What’s the Difference Between Email Marketing and Marketing Automation?

Whether it’s the baked good or slang for money, bread is a big motivator. If you want to get your hands on more bread (the green stuff), use a combination of email marketing and marketing automation strategies. 

We’ll share our secret recipe and explain the delicious differences between email marketing and marketing automation. 

So, sit down with a glass of cold water and taste this warm, fresh-out-of-the-oven overview.

Email Marketing Explained

Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that directly delivers a brand’s message to a customer’s inbox.

Use email marketing to simplify and complete the following tasks:

• Campaign development
• List building
• List segmentation
• Hyper-targeted campaigns
• Automated flows
• Email automation 
• A/B testing
• Results tracking

When to Use Email Marketing

Here are some tasty samples of when to use an email marketing campaign:

• Welcome Series: The purpose of sending a series of anywhere from 1 to 6 welcome emails is to:
  • Personally welcome new subscribers
  • Tell your brand story
  • Start building relationships
  • Turn subscribers into buyers

• Informational Content: This email provides an overview of a brand, product or service, or related topic.
• Promotional Material: These materials are for product or service awareness and can include coupons, exclusive content, etc.
• Browse & Shopping Cart Abandonment: This email aims to re-engage your customers after they leave your page and invite them to complete their purchase when they’re ready.
• Thank-You Messages: You can send these after a customer signs up to receive content and notifications, buys a product or service, or leaves a review.
• Product Review Requests: Send these to ask a customer to leave a review after making a purchase. 

The Benefits of Email Marketing

With the right email marketing recipe, you can entice your customers to engage and convert repeatedly.

• You’ll find the right customer for your products and services. Recipients open a welcome email 80% more often than most other types of email.
• You can create personalized product emails for your customers. Personalized subject lines can produce a 50% higher email open rate.
• You’ll sell more inventory. For every $1 spent on email marketing, you can expect a $42 return.
• You can decrease cart abandonment rates. After receiving an email about their abandoned cart, 60% of shoppers return to the website.
• Re-engage previous customers. 80% of marketers would rather give up social media marketing than email marketing. 

Marketing Automation Explained

Marketing automation is a technology designed to efficiently prioritize, execute, and streamline marketing and sales tasks throughout the lead-nurturing process. (To be clear, email marketing falls under the marketing automation umbrella.) 

The three simple steps of marketing automation are:

1. Workflow automation
   • Marketing automation audit 
   • Segmentation
   • Lead scoring
   • Database setup and ongoing maintenance
2. Email marketing
   • Email campaign development
   • A/B testing
   • Results tracking 
3. Sales enablement
   • Sales report setup and tracking
   • Templates and sequences

When to Use Marketing Automation

If you answer yes to any of these questions, it’s time for marketing automation:

• Do you struggle to gain qualified leads?
• Are you not getting enough engagement?
• Do you need to drive more sales?
• Are you wasting time on manual tasks?
• Do you want a more customized marketing campaign?

If you’re not already investing time, budget, and resources into making marketing automation happen, it’s not too late to join the 76% of companies that do.

The Benefits of Marketing Automation

Because of the following six benefits of marketing automation, lead generation and sales rise from flat to fluffy:

Marketing automation:

1. Allows you to utilize resources (time and money) where it matters most.
2. Nurtures pre-qualified leads down the sales funnel.
3. Boosts customer engagement by delivering the right content to the right people at the right time and place.
4. Increases conversions and revenue through personalization and data-driven decisions.
5. Improves customer retention by fueling stronger relationships.
6. Aligns and integrates marketing and sales strategies to boost visibility.

Big Leap Email Marketing and Marketing Automation Services

Big Leap services deliver the bread—it’s as simple as that. 

One client, Redmond Life, offloaded its email marketing and marketing automation tasks to our team, and do you know the results? We managed to generate nearly $1 million in email-attributed revenue. 

We’re sure you want similar results, and lucky for you, getting your slice is as simple as speaking to a Big Leap breadmaker. Contact Big Leap now!