be able to dig even deeper and build profiles on your archetypal customers — these are called buyer personas.

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Build buyer personas

A buyer persona is a fictitious character you create to represent a particular segment of your general customer base. In doing so, you gain a deeper understanding of what drives different segments of your audience to buy from you.

As with most things, the more effort you put into building a buyer persona, the more value it will yield

The strongest and most effective buyer personas are those focused on market research, consumer insights and your own objective observations from your day-to-day commercial activities.

To build the perfect buyer personas, it’s essential to ask the right questions. To help steer you in the right direction, here’s a guide to the top 20 questions to consider when developing buyer personas for your marketing activities.

Now that you understand your audience, it’s time to move onto the next phase of the operation — planning your email marketing goals and strategy.

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2. Plan your email marketing goals and strategy

Armed with a newfound understanding of your audience, you’ll be able to develop email marketing campaigns and strategies that will help you grow your audience and make the best possible use of your email automation software.

To achieve such a feat, it’s important to:

Ask the right questions to define your marketing goals.
Understand how to use iterative marketing to enhance your campaigns.
Analyze the right consumer data to get a deeper insight into customer intent and browsing behaviors.

Questions to help define your email marketing goals

Before you dive headfirst into email marketing, sinking deep into the realms of email automation, you need to define your goals. These four questions will help you kickstart that process.

What do I want my audience to do?

Once you’ve gained a deeper understanding of your audience, consider the email marketing-driven actions you want them to take.

For instance:

Are you trying to increase sales?
Do you want more people to attend your events?
Are you hoping to increase brand awareness?
Maybe get more website hits?
Is becoming a thought-leader in your niche or field a top priority?
Do you want readers to download a whitepaper or click on a certain piece of content?

As business owners, we tend to focus on the bottom line. And yes, for some companies, the goal might be an immediate uptick in sales. Then again, that might not always be your goal.

Perhaps you want to see a rise in sales in a year. To lead prospects to the sale, you may want to use email marketing to raise awareness of your brand. Whatever your primary aim, your written goals should reflect this.

How will I measure my results?

Circling back to data for a moment: without measurement, you won’t know if you’ve met your goals.

For instance, if your goal is sales, reporting on open rates won’t help you monitor your email marketing success. But if your goal is awareness, open rates could be a good measurement tool.

What if you’re trying to encourage content downloads? Then, you’ll want to track clicks within your email — as well as where those prospects go next. Here, unique landing pages (e.g. mydomain.com/whitepaper1) and phone numbers can help enormously.

What is my expected timeframe?

For your marketing goals to be meaningful, you need a deadline.

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight (10 pounds, right? It’s always 10 pounds), then you know the value of a deadline.

Email marketing is no different (except you can eat all the cupcakes you want). A realistic time horizon can help you set realistic goals and smartly assess your progress.

Set an achievable deadline and you’ll gain the direction, as well as the urgency, you need to set milestones and get your email marketing assets in place.

What resources can I devote to email marketing?

As you set your email marketing goals, remember that they should correlate to your email marketing or email automation budget.

Depending on the size of your company and what your email marketing initiatives are trying to achieve, the amount of time and resources you dedicate to your efforts will vary. Take every factor into consideration when developing your strategy and you’ll get the mix just right.

Now that you know what to consider to get your campaign off the ground, let’s move to the second phase of the email marketing strategy development process.

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Iterative marketing with email

Whether you work in product development, marketing, retail or any other field, repetition often leads to superior results. With this in mind, let’s talk about iterative marketing (or repetitive marketing, as some call it).

So, what does it mean to practice iterative marketing with email?

Email marketing can be iterative on two levels:

You can do several rounds of edits on any given email.
You can keep challenging yourself to improve your overall email marketing strategy and execution.

Honing the individual email newsletter

Let’s talk about iterative marketing with email on a “micro-level.” You want to create a new drip campaign (a series of autoresponders) to welcome new subscribers.

Do you:

Go with your gut instincts on what people want to hear from you. Put on some good tunes and crank out a series of three emails. Cue them up and wait for the magic to begin.

Or:

Revisit your current business goals. Think critically about what you want your new subscribers to learn, feel and do. Outline a series of emails. Share what you have with a business partner or mentor. Incorporate their feedback. Start over if you need to. Share version No. 2. Continue to tweak the content, design and links. Cue up your emails for a trial run. Check your stats or data after one week, two weeks or a month — whatever makes sense given your drip-campaign schedule. How many people open your emails? How often do they click your links? Is your drip campaign serving the intended purpose? If not, it’s time to iterate some more.

