Pros and Cons of Email Automation for Customer-Facing Teams
Automated email communication is a must-have for client-facing teams working with a large book of business, as it’s impossible to contact each client manually at the right time with the correct messaging. Let’s look at the main benefits and pitfalls of automated email processes.
Pros of email automation
Saving time on manual work
Instead of spending their time on manual, repetitive tasks like sending the same emails to dozens or even hundreds of clients, the team can focus on other value-generating activities that require human efforts, like answering client requests or working on contracts. It results in higher team productivity and better goal achievement. The time-saving effect is proportional to the size of the book of business.
Reducing risks of human errors
Manual work requires attention to details while copy-pasting of the same information over and over again. The most typical mistakes include sending the same email to the same person several times, messing up with names and email addresses, or forgetting to send emails. With automated communications, such risks are minimized as email texts, and target groups are set in the system.
Unified communication strategy
A documented communication plan clarifies which offers or messages will be delivered to clients. On the one hand, it helps make sure that all relevant target groups are reached. On the other hand, it reduces the chances of overcommunication. Also, it helps team members understand what is sent and when while planning their manual outreach.
Accountability
Email automation tools allow you to track which campaigns were sent when and their performance. It’s great for optimizing future campaigns, predicting outcomes, and reporting to stakeholders.
If the email automation tool is synced with the CRM system, it allows for tracking all emails sent to clients from different teams there and clients’ replies. It’s great for analyzing the frequency and relevance of communication and providing email history, so it’s easy to review all previous touch points with the client.
Better timing
With big books of business, it may be hard to track what’s going on in each account and react quickly with relevant offers. Launching triggered email flows lets customers engage exactly when they need to with the messaging they are likely to be interested in at that particular stage of their life cycle. It can be valuable resources during the onboarding stage, user trainings when their team grows, or demos of new functionality after they upgrade.
Cons of email automation
Less human touch
Many people still can feel the difference between automated and manual emails. Even the unsubscribe button (required by GDPR and other laws) and UTM-tags are clear evidence of automated communication for tech-savvy customers. Also, the option for personalization is quite limited: it’s impossible to refer to previous email communication with this client or adjust messaging too much.
However, if you’re using relevant messaging and sending helpful information, you’ll get results comparable to manual emails.
The high price of errors and process failures
The cost of mass-mailing errors is vast compared to manual emails, as it affects a larger audience.
The risks can be:
- Operational (sending emails from or to the wrong person)
- Reputational (sending an email with a typo or a broken token can be shared in social media)
- Financial (if GDPR or other email regulations are violated, for example, when there’s no unsubscribe link in the email)
Dependency on the quality of info in the CRM system
The email automation tools often pull data for tokens and merge fields from the CRM system. It can be anything from names and email addresses to renewal dates and subscription plans. This information is vital for correct targeting and email personalization. If, for some reason, the information needs to be updated or stored in the wrong format, it may damage the campaign’s performance. The solution to prevent this risk is to run sanity checks for data stored in CRM and if there’re any errors, pause all communication until it’s corrected.
Higher unsubscribe rates compared to manual emails
Due to the possible errors described above and limited personalization capabilities compared to human-generated emails, clients may consider automated emails irrelevant and thus press the unsubscribe button. If clients opt out of the email, it becomes hard to reengage with them again. As it’s impossible to send emails, the team should use alternative methods like phone calls and social media communication, which can be quite time-consuming and sometimes irritate clients.
Less control over team workload
Though it’s possible to predict campaign results based on the previous email performance, there’s some room for fluctuation. A weak subject line leads to a lower open rate, so fewer meetings are booked, and the team’s calendars remain half-empty. On the other hand, a successful campaign may result in overbooked calendars. Combined with poor targeting, it may cause working with clients that shouldn’t be prioritized.
Risk of communication overload
If the processes are not set up correctly, and there’s miscommunication between teams, the client may receive too many touchpoints during the same time, for example:
- Manual outreach sent by team members may overlap with automated campaigns
- Several reps (account executives, customer success managers, renewal managers, etc.) may send emails to the same client simultaneously on the same topic (for example, upcoming renewals, new feature releases, etc.)
- In addition to client-facing teams, other departments are also sending emails: newsletters from the marketing team, surveys from product teams, new educational materials from the education team, etc.
Communication overload results in client frustration, worse campaign performance, and higher unsubscribe rates. The solution may be to create a single calendar of all communication so all teams are on the same page. If all teams use the same email automation tool, the alternative solution can be limiting the number of emails sent per week or simultaneously launched campaigns right inside the tool.
If you have a clear understanding of all potential risks and have a good solution to prevent them and deal with sequences, the benefits of automated communication may take your team to the next level of efficiency and improve overall results.
