Email Marketing vs Marketing Automation: What’s The Difference?

#TechChat – Email Marketing vs Marketing Automation: What's The Difference?

You may be wondering about all the chatter you hear about email marketing and marketing automation. And like most you may be confused about what they actually are or if they are the same thing.

Let’s first define what I mean by email marketing and marketing automation. Because a lot of people use them interchangeably and this just shouldn’t be. They are 2 different things. Albeit that they overlap they still serve different purposes.

Let's Define Email Marketing

According to Techopedia, Email marketing is the targeting of consumers through electronic mail (email). And according to Wikipedia – Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email.

Some key things to note:

• This is either your sales messages, your newsletter, or correspondence.
• You use email marketing to build the know like and trust factor with your audience.
• Allows you to use forms and autoresponders to collect data.

A popular email marketing tool is MailChimp. Even though they say on their website that they are a marketing automation tool (we will get into that definition shortly) they mainly are email marketing with a touch of marketing automation.

Let's Define Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation – Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks. Via Wikipedia.

How this relates to coaches, consultants and entrepreneurs is that this helps you to do the same thing even if you don’t have a dedicated marketing department. This is huge. This means you get on the same playing field as the big guys.

I love how simply HubSpot puts it – “Marketing automation refers to the software that exists with the goal of automating marketing actions.”

Exactly.

So now that we have defined Marketing Automation, let's talk about tools that fall into that category.

Tools that fall into this category are ConvertKit (which straddles in the middle) and ActiveCampaign. Which is what I use now.

Tools that I use now: ActiveCampaign

I’m a firm believer in starting with a tool that you can afford and that offers growth on the front end. You don’t want to have a tool and start to get exponential growth and have to import all of your data into something new. You also will incur more cost trying to hire someone to do it or worst yet you have to do it.

So my advice is to start with either ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign.

Why You Need Both:

• Because sending out emails through your gmail or outlook in mass can get you on the spam list. (EM)

• It can look unprofessional when sending out marketing campaigns. (EM)

• You want to send the right messages at the right time to the right people. (MA)

• Again keep your messages out of the spam or junk box. (MA)

• Be able to remarket, retarget and really deliver and keep track of what your audience really wants. You are able to see what people have been responding to either positively or negatively. (MA)

You can grab your free trials of the software I mention in the video below:

1. ActiveCampaign
2. ConvertKit
3. Ontraport

Watch the live below and let me know your thoughts in the comments.