How to unlock the full potential of marketing automation
As marketers, you’ve undoubtedly heard that marketing automation is important, but why? Here are just a few stats to show you the real value behind adding marketing automation to your marketing stack:
Knowing marketing automation is right for your business
All too often we hear about the benefits of marketing automation from an ecommerce perspective; welcome discounts and abandoned cart programs are guaranteed to drive sales.
But the truth is that email marketing automation was built for B2B and non-commerce businesses. Customer engagement and automation platforms like Dotdigital are a scalable and cost-effective method to guide prospects, leads, members, volunteers, donors, and more through every stage of the complex customer journey.
Powerful data-driven automation programs aid in the capturing, scoring, and nurturing of leads, and will help retain customers for longer with timely and relevant messaging.
The combination of large sales pipelines and limited people power requires a robust strategy for facilitating human conversations at a mass scale. With email returning on average $36 for every $1 spent, it’s a smart investment for businesses looking to drive a deeper, more frequent, and profitable level of contact with their customers.
Unlock your potential with 5 key email automation programs
To tap into the full potential of marketing automation, you need to understand your customer lifecycle. We’ve identified five key automation programs that brands everywhere can use to improve efficiency, drive conversions, and increase profitability.
1. The welcome program
No matter what industry, sector, or vertical you’re in, you should start every relationship off with a welcome program.
Welcome emails are a vital part of your marketing toolkit. They’re the first step in building a long-lasting relationship with your new prospect. This is your best opportunity to learn about them – who they are, what they want, and how you can exceed their needs and expectations.
Your welcome program should introduce your brand. What are your USPs? What values do you share with your new subscriber? Think sustainability and social responsibility. You need to build trust and demonstrating your values and integrity will be key at this stage.
You also need to learn as much as you can about them. Collecting preferences is essential. Discovering what subscribers want to know, how often they want to hear from you, and where they’re based will ensure you’re delivering relevant messages that drive conversions, every time.
2. The nurture program
Nurture programs are designed to drive prospects down the funnel, turning them into long-term, loyal customers.
Your nurture program should be designed to ignite interest and transform it into a need or action. Automating nurture programs is a thorough and cost-effective way to surprise and delight everyone – at a mass scale. Show your customer that you’re attuned to their decision-making process, keep crucial leads warm, and provide a better experience for more complex purchase journeys.
Tailor your nurture program to your customer’s buying cycle. If your company offers a free trial, your welcome email could be followed with a gentle nudge to customers to get started with your software right away. Rich media elements like how-to and product demo videos can add value to your proposition.
However, building your nurture program doesn’t have to be a drain on your resources; you can use existing content to better target customers at appropriate stages of their journey. For example, repurpose blogs into handy infographic content for customers to digest on the go, and create an FAQ-focused campaign from user-generated content on your website.
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3. The onboarding program
Automation doesn’t end when a customer converts. One of the biggest benefits of marketing automation is the efficiency with which it breaks down silos between teams.
Onboarding new customers is a perfect example. Converting isn’t the end of the customer journey. If you want to boost loyalty and retention amongst your customers, automating the onboarding process is essential. While your onboarding team, account managers, volunteer managers, and more are reaching out and creating human-to-human connections with your new customers, your automation program should be showcasing what’s possible.
This content should be educational and informative. Think about all the things a new customer needs to know. Send them video tutorials and FAQs, and direct them to your social channels for daily updates. This will help reduce the pressure on your onboarding team, allowing them to handle the more complicated or technical issues that may arise, while significantly improving the overall customer experience.
4. The event program
Demonstrating a value exchange is vital for creating long-term loyal customers. A value exchange means that a customer feels as though they are getting back a high level of value from their relationship with your brand.
Events, whether they’re face-to-face, online, or hybrid, are a unique opportunity for you to create long-lasting connections with customers. Free or educational content makes these interactions memorable for your audience.
Every touchpoint in the event journey can be automated, from the initial registration of interest to booking your seat to information about start or arrival times, directions, and post-event follow-ups. Not only does this save your marketing team time, but it also ensures a smooth experience for your customers.
5. The re-engagement program
Loyalty is harder to create than ever before. Customers are faced with a myriad of choices in the post-pandemic world where businesses were forced to grow their online presence. As a result, when the time comes to renew, replenish, or re-engage, it’s essential that brands use all the tools in their arsenal to connect with customers.
According to a report from Gallup, 71 percent of B2B customers are ready and willing to take their business elsewhere. Brands that focus solely on new customer acquisition will lose out big time in the future. Syncing your CRM with your automation platform will help you understand when customers are losing interest in your brand.
Using segmentation and personalization, you can reconnect with customers on a one-to-one basis, at scale. If they have already engaged with your marketing, website, products, or events you can use this behavioral data to drive relevancy in your re-engagement messaging. Consider how you can cross-sell, upsell, or reiterate the benefits of working with your brand.
You can even take your automation cross-channel, leaning on re-targeting ads, SMS, and push notifications to re-engage customers as their interest wanes.
Conclusion
Marketers are gearing up to maximize their ROI for email marketing automation. With traditional programs like the welcome series becoming a routine facet of every digital marketing team’s strategy, it’s important that brands strive for customers’ attention with relevant, contextual communication that surprise and delight the customer. Utilize the wealth of customer data at your fingertips to inspire and inform your automation campaigns for a winning customer experience.?
In this article we’ve given you some inspiration for automations that break from the status quo, but there’s no limit to the possibilities for building programs that promote your business. Keep the customer in the forefront of your mind and enjoy experimenting with innovative ways to stand out from the crowd. Keep an eye on your program reporting data to see what works, what doesn't, and identify where you should focus next, and you're onto a winner.