Automation is hot in direct marketing. Companies like HubSpot, Maribel, and AWeber are capitalizing on the digital marketing trend and creating tools to make the process of marketing, sales, and nurturing leads less laborious. In this article, you’ll discover how to use AWeber’s visual automation tool to create a segmented email marketing campaign.
Set Up Your Automated Email Marketing Campaign With AWeber
Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just dipping your toes in for the first time, setting up automated email marketing with AWeber is a manageable and straightforward process.
To begin, find the Campaigns area of your AWeber dashboard. For the sake of this example, we’ll call our campaign “Automated Email Marketing Tips.”
Next, click the Create New Campaign button.
Then, in the pop-up window, you’ll see a few text boxes with campaign details such as the campaign name, description, and keywords. Next to each field is a little blue box. When you click this box, it will open a drop-down menu with suggested words and phrases you can use to optimize your campaign.
For example, let’s say you named your campaign “Automated Email Marketing Tips” and you clicked on the first suggested word, “a,” in the Name field. Then, you would have created a campaign targeting people searching for “a Automated Email Marketing Tips.” Now, when you go to edit your campaign, you can add more descriptive words to the end of your subject line to further qualify your leads.
As you create additional campaigns, you’ll notice the keywords in your subject line and throughout your content become more sophisticated and helpful in drawing in your target audience.
Segment Your Leads By Keywords
One of the first steps in creating an automated email marketing campaign is to segment your leads based on keywords. You can do this either manually or with computer assistance. For this example, we’ll use the keyword, “email marketing.”
To segment your leads manually, go to your Campaigns tab, find the Automated Email Marketing Tips campaign you just created, and click the blue words “Segment” and “Keywords” next to the campaign name.
Then, in the pop-up window that appears, type the keywords you used in your subject line and in your content. For example, if you used the keyword “email marketing” in both the subject line and throughout your content, these leads will be automatically segmented into groups based on search interest when they receive your email.
You can also use software like Google Keyword Planner to discover and analyze your target audience’s search habits. Then, you can create SEO-optimized content to capture their attention and grow your business.
Optimize Your Automated Email Marketing For The Web
Once you’ve established your automated email marketing campaign with AWeber, you’ll want to make sure your content is viewable and usable on the web. To do this, you can use a number of tools and tactics including but not limited to:
- Making your content readable and engaging.
- Testing with real people to make sure your content resonates.
- Probing your target audience’s needs and wants with surveys.
- And finally, creating and distributing content consistently.
To make your content more readable and engaging, you can use a service like Readable to create highly formatted text that appears like a graphic narrative because of its emphasis on storytelling rather than just listing content.
One of the best things about Readable is that it allows you to preview your content to ensure everything converts as you intend — meaning your copy is polished and pleasing to the eye. When you view your content this way, you’ll notice a few things like font size, contrast, and color all become more apparent. These details can help elevate the aesthetic quality of your content while notifying your reader they are experiencing well-designed text. This brings me to my next point.
Distribute Your Content In The Most Appropriate Form
With an automated email marketing campaign, you’ll want to distribute your content in the most appropriate form to reach your target audience. To do this, you can use a tool like Hootsuite to manage your content calendar and distribute your content when and where you want. For example, you can choose to have a content piece published on Medium and then have another published on your company’s blog. You may even want to consider creating a podcast to further extend the reach of your content.
Whether you choose to go the traditional route with a blog post or opt for more of a narrative approach, publishing your content in several places is the best way to ensure your target audience sees your content when they’re looking for it. This may mean creating and distributing content on a regular basis, which is something to consider as you develop your strategy.
Creating an automated email marketing campaign can be simple, yet full of complex insights. For example, you can use SEO strategies to drive traffic to your website and capture leads, or you can use content to encourage visitors to subscribe and sign up for your email list.