Growing a business is like growing a human being.
As it grows, its problems and needs get bigger and bigger.
In your case, it’s the marketing needs that are growing and so are the growing pains.
Yeah, it’s great that you have an email list, but does it mean the database needs email marketing or marketing automation?
Like two peas in a pot, Which is Which?
What is the difference between email marketing and marketing automation?
This is what you will learn in this article on email marketing vs marketing automation.
Keep on reading to know which email marketing and marketing automation is the best fit for your business.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the act to follow your recipients’ actions during your email campaign.
Email marketing relies on email as the main channel to engage with niche recipients.
Email Marketing and Marketing Automation
Email marketing is the step-by-step road map you follow to generate leads and make products or service sales, through the email medium.
An effective way to market your business online is through email marketing.
To gain potential leads, setting up an opt-in page with a form is a great move.
Through an opt-in page, prospects can add their email in exchange for something of value.
This value can be a free gift, a mini-course, or an e-book.
While you’re growing a database with an activity history, you can get a 360-degree view of your leads.
This is marketing automation.
What Is Email Marketing Automation?
An email marketing campaign is a series of emails that are automatically generated by software programs and delivered to subscribers’ inboxes.
Like when a subscriber signs up to an email list, makes a purchase, or clicks a link.
The Advantages of Combining Email Marketing and Marketing Automation
Email marketing and marketing automation are not the same things.
However, together, they are Batman and Robin.
You can use marketing automation tricks like drip campaigns and retargeting.
Drip campaigns and retargeting can help make your email marketing specifically targeted, hence, more powerful!
Marketing automation can help you track your results, research, and test more automation strategies.
You can try all the tricks in marketing automation books to develop stronger relationships with your subscribers.
You can also give email testing a try to reinforce your email marketing game plan.
Here is how: How to write email validation test cases
Email Behavior Tracking vs. Web Behavior Tracking
During your email campaign, you can track your recipients’ behaviors via email marketing automation tools.
What’s different between email marketing and marketing automation is the collected data.
You can set up the collected data on your email open rate, link click rates, and other metrics.
This is how email marketing automation tools will help you track, summarize, and analyze data.
Analyzing data can give a thorough reading of your email marketing campaign.
For this, you need pristine, squeaky clean data ton based on your analysis.
So before you jump on to tracking and reading data, you need to clean your email list first.
You can clean your email list manually but it will take you the time you can’t afford.
Use an email cleaning software service to do it for you like Email Inspector.
Single Path vs. Adaptive, Customer-Centered Messaging
In email marketing, each of email copy, segmentation, and post-delivery analytics need delicate handling.
If you already built a campaign and started your email list cold reach out, you can leave the email marketing automation tool of your choice to take the lead on the next phase.
Sure, you can rely on an email marketing automation tool to send the same email to different segments of your email list, but it won’t give you magic results.
Make sure to do the following steps prior to launching your automated email campaign:
- Create your emails
- Plan your campaigns
- Segment your list
One of the great email marketing strategies is the Drip campaign.
The drip campaign is a series of email messages sent out at specific intervals for optimal performance and to increase engagement rates with your website
A nurture campaign is a popular type of drip campaign.
A nurture campaign sends follow-up emails based on your prospects’ interaction with your emails.
This way, the nurture campaign will send leads, based on their profiles in an automatic way.
Email automation tools pave the way for you to create dynamic email marketing campaigns.
Real-time analytics track engagement and conversion rates.
Of these emails, 67% follow the actions of individual contacts, not an entire email address book.
Another type of drip campaign is an adaptive campaign.
An adaptive campaign helps marketers create an engaging user experience by focusing on their customers.
Static Information vs. Dynamic Lead Scoring
Marketing automation gives you the chance to lead scoring.
Email marketing tools are only aware of your leads’ contact information.
Contact information is not enough to give deep insights about your campaign.
You will need to use a separate analytics tool.
That just means extra work and spreading your focus thin from one tool to another.
Kiss goodbye to your big picture as it is in tiny pieces, scattered from one tool to the other.
To avoid that, you can rely on marketing automation.
You can build a clear sight of your email marketing campaign, including your leads’ intent, firmographic data, and behavioral cues.
Here, let me paint you a clearer image.
In a long or complicated sales cycle, lead scoring is worth every single second you give it.
You need marketing automation for lead scoring.
In a short sales cycle, like in the products or services sales cycle, lead scoring isn’t of priority.
Is Email Marketing Automation The Right Choice For Me?
Yes and no.
If email marketing automation is what your campaign needs, then HELL YES!
If email marketing automation is not your campaign’s priority, then might as well leave it to another time.
By now you know that there are major differences between marketing automation vs. email marketing.
So is email marketing automation the right choice for you? Your business will decide for you.
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