Marketing automation is a powerful tool to streamline and optimize your marketing campaigns, but how do you know if it's working for you? To measure the impact and ROI of your marketing automation efforts, you need to define and track your goals. In this article, we'll show you how to do that in six steps.
The first step is to identify what you want to achieve with your marketing automation. Do you want to generate more leads, nurture existing ones, increase conversions, improve customer retention, or something else? Think about how your marketing automation aligns with your overall business goals and strategy, and write down your specific and measurable objectives.
When aligning your goals to your overall business objectives, it's important to also recognize the limitations of marketing automation. Sometimes organizations view automation as a cure-all solution, rather than just another tool in their arsenal. It's crucial to remember that marketing automation is only as effective as the teams and resources who build and maintain it on a daily basis. Therefore, it's essential to ensure that your goals and marketing automation capabilities are realistically aligned and can effectively deliver the needs of your business.
The next step is to choose the metrics that will help you track your progress towards your objectives. Metrics are the quantitative indicators that show how well your marketing automation is performing. For example, some common metrics are open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, revenue, customer lifetime value, and retention rate. Depending on your objectives, you may need to use different metrics for different stages of the customer journey.
Be sure to set a couple of primary KPI’s which best support your goal. How often do you set-up a campaign and it seems like you want it to achieve everything : Convert Leads, Engage, Up-sell, Retain…etc. ? You could consider breaking the campaign into different workflow segments with their own primary KPI’s. Then set secondary KPI’s. Campaigns may not achieve the Primary KPI but if it met several of the Supporting KPI’s then something of value was achieved which can be built upon. E.g. Lead conversion was lower than expected, but engagement was X% higher than baseline from which we gained insights about customer interests that can be used for profiling.
The third step is to set your benchmarks, which are the baseline values that you compare your metrics against. Benchmarks help you evaluate your current situation and set realistic and achievable goals. You can use your own historical data, industry standards, or best practices as sources of benchmarks. For example, if your objective is to increase your open rate, you can use your average open rate from the past six months as a benchmark.
The fourth step is to define your segments, which are the groups of customers or prospects that share similar characteristics or behaviors. Segments help you tailor your marketing automation to different needs, preferences, and interests of your audience. You can use various criteria to segment your audience, such as demographics, location, purchase history, engagement level, or stage in the sales funnel.
The fifth step is to create your workflows, which are the series of automated actions and triggers that guide your segments through your marketing funnel. Workflows help you deliver the right message at the right time to the right person, based on their actions and interactions with your brand. You can use various tools and platforms to create and manage your workflows, such as email, SMS, webinars, landing pages, forms, or social media.
For the workflows or journeys, yes, set them up but make sure to test often and include a hold-out group where possible. Also test the native AI and auto-optimization tools that are now included in most platforms.
The sixth and final step is to monitor and optimize your marketing automation goals. Monitoring means measuring and analyzing your metrics and comparing them to your benchmarks and goals. Optimizing means making adjustments and improvements to your workflows, segments, messages, or channels, based on your insights and feedback. You should monitor and optimize your marketing automation goals regularly, to ensure that they are aligned with your objectives and strategy, and that they are delivering the best results possible.
Optimization should be centered around personalization and should include testing of creative, channels (channel mix) and timing.