The first approach will certainly save you time, but if this is your email marketing modus operandi, you may well be selling yourself short.

The second option — iterative and evolving — will take more time and care but will almost certainly be more effective.

Now, many people find repetition frustrating. And it can be incredibly irritating to work really hard just to get lukewarm — or downright critical — feedback. But guess what?

All feedback is valuable, even if you disagree with it.

Because it will prompt you to try new things, push yourself further and make every email you build more effective.

Constant email marketing improvement through qualitative and quantitative feedback

So, it’s clear how to iterate on the “micro-level:” Rework the current email newsletter until it’s gorgeous, compelling and worthy of infinite clicks.

But to get the most out of your ongoing email marketing efforts, you also need to gather data, ask smart questions of that data, and set new goals.

If you don’t like your click-through rates, then try something different with your design the next time. But don’t change everything at once, or you won’t be able to assess what worked (or didn’t work).

Using interactive marketing to shape your email marketing goals and strategies stands a far better chance of resonating with your audience on a more personal level — which in today’s world, is the aim of the game.

Now, onto the next stage of the email automation success process: Choosing the right email automation software.

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3. Choose your email automation software

In the digital age, email automation software is the cornerstone of a successful campaign or strategy.

Now that you know who you’re aiming your efforts toward and considered the key elements of a successful email marketing campaign, it’s time to think about choosing the best email automation tools to help you execute.

Email automation tools can make the difference between losing out on potential profits and closing leads quicker than you thought possible — so getting your decision right is paramount.

What to look for in email automation software

To help steer you toward email automation enlightenment, here are the key attributes you should look for in email automation software:

Flexibility

Depending on the size of your venture, your personal commercial targets and your industry niche, you will need a plan that’s tailored to the success of your business. That said, the best email automation providers will offer a choice of price plans to best suit your email marketing strategy.

Usability

Any piece of email automation software worth its salt will be intuitive, easy to learn, and include functionality such as customizable templates and drag-and-drop email composers to make the entire process simple.

Integration

Most robust email marketing tools will integrate with other platforms including your website and social media pages to help you generate the most engagement from your campaigns and with the least amount of fuss.

Opportunity

Robust email marketing platforms will also offer automation to help you engage prospects at opportune times including anniversaries and birthdays. By capturing basic data, solid modern email marketing solutions will automatically send out celebratory messaging on these dates to connect with your audience and encourage more sales with minimal effort.

Service and data

Not only will a good email automation provider offer an exemplary level of client support but it will also offer access to comprehensive, easy-to-digest reports allowing you to measure the success of your campaigns.

Optimization

If an email automation tool doesn’t optimize your emails and communications for the mobile experience, then you should avoid it at all costs. Moreover, solid email marketing software also helps remove bad email addresses and redundant subscribers automatically.

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The best email automation tools

Now that you know what to look for in potential software, let’s compare the best email automation tools out there right now. This is a quick-fire list designed to inspire the selection process — so dig further if you’re curious about any of these offerings:

The GoDaddy Email Marketing software solution ticks all of the above boxes and is available in three price plans: Beginner (to get your email marketing efforts off the ground); Up & Running (the most popular option for budding online businesses) and Pro (for more experienced marketers with growing mailing lists).

With an abundance of email marketing automation tools available, it has never been simpler to customize an email automation workflow that empowers you to stay connected with your customers, keep your leads and prospects engaged, and even re-engage with people that have gone a little cold.

Consider your email marketing budget, goals and campaign requirements and you’ll find a tool that’s just right for you and your business.

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4. Welcome new subscribers

Once you’ve taken ample time to understand your audience, plan a creative strategy, and select the right tool to help you automate your email marketing, it’s time to make a long-lasting impact by welcoming new subscribers to your mailing list.

Consumers’ first impressions of your brand can impact whether they commit to investing in your products or services.

One of the most effective ways of getting things off to a flying start with a new prospect is by creating engaging email campaigns.

Remember, a mediocre welcome email can cause as much damage to your brand as it can to your subscribe rates. So, getting it right is essential.

Here we’re going to look at various ways you can welcome new subscribers to your brand, exploring a mix of inspiring real-world examples as well as automated email response strategies and delving deeper into ways to automate email marketing.

Not every campaign will leave your readers on the edge of their seats, but here are proven ways to create a great welcome drip campaign.

Offer real value

Telling new readers once more how awesome your service is, is all well and good. But, they already know that: your subscribers have already agreed to get mailings and updates from you, after all.

So, offer them information, tips or insights that they can’t find on your website.

