Maximizing email marketing potential: Our best tips for personalization and automation

Have you heard that email marketing is dead? It seems to be a trending topic but let us assure you, email marketing is far from dead. In fact, in this article, we will debunk this myth and explore how email marketing can still yield significant profits, especially when combined with the right strategies.

We'll delve deep into all things email, revealing valuable insights and our best practices on:

• Automating and personalizing email flows so your marketing is always up-to-date the second an email is opened.
• Leveraging AI for product centric email campaigns, triggers, and recurring emails, which gives you the time to focus on your content-heavy emails.
• The flexibility Clerk’s email gives you in terms of designing and analyzing high converting emails.

Let’s dig in.

Why should I invest in email marketing?

Many marketeers are careful about sending too many emails to customers because they worry the recipients will see it as spam. This is, of course, a valid concern. However, sending too many emails to your customers is only a problem if they are not seen as relevant.

If you start creating more relevant emails for your customers, they will then be more likely to open and read the content. When you start ramping up your emails, you will likely see some customers unsubscribe: but this is not necessarily a bad thing.

Those that unsubscribe are probably not going to buy from you anyway. And, as most email providers charge per recipient, you are organically clearing your email list which helps you focus on the actual potential buyers.

‍How to begin automating and personalizing your email flows:

To start with, let's address the need for a fresh approach to email marketing. With social media dominating the marketing space, it's crucial to think differently about how you utilize your emails.

Enter Clerk’s Email tool.

By embedding the power of recommendations into your existing email flows, you can ensure that the content within is always relevant to recipients when they open your emails.

Our tool enables you to create various content blocks, such as keyword recommendations, bestsellers in categories, and personalized visitor recommendations, to enhance the personalization of your email campaigns.

These logics are not chosen at random, however, they are vital for some of the most important emails you’re likely already sending to your customers.

How to unlock automation potential with Campaigns:

Clerk’s Auto-Email feature allows you to automate a baseline of product-focused emails, allowing you to save time for creating more curated, content-focused emails.

The campaigns feature is particularly powerful as it enables you to work with emails just like paid ads: decide what you want to sell, and let us take care of the rest.

• You should have at least 20 active campaigns running at any given time, but the more the merrier. This is because Clerk’s AI will pick and choose the best ones to send from the collective pool of all your campaigns, every single day.

And if you use Email in conjunction with our Audience tool, you can create campaigns based on segmented audience interests including different product categories and brands. This ensures that the right audience are receiving the most relevant emails tailored to their interests.

Harnessing Triggers for Enhanced Engagement:

Triggers play a vital role in keeping customers engaged.

Our triggers go beyond the traditional "abandon cart" and "abandon browse" commonly found in email platforms. With the addition of "abandoned search," you can actually react to your customers search behavior without them even making a purchase. This works with our Search tool.  

So, what’s the benefit of this feature? Well, it will allow you to send personalized reminders to customers based on their search behavior, keeping your brand top of mind.

Because there may have been many reasons as to why they stopped searching for a product. The doorbell might’ve rung, or someone called them. There are many possibilities.

Utilizing Recurring Newsletters for Routine Engagement:  

Recurring newsletters serve as an excellent addition to your existing email marketing efforts, especially as not all Email clients support automatic emails without triggering it on an action.

By sending emails at specific times every month or week, you can reach recipients during key points in their everyday routines.

How should you do this?

Well, for example, consider sending a newsletter at the beginning of the month that showcases the hottest new products when these recipients are likely to have more disposable income.

Similarly, an end-of-the-month newsletter featuring personalized recommendations that are currently on sale can entice recipients to purchase who might still be looking to make a purchase, but without all that income from the beginning of the month.

Perfecting Texts, Subject Lines, and Design:

The success of your email campaigns hinges on crafting compelling subject lines and captivating texts.

That’s right, your subject lines are truly what matter.

One of the biggest advantages of using Email is that you’ll know the type of products featured in each email, helping you create subject lines that align with its content.

And, include relevant flavor text (of about 1-2 lines) to provide recipients with a clear understanding of the email's content. While most recipients won’t read more than your subject line and headline, the flavour text is still important for creating a cohesive, professional-looking email that entices them to read.

But what about design?

We’re glad you asked. When designing your email recommendations, make sure you incorporate the following:

• High-resolution images
• Product details, pricing
• Potential discounts
• Prominent call-to-action buttons.

And it’s vital that the design aligns with your brand's color scheme and fonts to maintain consistency.

How to maintain your emails by analyzing, optimizing, and growing:

Clerk’s Email automatically adapts to your customers’ behavior, but monitoring the performance of your email campaigns is essential for continuous improvement.

Our Insights feature offers a clear visualization of what works and what doesn't.

Regularly check this dashboard to identify growth possibilities and optimize your campaigns: we recommend at least once a month.

Maybe you should focus more on your personalized email flows, or cut back on a specific category to send more emails from another niche subcategory. Our Insights dashboard will keep you posted.

And finally, leveraging the Merchandising functionality, you can influence the ranks of products shown in your emails, placing emphasis on high-margin items for increased profitability.

Conclusion:

As we’ve said above, email marketing is far from dead; it simply requires a fresh approach that utilized personalization and automation.

By implementing the best practices discussed in this article, such as using email recommendations, automating campaigns, leveraging triggers, creating recurring newsletters, and perfecting texts and design, you can unlock the true potential of your email marketing efforts.

Want to really dig further into this? Watch our video with our product evangelist.  

So, why wait? Start maximizing your business growth today.