Don’t be deceived. Setting manufacturing marketing workflows to send automated emails to your prospects is not just about the convenience factor for your end of the spectrum. Automated email workflows bridge the gap between your marketing and sales endeavors.
More than just ensuring continuity when it comes to communicating with your leads and prospects, these emails are vital to a solid strategy to engage, re-engage, and push your prospects and leads further down the purchase funnel.
Benefits of Marketing Automation for Manufacturers
One of the biggest and perhaps the most obvious benefits of setting automated emails is that it frees up valuable time from both your marketing and sales teams. With these emails in place, your marketing team can focus on creating and implementing lead generation pieces, while your emails are “nurturing” your leads and prospects, pushing them further down the purchase funnel.
On the sales side, sending automated emails can help your sales team identify which clients are “warm” and ripe for the picking by gauging their level of engagement or implementing lead scoring in tandem with your email workflows. This allows them to dedicate their time on interacting with sales-qualified leads and not leads who are not quite ready to buy just yet.
By sending automated emails, you are also ensuring that your business stays top-of-mind. Your emails can serve as a conversation starter and will enable your prospects, leads, and even clients to feel your reach and prompt them to engage.
The Caveat
Of course, like any other good thing, done poorly and excessively automated emails can backfire. To avoid this, you have to keep it strategic. Find the best opportunities in the span of your interaction with your prospects, leads, and clients to send emails that are valuable. Don’t spam your mailing list with poorly written emails that are pointless. Instead, make sure your emails are succinct and within the context of where they are in the buyer’s journey and what type of correspondences are non-intrusive and relevant.
Keep your emails looking professional but attractive, check for grammatical or spelling errors, use a simple and relatable language, keep it short but meaningful, and check to make sure your email is readable across different devices (mobile, desktop, etc).
Types of manufacturing marketing emails to send
Now for the good stuff. Here are five vital emails you should be automatically sending if you’re not already doing so.
1. Following up on outstanding quotes
Have you recently sent a quote and have not followed-up? Sometimes it takes a moment or two to hear back, sometimes a lead falls off the radar after a quote, sometimes the lead is sidetracked or busy, or sometimes they are caught up in deliberation.
Automating a follow-up email is a great way to reach back out to these leads who are closest to conversion and offer a little nudge. Remind them of the quote information (the value and the offering) and offer your help in case they have further questions or need clarification regarding the quote. Open the line of communication by letting them know you are open to further discussions and that you’re open to their feedback.
Create another automated email to follow-up again after a good amount of time if you have not heard back, and be sure to remove those who have from this workflow.
2. Checking in on active and inactive customers
Automated emails are not just great for leads and prospects, but they’re a powerful tool for your active and inactive clients as well. Set up workflows to follow up on valuable clients to ask for their feedback or to see if they need help with anything. Doing so will make them feel valued. You can also create automated emails to encourage them to partake in your marketing efforts such as leaving reviews, following or engaging with your company on social media, subscribing to your blog, participating in your forums, or checking out your events.
As for inactive clients or those that tend to go a long time without placing an order or even requesting a quote, sending something to remind them of where your relationship and your interest in working with them can help warm them back up. If you still haven’t heard from them after this email, you can set lead nurturing email workflows that they can find valuable such as ebooks, case studies, or product/service updates.
Don’t let the relationship drop off at this point. Sometimes even something as simple as a “checking in, don’t forget to include us on your next bid” and sending a line sheet or product highlight along works wonders.
3. How’d that project go?
Did you bid on a large project but didn’t land it? Don’t get your feelings hurt. Remember the saying when one door closes another one opens? If you have a plan in motion, you can turn these moments into valuable new opportunities.
Set up a workflow to send a basic check-in emails inquiring how the project is going and to keep you in mind for the next one. Doing so will keep you top of mind and you might get lucky enough to catch them needing those couple extra pieces that didn’t make it in the initial delivery. Nothing puts you in a client’s good graces and makes you look like a hero than showing up to fix a competitor’s problem.
4. Reminder for repeat buyers
Do you sell a service or a product that typically has to be regularly replaced or serviced after a certain amount of time? You can set up an automated email workflow to be sent off as a reminder for the right time period after a purchase. Your email should include the latest information about these products or services, or any recent promotions or accolades. They must also include a way to easily reorder such as a pre-built quote based on their previous order, the sales agent information of who they have recently talked to for familiarity or an easy order link.
The Takeaway
Creating these automated emails and sending them at an opportune time can help you convert more leads into clients. As with most things, timing is everything so make sure you dig into the best intervals for your mailing list to receive these emails. If you have an inbound marketing platform like HubSpot, you can set your email workflows to be “smart” so that individuals who may be at multiple touchpoints for your workflows don’t get spammed by different branches of your automated email tree.
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