How Marketing Automation Can Get Your Business Way Ahead (And Make Your Life Easier)

Although marketing automation has come a long way since the era of impersonal bulk email blasts a few years ago, many brands still get it wrong and or never discover its full potential. I'm here to change that.

It sounds so good. Make more sales. Increase conversion rates. Improve customer engagement. Update contact information without your involvement. Track user behaviour and email marketing results. And achieve all that in a lot less time (and effort).

In fact, take a look at why more than 50% of companies are using marketing automation already:

It sounds almost too good to be true, doesn't it? But it's not, given you leverage it effectively.

Three Deep found that even though marketers understand the value automation provides, they still struggle to execute it successfully for various reasons:

Without clearly defined goals and comprehensively executed strategy, not only are you risking leaving your customers confused and often, annoyed, but also for the automation to not make any significant impact on revenue.

And more importantly, a blend of automation and a personal touch is the key to getting it right.

So if you're looking to get ahead in 2020 or you're not satisfied with your current automation process (or both!), this article is for you. Let's dive in!

Deciding what to automate

The goal of any kind of automation is to increase efficiency, so start by reviewing your current marketing strategy to help you determine where automation can simplify the process the most.

The first elements to be automated are usually:

• email marketing & segmentation
• social media scheduling
• content marketing
• lead generation & nurturing
• workflow automation

Basically, if it’s predictable and repeatable, marketing automation can handle it. Of course, there are certain actions that require for you to step in and take the conversation further personally (such as growing your social media presence), but creating a cart abandonment email sequence or a "Happy Birthday" birthday message is a one-off action that once designed, it does not need further involvement.

The same goes into lead generation & lead nurturing. Once your landing page is live and your lead nurturing email campaign is up and running, you can forget about it and move onto doing bigger and better things.

But you can also take it a step further and create action-triggered email campaigns and automate your CRM to boost customer engagement and essentially, drive more sales.

Choosing the right tools

Now, the whole point of marketing automation is to simplify whatever possible. When looking for the perfect automation tool or a software, make sure that it doesn't just do what it's supposed to but also so it's easy to use - the more complicated the interface is, the harder it gets to benefit from all the features offered.

There are a lot more factors to consider, such as:

• your budget
• the size of your company
• available channels and integrations
• personalisation level
• data availability and update time

The key is to look for a platform that can not only meet the needs of your marketing automation program today, but that can also scale with your business to continue to meet your needs even as those needs change and grow.

Here are some marketing automation tools and platforms for you to consider:

Klaviyo

HubSpot

Email Octopus

Ontraport

GetResponse

Sprout Social

Hootsuite

And I'm only scratching the surface here...

Choosing the right goals

Setting arbitrary goals based on raw numbers like traffic, click-throughs, retweets, and likes isn’t a great strategy. Actually, it’s no strategy. Vanity metrics are only good for stroking your ego, so focus on setting goals that are good for increasing efficiency of your team and of course, driving revenue to your bank account. A few examples:

• Get 10% positive brand mentions on Twitter (brand awareness)
• Respond to all Facebook queries in 60 minute or less (customer service)
• Convert 30% of first-time mailing list buyers in the last month to repeat buyers in 6 months (revenue)

You also need a process in place to measure your goals. Most automation tools have reporting feature built-in so all you need to do is review them on a regular basis.

Choose the right starts, actions and stops

There are many places to start the automation, just like there are many paths one contact can take on a customer journey, which is why it's so important for you to identify all possible touchpoints visitors have with your brand.

The beginning of an automation could be anything, like users filling out the form on your landing page or opening your email. It's important for you to be able to distinguish between:

• users requesting information immediately
• users engaging with your content

As you can see, different user behaviour requires different approaches - someone requesting further information is probably more likely to buy in the nearer future as opposed to someone opening your email for the first time.

Your next steps aren't just about giving visitors what they need to proceed with their journey but also to encourage them to follow the path you want them to. You can, for example, send them an email with product recommendations and track which items they engage with to identify their needs further to craft more personalised messages in the future.

What you also need to understand is that people will engage with your brand on different levels. Marketing automation allows you to reach out to them with the right message and the right time, thanks to their behaviour being tagged and data saved whenever they take a specific action.

Finally, each automation should have an endpoint - even if it takes them to another automation. Imagine a scenario, where someone discovers your ecommerce via a Facebook ad.

They click on the ad and view a specific category but don't buy immediately. Thanks to automation, you send them an email with a first-purchase discount that convinces them to place an order a few hours later.

They're now your customer so you'll want to engage with them in a different way and for different reasons (retention) - it's time for new automation.

In conclusion

No process is too big or too small for automation. And even a very basic cart abandonment email sequence can drive big results.

So if your business is still using outdated automation techniques (the dreaded email blasts) then it's time for you to take it up a notch - speak to me to see how we can get your brand ahead and make your life a lot easier.