Email Automation vs. Manual Campaigns: What’s Best for Your Business?

Among the currently discussed in the constantly developing sphere of digital marketing, the question which email automations or manual email campaigns would be chosen turns out to be among the most frequently discussed questions. Each of these two approaches has its share of benefits, difficulties, and possible effects on your business.

However, with the blistering development of the marketing instruments and consumer demands, how can you tell that you are doing the best thing regarding your business? In today’s blog, we will explore the email automation vs. manual campaigns battle and see which one is suitable for custom business models. We are also going to discuss some of the main points that are usually ignored but which are very important in the achievement of your email marketing strategy.

The Question of Email Automation –

Email automation is the process through which the emails are sent out at a predetermined time and with a run of triggers or schedules being in effect through a software. This system will help simplify the communication process, save the manual tab on doing that work and to be always in constant touch with the customer. Automation in email marketing gives companies chances to deliver automated messages to the customers they need to reach at a proper time without very much human control.

Automation in email marketing comes in some of these standard forms:

• Welcome Emails: The Welcome Emails are triggered when a user signs up for your newsletter or your services.
  

• Abandoned Cart Emails: These are automatic emails that are transmitted upon an individual leaving an item in his or her warping basket.
  

• Follow-up Emails: A series of Emails that involves a customer after the purchase or contact with a product.
  

The use of email automation services allows businesses to incorporate enormous activities with very little human intervention, and thus it is one of the greatest tools to enhance customer retention, engagement, as well as conversions.

Manual Email Campaigns: The Traditional Approach –

The Traditional One: Manual email campaigns in their turn imply the process of creation and sending off emails separately and in most cases case by case. This method will be more individualistic and dynamic, in that marketers can format each message according to the occurrence of certain events or campaigns. For example, a manual campaign might be a one-off email sent to a select group of customers after a special event or product launch.

Although manual campaigns are suitable in keeping things personal, they are extremely tedious and many times end up being inconsistent in terms of message. The use of email marketing services that depend on manual operations is also prone to delays, and this will make it difficult to send messages or communicate in time. This process is usually favored by companies having less customer base or by the ones giving more priority to a very personal approach.

What is Best in Your Business? 

Whether you prefer automation of the email or the manual campaigns will primarily depend on your business needs, the size of your email marketing campaign, and your goals. So we should consider the advantages of using each and the disadvantages so that you make a well-informed decision.

Advantages of Email Automation –

• Time efficiency: You can also have automated workflows set up with email marketing automation. After setting up the system, you no longer need to concern yourself with emailing people and keeping tabs with the follow-ups. This immensely saves the time involved in repetitious activities enabling your team to engage in more strategic activities.
  

• Consistency: Automation helps make your emails regular, be it in a regular newsletter, in a series of educational messages, or in customer lifecycle messaging. The consistency contributes to the management of customer trust and involvement in the course of time.
  

• Personalization at Scale: Although most other platforms assume that email automation is impersonal, it is the opposite nowadays, as most platforms offer dynamic content. This implies that you will be able to customize your messages depending on the customer behaviour and preferences as well as previous interactions. Even automated, personalized emails stand a much better conversion rate.
  

• Segmentation and Targeting: By using email automation, a business will be able to automatically segment their list and target specific groups of customers based on their behaviors, location or demographics. This results in the delivery of more relevant content to each of the segments, boosting the rates of engagement and conversion.
  

• Advanced Analytics: Automated outlets provide a lot of open rates, click-through rates (CTR) and customer-interaction measures so that you can continuously maximize your campaigns. In real-time, you find it much easier to measure how well your messages are working and make changes where necessary.
  

Issues with Email Automation –

• The First Setup is Complex: The setting up of email marketing automation is one of the biggest barriers. Creating workflows and segmented lists, and having your automation system talk to your CRM or other marketing tools uses time, and it is not self-service.
  

• Excessive use of Technology: Automation is very convenient yet when overused it may create a tendency where there is no human connection. Customers will appreciate authenticity, and automation will always appear impersonal, when your messages are too generic.
  

The Advantages of Manual Email Campaigns –

• Extremely Personal: Manual email campaigns enable you to customize every email to an individual. This individual touch may be particularly helpful in targeting high-value customers or in special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries or other milestones.
  

• Flexibility: Manual campaigns are always flexible compared to automated systems which may not be flexible. The message, design, or subject line can be changed in a blink of the eye without the limitations of a pre-designed business process.
  

• Creative Control: When you are doing the mails yourself, you are in full control of the tone, style and design. This may be vital to the preservation of brand voice in smaller companies where each contact with a customer is key.
  

Pitfalls of Manual Campaigns of Email –

• Labor Intensive: The great drawback of manual campaigns is the amount of time they will demand. In the condition where an email list is very long, it might be messy to send emails to individual addresses.
  

• Lack of Consistency: Manual campaigns involve human input at each step hence there is an increased likelihood of lack of consistency. The message does not necessarily coincide with your branding or campaign goals.
  

• Scalability Problems: When your business performs better, manual email campaigns management becomes impossible. It might not be easy to scale email marketing without an automation process, and it will be hard to reach the big audience.
  

What works best in business? 

An email automation vs. manual campaigns debate does not have a single solution that fits all. Well, it will actually depend on what you are doing in your business, to whom are you selling, and what resources you have.

The following are some of the questions you can ask yourself when making a decision:

• What is the size of your email subscribers? When your business has an expanding or huge customer base, the most effective solution to scalability will be email automation.
  

• Behavioral Targeting: Segmentation is a topic of discussion, but what is being specifically discussed is behavioral targeting of email where it is not only about the demographics but converting the message depending on the interaction that the user has with your webpage or email messages.
  

A question to ask oneself is how customized you need your messages to be? When you depend on extremely personal messages to every customer, try using manual campaigns when your company is smaller.

What is your marketing experience? Automation may sound just too much when you are still starting out. However, with an adequate set of resources and time to educate, the automation of email marketing can have significant returns.

Original Ideas of Email Automation which are Easily Forgotten –

Though there are numerous blogs on the fundamentals of email marketing automation, there are a few other things that should be considered, but are ignored, which can benefit business a lot provided they are used properly:

• AI in Email Automation: By using artificial intelligence (AI), personalization can be improved through the generation of anticipation of the customers, product suggestions, and sending of emails at optimal times.
  

• Interactive Emails: To boost the engagement rates a lot, it is advisable to provide interactive content, such as polls, quizzes, and carousels, and they can be implemented by using most of the available email automation tools.
  

• Behavioral Targeting: Segmentation is a popular topic, but behavioral email targeting is something that takes it out of the realm of demographics and hones the copy to the manner in which the sender accesses your site or your emails.
  

• Email Automation with Lead Scoring: Lead scoring should not be left behind in the role of automating it by a business. You also have the process of automated lead qualification, in which leads can be automatically qualified based on the actions they take with your emails, and can be acted upon accordingly.
  

• Automating employee communication with email: Email automation is not limited to communication with customers only. Onboarding emails, employee newsletters, and employee reminders are all the sources that can streamline the HR process and enhance internal communications.
  

• Auto re-engagement campaigns: There are some subscribers who may go dormant with time. You can also use automated re-engagement email campaigns to entice those customers and they can be set up with little or no manual effort.
  

The practice of putting emphasis on these advanced capabilities and leveraging them to create a more powerful effect on the engagement and conversions of customers is indeed how businesses can make the most of email marketing automation as a method of increasing traffic.

FAQs –