Surely you have heard or even used Email Marketing but not many know about this relatively new concept of Marketing Automation which basically consists of launching email campaigns, messages or responses that depend on the actions of the customers, here we already point out the fundamental difference but still many people confuse it with Email Marketing due to the fact that it uses emails as a main tool but here we mention the main differences of Marketing Automation:
1. Marketing Automation depends on the client
When you create an Email Marketing campaign, it depends on the company, you decide the message you will send, the address database to which you will send it, the time and the format in which it will be sent, even if it is an email programmed for another hour, even so you have total control. Unlike Marketing Automation, the customer is usually the one that determines when they will receive the mail and many times even the content of it, because in order for a Marketing Automation to be triggered, an action by the client is necessary. That often is as simple as leaving your data in a certain site and you will immediately receive an email.
Of course, you configure automation from the beginning but you still do not have control over when your client will receive the message as it will be sent to him until he takes action.
2. Email Marketing is massive and Marketing Automation is personalized
When you have a database for which you are writing an email, you have to generalize and the message is not really addressed to anyone but to everyone, unlike in a marketing automation a message is contextualized to what is living your client right at that moment, for example a thank-you automation for your first purchase, or an automatic congratulation on the day of their birthday or anniversary.
3. People do not want to receive Email Marketing
Have you ever received a massive email? It does not matter if you give your information or not, generally the mass mails with promotions or that try to sell you something that you did not ask become very annoying very fast so I assure you that however interesting your product is to most people not they are interested and you will not convince them by flooding their inbox with your advertising, the brands that do this become annoying and irrelevant.
4. Marketing Automation saves you work
As the name implies, they are made to automate the marketing work that we normally did by hand or that after a certain level it is difficult to continue doing it with excellence. For example, in our agency whenever someone asks for free advice, instead of waiting for someone from us to contact them, we send them a personal email from one of the advisors suggesting to schedule for counseling and trying confirm it, in this way the advisor only has to wait for the people to confirm to have the advice and the process of doing it is saved.
5. The effectiveness
While a good email marketing campaign can have an average of 10% opening of emails, most marketing automation campaigns have a 40% open (Impactum data) and a percentage of clicks of 15% against 1% that have the Massive Mails, this shows that sending a personalized email and at the right time can drastically change your results
6. Email Marketing is Invasive and Marketing Automation is on demand
A massive mail, the client is not asking for it, it is simply sent with the hope that it likes, on the other hand marketing automation is sent just when the client has just done something, register, ask something, enter a page etc. and the message speaks of a context that makes the client identify and respond in a better way for what we could say is a message that many times the client already expects.
7. Email Marketing is bad seen by your customers
Basucaly no one likes to receive SPAM in their mail, if your company begins to send it, the customer, instead of feeling cared for, probably feels threatened by your company and begins to lower their perception of you so it is always advisable to be extremely moderate in the email marketing campaigns you drive and the frequency of these.
8. The Automation of Marketing makes your business look modern and professional
When your customer receives a welcome email on your first purchase or an email for having reached a certain goal, not only do you feel that you are in a company that cares about your customers, but you know that it is not just any company because only better companies take these types of strategies or maybe in your mind only large companies can have systems that detect and send mails for this type of actions.
Nowadays any company can implement Marketing Automation without technical knowledge or big budgets, we recommend you take a look at ActiveCampaign.
9. Marketing Automation has a small level of complexity
Although it has many advantages, marketing automation is usually complicated for most SMEs to carry out, mainly because it requires a certain level of integration with other systems of your company to work better and requires design of flows of actions that your clients carry out and design of the messages that will be detonated after each one of those actions.
Although it does not require knowing programming or anything like that, it is something that not many people are used to and usually requires a consultancy to be able to carry out a correct automation.
10. The Automation of Marketing has higher cost
This is also a point to consider: it does not mean that it is expensive, simply the cost is higher since for email marketing there are quite broad and zero cost solutions like Mailchimp or MailRelay. In the marketing automation you can start for only $ 9 dollars per month (an approximate of $ 200 MXN) in ActiveCampaign which is the best cost-benefit platform and also gives you an unlimited number of emails limiting only the database to 500 records.
