Introduction

Email marketing vs Marketing Automation – Email marketing automation has become the next big thing in email marketing. This rise in popularity has brought a cloud of confusion with it. Business owners started to mix between  “marketing automation” and “email marketing”. Others confuse “marketing automation”  as the same thing as “email marketing”.

“Marketing automation” and “email marketing” make buyers often end up comparing systems designed for different jobs. As an email marketer, you should learn the difference between email marketing and marketing automation — and when it’s time use or the other. This article will teach you the difference between email marketing and marketing automation and which one is the best fit for your business.

Keep on reading to find out.

I) Email Marketing vs Marketing Automation

Here is the difference between email marketing and marketing automation:

Email marketing is the steps you take to generate leads or sell products and services via email. Email marketing includes email list or database building,  of current customers, potential leads, and subscribers.

To land new subscribers on your list, you need to set up an opt-in page with a form where prospects provide you with their email in exchange for something of value. This thing can be a free gift, a mini-course, or an e-book.

II) What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing follows your recipients’ actions during your email blasts. Email marketing uses email as the primary channel to engage with your audience,

III) What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation monitors every digital interaction a lead has with your business. Marketing automation gathers all that data into an activity history that gives a 360-degree view of your leads and their digital breadcrumbs.

Email marketing is for outbound marketing only. A marketing automation platform will help you create and manage search-optimized landing pages and blog posts, and social media marketing, and integrate them all into your outbound programs.

A marketing automation platform helps you build frictionless forms. This means that your inbound leads easily engage and receive your marketing assets. To make it more simple, I ask you to consider these five key differences between email marketing and marketing automation.

IV) Using email automation to grow your business

In email automation, a trigger can be a specific date, event, or contact activity that tells your system to send out a related message. Based on your lead’s experience, you can select the triggering copy that will touch a valid pain point.

These are some examples:

Trigger: New subscriber Even if your website e-commerce store, many of your first-time visitors won’t be ready to make a purchase.

When you grab your leads’ interest with a “subscribe now” button, then what good is an email once you have it? Welcome emails have become a hidden etiquette. There isn’t a specific rule that you have to send them, but people notice when you don’t 74% of people expect to receive a welcome email when they subscribe to a mailing list.

Here is a more ground-breaking fact: welcome emails have more chances to be read 4 times more and clicked on 5 more times than the standard marketing emails. Welcome emails generate 320% more income per email than different types of promotional material.

The moment you get a new subscriber, make sure to send them a warm welcome email. This welcoming and valid email can help you turn new leads into customers with less effort.

Email: “Forget something?” It only takes 1 click to add an item to your cart, but following through takes more steps. Just so you know, a fact states that 70% of e-commerce shoppers abandon their carts because of high shipping costs, having to register for an account, or concerns about the site’s security.

But you recover lost sales with “abandoned cart email” iHerb does a great job in this area. When you define your audience, write a clear email copy. This way, you can start recapturing the interest of your shoppers.

A new products or promotional email can have a subject line like “Something special for you!” Don’t fall into the trap of announcing every new product release, upgrade, or promotion to every customer, there is a huge chance for your messages to lose their grasp on the audience.

V) Making email automation more effective

1) Track responses to collect more information

Every time you send an automated email, you have the chance to get key information from each customer. You can know if your recipient:

  • Opens the email
  • Clicks through to your site
  • Uses an offer
  • Buys a suggested product
  • Continues to browse after they’ve been redirected from your site.

When targeting your automated emails, everything you learn about your recipients can guide you to your next move. If your recipient doesn’t open your discount emails or doesn’t click on your recommendations. it’s your sign to switch up your tactic.

2) Offer discounts strategically

The shipping option comes with that high cost. Shipping costs are one of the biggest reasons that buyers don’t proceed to finish their order. You can’t lower the shipping costs or your prices. However,  you can send your clients who abandoned their carts discount coupons or promo codes.

Discount coupons or promo codes can have an influential outcome. But be careful not to overuse it. Because the downside is when you offer too many discounts, your clients will start to expect them from you all year long.

VI)Email Behavior Tracking vs Web Behavior Tracking

Email marketing automation tools track the recipients’ behaviors within your email campaign. Many of the differences between email marketing vs. marketing automation come from what data the platforms collect.

This data has a strong correlation with the following questions:

Did the prospect or customer open your email? Did they click a link? Which link and how many times? Email marketing automation tools will help you summarize data and analyze it. The data analysis will give you an idea of what is going wrong with your email marketing campaign. With email marketing automation tools, you get that email data plus much more. You can track your lead’s behavior based on their interaction with your website.

VII) Single Path vs Adaptive Customer Centered Messaging

Email marketing needs a considerable time investment in email copy, segmentation, and post-delivery analytics. Once you’ve built a campaign and sent emails to your entire list. According to the email marketing automation tool of your choice, you can send the same email to different segments of your email list.

Marketing automation isn’t an Aladdin lamp, it won’t magically give you results. Before you launch the automated email campaign, you need to:

  • Create your emails
  • Plan your campaigns
  • Segment your list

You can build automated programs with more choices and options. There is this great email marketing strategy called the Drip campaign, a sequence of emails sent at set periods of time for optimized results and raise engagement rates with your website.

A famous type of drip campaign is a nurture campaign. A nurture campaign sends follow-up messages based on how prospects interact with your emails. The platform will manage the automatically sent leads, based on their profiles. Real-time analytics track engagement metrics and qualification levels.

Email automation tools make it way easier to create dynamic email marketing campaigns. 67% of these emails follow the actions of individual leads, instead of a single email list. Adaptive campaigns help marketers create an engaging customer experience by focusing on the customer. By now you know that there are major differences between marketing automation vs. email marketing.

However, you might ask yourself which is better; marketing automation or email marketing? Well, it’s neither. It’s what your business needs that have a say in this. That’s what will help you to identify the one that will roll the dice for you to successfully achieve your goals. This will also prevent you from being stuck with a system that doesn’t fit your marketing strategy.