If you can, offer them a welcome email-only discount on a great product. Whatever it is, make it count — and yes, make it worth forwarding.

Leverage intimacy with humor and emotion

Your email subscribers are your inner circle. They represent a fraction of your total visitors and of everyone who knows about you via social media.

Your welcome email campaign should make them feel they signed up for something special.

It starts with valuable information, but it’s also a matter of tone.

If your website is somewhat buttoned-down, your emails can be a little more informal. No need to go crazy with this, but you’re writing to your friends. You’re addressing people who already believe in you and your product. So connect. Tell a joke, share a personal anecdote, include a fun customer success story.

Do not be afraid to change your tone of voice with these customers.

Be brief and focused

Brevity is the soul of email.

Keep each email focused around a single message.

Your readers have many other emails overfilling their inboxes. Make yours worth reading by offering real value while being quick and easy to digest.

Keep each email in your welcome email campaign focused around a single message, and try to keep the word count as low as you can — it’s the key to keeping your readers engaged.

Note: Blasting your subscribers’ inboxes mercilessly, without even a morsel of strategic thought or quality content, is your fastest route to an unsubscribe action, spam complaint or, worst of all, a poor opinion of your brand.

So, getting your welcome campaigns just right is essential. To help steer the success of your campaign from start to finish, here are two end-to-end welcome strategies that you might leverage to your advantage.

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Creating a welcome series email marketing campaign

Imagine you just subscribed to the email list of a brand you admire. What do you expect to happen next? Well, this is a brand’s opportunity to make a good first impression with a subscriber.

A welcome series is a powerful way to set expectations for your email marketing campaigns while educating subscribers about your brand’s values, mission, and personality.

Consider a progression of two or three emails that supply subscribers with some or all of the following information:

What type of content can they expect in your emails?
How often should they expect to receive your emails?
What are the benefits of being a subscriber?
Can they interact with your brand on other channels? Which ones?
What does your brand stand for? What are its values?
What is your brand’s story?
What action(s) should they take?

Always remember: Try to keep each email focused on a single core message — you don’t want to overwhelm subscribers with too much content at once. Hold fire on overly promotional content, taking a moment to create emotional connections with subscribers.

That said, offering an incentive to sign up for your email list — such as 15% off a first purchase or free shipping — is a valuable way to grow your subscriber list and boost your bottom line.

Once you’ve successfully embraced your customers with a welcome series, prompted them to take action and closed a sale, create a tailored repurchase series to encourage repeat customers.

Creating a Repurchase series email marketing campaign

Your repurchase series aims to provide subscribers with product or service recommendations based on their previous purchases.

It can move down a couple of possible routes:

Cross-sell: Recommend a product in a different category than the product originally purchased by your prospect. For example, if they bought a T-shirt you might recommend a matching pair of shorts or sweatshirt from the same brand.

Upsell: Recommend a product in a higher price tier than the originally purchased product. If your subscriber snagged a new suit jacket, you could recommend a classy watch to complement the ensemble.

Refer: Offering your subscribers an incentive (a year’s free shipping or online store credit, or a prize based on their specific shopping preferences, for instance) by referring a friend to your brand (encouraging them to sign up to your email list or make a purchase) is another personable way of boosting loyalty and encouraging repeat purchases.

If you can create relevant, personalized product recommendations, you stand a far better chance at driving repeat purchases and, in turn, boosting your retail sales. Magic.

Now that you understand the key elements of a successful email-based welcome campaign, it’s time to learn how to automate your email marketing on a deeper, more practical level.

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5. Offer enticing email autoresponders

Once all of the cogs in your email marketing wheel are in place, it’s important that you put your automation strategies into play.

If you do this effectively, you will help to boost your overall productivity, reduce your workload, and ultimately help drive the kind of engagement that will propel your business to exciting new heights.

Fortunately, it’s never been easier to automate key parts of your email marketing strategy and make sure you’re sending the right message to the right people at just the right time.

This next section of our guide will help you to place your email marketing efforts on autopilot — or more specifically, catapult your success with a customer-grabbing email autoresponder campaign.

Let’s get started with a quick-fire definition: Autoresponders are emails sent to subscribers automatically, based on certain predetermined criteria.

For instance, you can set autoresponder emails to go out to new subscribers on a periodic basis. Once your email autoresponders are up and running, you can enjoy the benefits of email marketing, using up significantly less time in the process.

How to create an effective autoresponder email campaign

Here are the four key elements of any successful email autoresponder campaign.

1. Choose your platform

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to choose a suitable email marketing platform. You can always refer back to step three in our guide.

