By: Julie Thorner, Liquid Spark
Efficiency is vital in business. When the need to scale comes around, deploying systems, processes, and workflows can shift the very essence of not only how we do business, but of how we serve our customers, too.
This is where email automation comes swooping in with a superhero’s cape tied to its neck. It automatically delivers one-to-one communication that speaks directly to your customer’s interest based on a predetermined action or rule (a “trigger”)—while your team is free to focus on the necessary touch-points of your customer’s journey with your adventure brand.
Just think about the power of knowing that every new subscriber receives a series of emails that provide them with valuable information about your business…
Or knowing that every person interested in a particular type of trip or tour will receive thoughtful recommendations or tips…
Or that someone who abandons your online shopping cart gets a humorous reminder to finish their purchase…
Or maybe even that a kind “Happy Birthday” message (with a surprise gift or discount!) is delivered without fail…
All while saving you time, money, and energy?
Email automation unleashes an entirely new level of customer service, support, and satisfaction.
A Quick Look at the Benefits of Well-Planned Email Automation
On average, 51% of companies are currently using automation. When appropriately implemented for your adventure brand, you enjoy the following marketing automation benefits above your competitors:
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Improved targeting of messages
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Improved customer experience
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Better quality of leads—and more of them, too!
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Improved efficiency across customer service and sales funnels
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Higher conversion and customer engagement
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Longer customer retention
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A shortened sales cycle
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Streamlines your resources (time, money, energy)
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Allows employees to focus on high-touch points
From the list above, it’s easy to see how email automation plays a role in your adventure brand’s success. It offers great results because it allows you to target people based on their interactions with your website, purchase history, or personal preferences—and automatically deliver a personalized and relevant experience. In short, it’s effective because it helps you show up exactly where they are in their customer journey.
How Email Automation Supports Your Customer Journey
Let’s look at the critical stages of the customer journey for an adventure tourism brand. The customer journey is also known as the sales funnel.
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Dreaming: At some point, we all start to dream about that next escape, that next adventure. We imagine where we might go and with whom.
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Planning: We begin to gather the details needed to make informed, educated decisions on our next adventure.
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Booking: Having gathered helpful information, we can make an informed decision and book.
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Experience: What comes next is the complete experience we have with the adventure brand we've booked with: from the moment we buy until we go home.
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Sharing: After we’ve made memories, we want to share our experience with others in various ways; word of mouth, social, and reviews, to name a few.
We’ve found that the most effective workflows fall within these buckets. When you can show up exactly where your customer is in their interest stage with high-impact, high-value information that supports their needs, you bypass the “car salesman” approach and move them through your sales process with ease. So naturally, when we begin to craft email workflows, we return to this framework and ask ourselves, ‘Where is the client in their journey with our adventure brand right now? What pain (and joy) points might they have, and how can we provide them with well-timed information to help them take the next step?’
This is where email automation saves the day every single time!
Getting Started with Email Automation Isn’t as Hard as You Might Think
We’ve created an Email Automation Toolkit you can use to help you begin thinking about email automation and plan out high-impact workflows to support your triple bottom line.
You’ll find In this toolkit:
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Intro to Email Automation Toolkit
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An Introduction to Email Automation
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A Look at Effective Email Automation Workflows
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Tools to Help Plan an Email Automation Workflow
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Step-by-Step How-To
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Interactive Worksheets
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Resource Lists
About the Author
Julie Thorner is the founder and President of Liquid Spark, a strategic marketing agency in adventure travel & tourism. Julie combines 3 decades of experience in outdoor adventure, finance, marketing, operations, and specialty retail - helping startups and industry pioneers alike. From Wall Street to Main Street to guiding on rivers & bike tours - Julie understands what it’s like to be the customer, serve the customer, run the business, train the staff, and mitigate risk. She is passionate about sustainability and responsible tourism; Liquid Spark is a 1% for the Planet business member and has a sister organization, Liquid Spark Foundation. Julie’s happy place is fly fishing on peaceful rivers or skiing heavenly slopes with her sons.