It is important to follow up with your customers. This way, you can make sure your customer is completely happy and satisfied with your service or product, you can provide further assistance, and you can even ask for a testimonial or referral.
A manual system for following up is probably not the best idea. It is time-consuming and most likely to not get done, as it relies on the diligence of you or your employees. The task often falls into the ‘forgotten’ folder. this falls by the wayside. The best way to ensure you always follow up with your customers is by having an automated system in place.
How to set up an automated system
First, lay out what you want to achieve. It is best to keep it simple as the system can get complex quickly.
For example, I have recently decided that I want to email new customers that we do a job for and ALSO I want the system to tell me if the emails don’t get read (so I can then schedule a call to them).
The emails will be automatically sent as follow:
- Straight after the job is done, we will send them an email with a survey to complete.
- 7 days later.
- 14 days later.
- 30 days later.
You want to write content for each of the emails you will send to them.
For example, on the 7 day one you could say:
“Hi [name]. Just dropping a line to make sure everything is good with the service we have provided. Please do tell me if something is not right!”
Note: The system will automatically put the name of the contact in there instead of [name].
Choose your automation tool
Ok so once you have written the copy of your emails and decided on what you want to achieve, you can set this up in the system. I use Active Campaign. For my use, the system is free and it allows me to do everything that I want it to.
Sign up for it to check it out. What makes this powerful is that it allows you to create automation attached to a CRM. So you can input a person’s details into it, then you can send out emails to this contact constantly. It will even tell you the action of your recipient, for example, if they have opened the email or not.
How to set up your automation
Once you have your account, head to Lists at the top. You want to create a list that when a contact is added to it, it will trigger the automaton. Scroll down to the bottom and select’ add new list’. Name it ‘New Customer Follow Up’ for example and enter the other details it requires.
Then head to Automations at the top. And then ‘create new automaton’ on the right top. For your simple email follow up, you are going to tell the automation when to kick into effect, for example when a contact subscribes to a list (the one we created above).
Ok, then you can add actions. The two you want to get familiar with first, are ‘send email’ and ‘wait items’. Lay it out so it goes how you like, eg.: send email – wait 7 days – send email – wait 7 days. etc. etc. Then fill in the emails to send. You can use smart links it here like ‘Hi [first name]’.
Then you just need to create contacts and add them to the list specified for the automation to start!
Conclusion
Automated marketing is a powerful tool to keep in touch with your customers and to gain new ones.
As a business owner, you probably know the importance of keeping in touch with your customers. If you are too busy to set it all up yourself, we can help to do it all for you, so you have more time to work on your business.
If you want the peace of mind your email marketing automation is well looked after, request today a free strategy session with Dominic.
The first step is a free strategy session
Your peace of mind is paramount. In this session, we will talk about your current situation, your desired situation and look at the best ways to get you there smoothly.