Once you’ve settled on a solution, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with its features and functionality. Keep in mind that each marketing platform uses different terminology.

2. Decide on your goals and strategy

Next up —nail down your goals and strategy. What is the end result you’d like to achieve with your email autoresponder campaign, and what methods will you use to reach your destination.

Why? Well, because having solid goals and a predetermined strategy can help anchor your decision-making, and will serve as a guide when you begin to draft your email series.

Each scenario is unique, but there are a few typical goals you might want to pursue, including:

Orienting new users via a welcome sequence of emails.
Attracting new subscribers and customers.
Creating an automated sales funnel.
Developing dedicated landing pages for your email marketing campaigns.

Which of these objectives speaks to you? Chances are, you’ll pick more than one.

Once you understand your primary goals, the strategy you use to get there will depend heavily on your own needs, industry and budget. But throughout, remember that maintaining consistent branding is key across the board.

3. Plan and draft your email chain

Planning out the emails you will send is just as vital as having a solid overall strategy for your email autoresponder email campaign.

A robust plan provides a roadmap and can help anchor your decisions just as it does when you’re setting goals.

It’s possible to become overwhelmed at this point, given the potential complexity and the fact that it depends so much on your business’s particular needs. But, following a few key steps will help you work your way through this task in no time:

Take a piece of paper (or whatever writing medium you prefer) and note your goal and strategy at the top.
Decide on an initial number of emails you’ll send and their frequency (e.g. once every two days).
Start to fill in the slots with general email topics without worrying about creating a killer headline yet — just a rough idea will do. Here you should think about the reader’s journey as they move through the emails in a logical sense.
Drill down into your email topics to make your your subject matter meet the needs, interests, and pain points of your specific audience
Refine your topics and frequency, relating back to your goals and strategy as needed.

Now, for the final step.

4. Ensure your content is optimized for conversions

Of course, planning is all for naught unless your content can entice and convert your readers. In an email marketing context, we’re simply talking about successfully engaging and encouraging the reader to make a sale.

Quality content is vital for any business with a message to promote, regardless of your specific niche.

By offering personable, engaging value-driven content, you can potentially build a loyal, dedicated customer base that will be more willing to open their wallets. What’s more, inspiring content will provide you with an air of professionalism and brand authority.

All these elements contribute to the real aim of any email marketing campaign: increasing your click-through rates and sales revenue.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Just focus on these key aspects when crafting your email copy:

Ensure your subject lines are optimized.
Don’t over-promote your products.
Optimize your delivery times.
Make sure your design is mobile-friendly.

Clear yet concise copy focused on your readers’ personal needs will likely be enough to meet your goals, so when you’re crafting your copy, think of your audience — and use your words wisely.

You understand the key elements of creating an enticing autoresponder campaign. Now let’s look at some general strategies to help give your efforts more direction.

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7 automated email response strategies

Whether you sell products, services, information — or even hope — you can use these automated email response strategies to connect with your audience on an even deeper level.

1. Send a year of inspirational quotes

This is a fun one. A year’s worth of lovely thoughts — sent daily (or weekly, or whenever) — is a fantastic way to inspire people and remain top-of-mind.

2. Follow up after appointments or purchases

After an appointment, add your client to your “post-appointment or post-purchase” list and send them a follow-up autoresponder. It could be a thank-you note, a reminder to schedule their next appointment or an incentive to buy another product. Whatever works for your business.

3. Share rewards and incentives

Encourage people to subscribe to your email list by offering a downloadable reward like a song, an eGuide or a piece of writing. Commonly used by musicians and authors, the offer goes a little something like this: “Sign up for my newsletter and receive a free download!”

Once the subscriber joins your email list, deliver the reward via autoresponder. A solid strategy.

4. Serialize your eBook

If you’ve created an eBook or whitepaper, serializing your eBook via email is a great way to turn readers into subscribers (and subscribers into buyers). Send them a chapter a week with autoresponders!

5. Ask for online reviews

Your customers love you, right? But it isn’t always easy to ask for reviews on Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc. A savvy way to handle this is to send a sweet thank-you note after they purchase something — and include links to the important review sites.

6. Instill a sense of urgency about trial periods

This works wonderfully for both services and products. Set up a series of autoresponders to remind your customers that their trial period’s clock is ticking away. Educate your customers on the features they might have missed while also creating a sense of urgency.

7. Send a thank-you email on customers’ anniversaries

This one’s fairly obvious but certainly worth mentioning. Set an autoresponder to send a thank-you note after one month or one year. Reminding your customers that you appreciate them is an effective approach, indeed.

