The pitfalls of email automation

Email marketing can be a tremendously effective way to reach prospective customers and automation software has made it even easier to send messages to dozens, hundreds or even thousands of individuals at once. However, when using automated emails, it’s crucial that small business owners don’t come off as being fake, as this will turn customers off.

There is a right way and wrong way to automate the email sending process. As Hubspot notes, the key is figuring out ways to make messages seem genuine, while still being able to automate them in some way or another.

Generic first lines

With automated emails, {there are several ways to go bad. One of the best examples of this is the forced sincerity route.

“Forced sincerity is one of the biggest giveaways that an email is going to be irrelevant,” Hubspot explains. “It’s fine to show that you care about the recipient’s well-being, but the first line should grab the reader’s attention, not make him/her wonder who you are and why you are so confident that things are going great.”

An example of forced sincerity is starting an email with the line “I hope you’re doing well.” While many businesses have good intent behind this greeting, it can seem insincere, especially if the recipient has never heard of the company before. In these instances, it’s best to just skip the filler and cut straight to the chase – how a business’ products can improve the life of the recipient.

Irrelevancy

Another common pitfall with automated messages is irrelevancy. Businesses may generate email subscribers for any number of reasons – to gain access to a white paper, because they made a purchase in the past or because they met the company owner at a networking event. Each consumer has a different reason for subscribing, but many brands make the mistake of treating subscribers as if they have uniform needs.

For example, a brand may offer consumers a comparison guide for an enterprise telephone system. While this free content would be great for people looking for such a product, it might as well be spam for those not interested in that solution.

Small businesses need to be careful with their automated messages. Relevancy is key to keeping email subscribers happy, and too many off-target messages may have readers opening the email – not to read the content but to unsubscribe.

What works

For companies trying to reach hundreds or even thousands of consumers at once, creating personal messages is all but impossible. However, it isn’t that difficult to write emails that at least sound personal at first.

The invitation-only women’s style site Rue La La has developed an email that embodies that mind set. The invitation email, which is sent out to customers who subscribe through the company’s website, is behavior-triggered – once the prospect submits their email, the message is sent. This enables the message to be highly relevant.

It also uses a sense of humor that is more engaging then false sincerity. The email acknowledges that the recipient hasn’t given his or her business to the brand yet, which works much better that assuming a relationship with a line like “Hope you’re well.”

Another strategy that small businesses can use to avoid irrelevancy is to segment their audience. BtoB Online suggests breaking down email lists into high-spenders and low-spenders and then further based purchase history.

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