B2B marketing automation can help you save time, scale your campaigns, and personalize your messages. But it can also backfire if you don't use it wisely. How do you make sure your automated messages are relevant and trusted by your prospects and customers? Here are some tips to improve your B2B marketing automation strategy.
The first step to create relevant and trusted messages is to know who you are talking to. You need to segment your audience based on their characteristics, needs, pain points, and goals. You also need to understand their buyer journey, their decision-making process, and their preferred communication channels. This will help you tailor your messages to their context, interests, and expectations.
In our experience, B2B companies have two kinds of lists: one that's been really well-segmented and one that's not segmented at all. The first one is pretty easy to create content for, but we often see clients with big lists and very little tagging or segmentation. Here are a few ways to add segmentation to an unsegmented list: 1) Group by open and click through rates - this is the most basic, but will help you understand who's most interested in our content. 2) Append third-party data, including firmographic info such as company size and industry 3) Send emails asking for recipients to click on responses that would help segment them (for example, what they want to hear from you on, or what their biggest pain point in business is)
The second step to create relevant and trusted messages is to deliver value to your audience. You need to offer them useful content, insights, solutions, or incentives that can help them solve their problems, achieve their goals, or learn something new. You also need to avoid spamming them with too many or too frequent messages that are irrelevant, generic, or pushy. You want to build a relationship with your audience, not annoy them or lose their trust.
The third step to create relevant and trusted messages is to test and optimize your marketing automation campaigns. You need to monitor your performance metrics, such as open rates, click-through rates, conversions, and feedback. You also need to experiment with different variables, such as subject lines, headlines, copy, images, calls to action, timing, and frequency. This will help you find out what works best for your audience and improve your results.
The fourth step to create relevant and trusted messages is to personalize and humanize your marketing automation campaigns. You need to use your audience's data, behavior, and preferences to customize your messages to their specific needs and situations. You also need to use a friendly and conversational tone, address your audience by name, and sign off with your own name or a real person from your team. This will help you create a connection with your audience and make them feel valued and respected.
It's not enough today to deliver plain old corporate marketing emails. We find that the emails that get the best response are those with personality. If you inject a strong brand voice into an email, it makes it much more interesting and it's more likely to get clicks and replies. Even if your goal is to sell something, doing it with style and maybe a bit of humor makes it go over better!
The fifth step to create relevant and trusted messages is to align your marketing automation campaigns with your sales team. You need to communicate with your sales team regularly, share your goals, strategies, and results, and coordinate your actions and messages. You also need to use lead scoring, lead nurturing, and lead handoff processes to ensure a smooth transition from marketing to sales. This will help you create a consistent and seamless experience for your audience and increase your chances of closing deals.
The biggest disconnect for our B2B clients is between marketing and sales, and this is true in their marketing automation campaigns as well. Be clear in your process on what happens if a salesperson picks up a lead - in most companies, the marketing automation should stop at that point. If that's not part of your automations, ensure that there's a manual process for that to happen.
The sixth step to create relevant and trusted messages is to follow up and follow through with your marketing automation campaigns. You need to keep in touch with your audience after they take an action, such as downloading a resource, signing up for a webinar, or requesting a demo. You also need to deliver on your promises, such as sending a confirmation email, providing a discount code, or scheduling a meeting. This will help you show your appreciation, credibility, and professionalism to your audience and encourage them to take the next step.