Most marketers can agree that email marketing, when done well, is a powerful and personal way of reaching your target audience.

Nurture emails in particular can be tailored to behaviors so that communications are more relevant and contextual to what contacts are actually interested in.

But as consumers become increasingly inundated with emails, is there a way to make your email efforts even more personalized and frictionless to break through the noise?

Yes! Here’s how.

Combine Your Email Marketing and Chatbot Strategy

As more people become more comfortable using chatbots, new and innovative applications for this marketing technology are on the rise. In fact, according to Markets and Markets, the global conversational AI market size is expected to grow from $4.8 billion in 2020 to $13.9 billion by 2025.

Chatbots can assist in several different ways as you work to nurture your email campaigns.

Qualify Prospects Across the Customer Journey

A popular strategy is to start by enrolling all prospects, regardless of where they are in their journey, at the beginning of the email nurture workflow.

There are some flaws with this process, though.  Many initial nurture emails are generally designed for those with minimal exposure and/or engagement with your company, and depending on your prospects, this might not always be the case.

For example, a prospect who has visited your site often and read through numerous blog posts might have been compelled to fill out a white paper form. If they receive a follow-up email with a company introduction and a list of blog posts they’ve already read, this could easily turn them off.

Chatbots can help avoid this by asking a series of qualifying questions, giving you a better idea of where any given prospect is along the customer journey. This means that you can enroll a particular prospect at the stage where they actually belong.

Here are some examples of some conversation starters:

  • Hi there! My name is Welcome Bot, is there anything I can help you with?
  • Which products/services are you interested in? We offer X, Y and Z.
  • Do you need help with this product/service? Here are some resources I can point you to with more information.
  • Interested in learning more about how we could help you and your team?
  • Hello! I’m Welcome Bot with Company X! I’d be happy to help you with any of the following topics: X, Y and Z.

These prompts allow you to identify which prospects should be nurtured with top-of-funnel email touch points and which may be closer to a decision, rather than assuming they are all starting at a single starting point.

Engage More Conversationally With Your Email Recipients

You may be familiar with chatbots on websites, social media and apps, but did you know you can embed them directly into your emails? This offers your prospects the opportunity to engage with your company through a personalized conversation designed to address their specific needs.

When prospects click these chatbot links, they are taken to your company website where they can interact with the chatbot.

You might use an embedded chatbot links in situations such as:

  • Webinar announcements to get visitors registered and pre-ask questions for FAQs
  • Purchase confirmation emails in case they have any questions about their order or want to check on fulfillment status
  • Demo or meeting scheduling to minimize email back and forth

You’ll be able to amass a wealth of data and information to help you deliver personalized experiences and build meaningful relationships.

Drive Conversions With Segmented Mailing Lists

A great way to increase your targeting power is by scaling chatbot data for hyper-targeted segmentation.

Since we know personalization is key to marketing to individuals, set your chatbot up to collect the right data you need to help segment your prospects. You can then use the information you collect to build targeted email nurture workflows that speak more specifically to your prospects, instead of just giving them general responses.

And the payoff appears to be worth it. Marketers that use segmented email campaigns have reported up to a 760% increase in revenue.

There are also a number of ways that this strategy can support your account-based marketing (ABM) strategy. If a prospect from a target account visits your page, they can engage with your chatbot and offer important details, including company information.

You then have all great insights to send a company-specific follow-up email designed to address their particular pain points and needs, including industry case studies and other appropriate resources.

Combat Email Fatigue

To ensure you are seeing returns on your email marketing efforts, chatbots can also help minimize the risks of email fatigue. Email fatigue occurs when customers get tired of receiving emails and start to ignore messages, delete them, unsubscribe or even send your message right to the spam folder.

Chatbots can help prevent email fatigue by streamlining your data collecting process. They can take on the task of converting conversations into meetings, calls and demos if you’re looking to send fewer emails.

They can also uncover new opportunities to send resources to more engaged prospects. These are customers who may be further along in the sales cycle and want to hear more often from your company.

This means you can focus your email campaigns on what they do best: maintaining relationships and building trust with your customer base, and testing brand messaging over time to improve effectiveness and outcomes.

Chatbots and Email Marketing Go Hand-In-Hand

Chatbots are still considered an emerging technology, but they are quickly maturing and becoming a staple in many companies’ customer service, sales and marketing operations.

As you uncover more chatbot tactics, think about how those features can be used in tandem with your other marketing efforts. Both chatbots and email nurturing are great at accomplishing specific marketing goals and can be used together to achieve even better results.

If you want any assistance combining both for big wins, we’d love to chat! Contact us today to discuss how to level up your email campaigns with features like chatbots. Or just talk to our chatbot!