Fired up and ready to go? Let’s round out this guide with some practical tips for a successful email automation strategy.

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Practical tips for successful email automation

Now that you know how to automate your email marketing and you’re brimming with content-fuelled inspiration, you’ll be well on your way to commercial glory.

Here are some practical bonus tips that will help you get even further ahead of the pack.

Start with a strong hook

Believe it or not, marketing has a lot to do with the human psyche. When you’re crafting your emails, you have to keep in mind what draws our attention and causes us to actually open one of the thousands of emails we receive. What makes that particular automated (or drip-based) promotional campaign more appealing than others?

Sometimes it’s a simple, “I was going to that store anyway and need a coupon,” but most of the time your emails are going to have to work a little harder to capture recipients’ ultra-divided attention.

Creating a successful hook boils down to five key principles:

Creating a personal connection
Offering exclusivity
Generating reciprocity by offering gifts and rewards
Encouraging social proof
Leveraging reverse psychology.

Inspire email recipients to act

A clear and concise call-to-action should anchor every email campaign.

The nature of the human brain and what makes us tick comes into play here, too. You don’t need to be pushy; it’s all about piquing interest in a potential customer benefit so email recipients want to click or call or email to follow through on your promise.

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Use your call-to-action to let email recipients know what’s in it for them, especially on an emotional level, so they’ll take that next step.

Create content that looks and feels good

In our content-driven digital age persuasive copywriting is the cornerstone of any successful email marketing campaign, hands down.

If you know how to tell stories and use words that inspire, entertain and prompt action, you’ll watch your click-through — and conversion rates — soar.

To help fill your automated emails with the kind of content that will result in consistent success, here are three copywriting tips to consider:

Grab attention with the most popular word in the English language

The most popular word in the English language is “me.”

It’s not our fault. It’s an evolutionary survival mechanism, or as psychologist Susan M. Weinschenk puts it in her book, Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click: “It is a fact of nature that if you want to get and hold the attention of humans, and if you want to get them to take action, you need to engage the old brain.”

So, if you want to connect with the old brain, the first step is to use the most popular word in the English language: me. Just don’t forget that when writing in the third person, “me” becomes “you.”

“Make the customer the hero of your story.” – Ann Handley, marketing expert

Use storytelling to charm, amaze and dumbfound

There is something universal and compelling about storytelling. We like stories because they give shape to an otherwise seemingly random existence — and storytelling gets results.

So, how do you use storytelling techniques in email marketing?

Signal that you are telling a story. Think about when someone walks into the office and says, “Man, you won’t believe what happened to me at the supermarket yesterday …” What happens? Your coworkers put down their mobile phones and coffee cups and sit up and listen.

Withhold information. In one email, you could try: “What if we told you that there is a way to offer your customers ancillary products and services that will actually improve their overall travel experience? Well, there is a way, and I’ll tell you what it is a little bit later, but first …”

Be specific. Details enrich your story and give it credibility. “The dog ruined the woman’s dress when it jumped on her” is generic. “The muddy border collie ruined Julie’s crisp, pink prom dress when it jumped on her” paints a picture and brings your story to life.

Include well-crafted stories in your email copy because they will engage your readers.

Write like a human being

No matter how closely you follow the above tips, it won’t work if your email sounds like it was manufactured in some form of corporate, direct-mail machine.

An email is not a whitepaper or an annual report. It is relatively informal and conversational by nature.

That doesn’t mean you don’t want it to sound professional and business-like. Yet, even the most formal documents can assume a conversational tone.

These three copywriting tips will help make sure your email automation activities are worthwhile — so use these tips for reference whenever you feel a little lost.

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Conclusion and next steps

Now that you know all you need to know about email automation — and more — the ball is in your court.

Remember: Your email marketing campaigns are only as effective as the content within them, so understanding your audience and their needs is paramount.

But, to accelerate your creative campaign efforts, email automation software is a must. Without it, you will fall behind your competitors quicker than you think.

To take your email marketing to a whole new dimension and enjoy the level of commercial success that you deserve, embrace the power of GoDaddy’s Email Marketing platform today.

Best of luck, email automation warrior!

This article includes content originally published on the GoDaddy blog by the following authors: Stephanie Conner, Natalie Cullings, Dean Levitt, Ben Jacobson, Tom Ewer, Eddie Gear, Maxym Martineau, Rachel LaCour Nieson, Tom Rankin, Oren Shafir, Emma Wilhelm and Erez Zukerman.

The post Email automation 101 — 5 steps to automate email marketing appeared first on GoDaddy Blog.