While we may have thought communication would be far more advanced than the old school, electronic mail in 2021, here we are, hitting ‘reply all’ by mistake when responding, “I don’t want to sit next to Tom”, to an email from HR about this year’s Christmas party.
You might be asking yourself, do people actually still use email to promote products? Especially when you look at your own inbox, filled to the brim with thousands of unreads from that brand you bought one pair of jeans from.
You are probably wondering if sinking thousands into a killer marketing automation strategy is still worth it. But the reality is, marketing automation can be the key to driving success in your organization. Don’t believe me?
If you’re still questioning whether or not you should jump on the marketing automation bandwagon, let’s convince you otherwise.
WHY IS MARKETING AUTOMATION IMPORTANT?
It’s time to face the facts, marketing automation is way more than sending an email, it’s making use of the technology put in place for repetitive processes and personalized tasks.
To that point, marketing automation strategies include more initial outreach via email, but they also generate a personalized experience for customers and potential leads that makes them feel like your brand truly understands them. This can include landing page creation, cross-channel marketing campaigns, lead nurturing and website personalization.
It also helps to automate the process of collecting information needed to track visitors to your site, scrape for leads, build buyer profiles, and segment leads. By gathering this information, you can efficiently create a personalized strategy for a range of personas.
HOW CAN MARKETING AUTOMATION TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS?
Stop building a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy, it isn’t going to work. With marketing automation, you can bring a tailored approach to marketing, improving the user experience and creating a more unified journey for customers.
Boost efficiency
If you’re still sending emails through Mailchimp or from your personal account, my first question is ‘why?’ And my second question is ‘can you please stop?’
You are wasting your marketing team’s time and resources on repetitive tasks that can easily be automated to save your business time and money. Joining forces with your CRM system, your marketing automation software can seamlessly integrate, further refining your processes.
Create a more personalized approach to marketing
Marketing automation gives you the ability to target prospects by behavioral, demographic, geographic and other identifying factors to generate dynamic content. By personalizing generic content to ensure a more focused approach, you can better target leads and work toward a better conversion rate.
Improve data collection
The days of inputting data by hand are far behind us, but with automation, you can create even more room for precision. Segment your sales stages, profile match in real time and qualify leads without pouring over copious amounts of data.
Reduce lead conversion time
After your leads are properly segmented with personalized communications in place, you’ll see conversion times improve naturally. A common misconception is that automation means less qualified leads, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. By implementing more effective targeting for high-value prospects, you can retain more interest and engagement, all while reducing lead conversion times.
Target potential customers across multiple channels
Take your multi-channel approach to the next level with marketing automation. When creating a marketing sequence, you can choose to send customers an email, text message or reach out another way during certain stages of the customer experience. By expanding your automation tools, you’ll have more options when it comes to multi-channel targeting.
Boost customer lifetime value
Is your business missing out on opportunities to cross-sell and upsell? With marketing automation, you can create a series of automated rules that can help push customers along their journey.
Beyond the generic upsells like reminding customers to upgrade their account or providing a gift list for Christmas shopping with products from your online shop, you can also create personalized upsells that take the entire experience to the next level. Overtime, this sort of approach can have a dramatic impact on your customer lifetime value.
Improve KPIs
Automation allows you to align sales KPIs and your marketing strategy, creating outstanding results for acquisition and customer loyalty. Well-crafted automation strategies can identify the most relevant sales KPIs which keep marketers from misinterpreting the sales dashboard.
MARKETING AUTOMATION FAQS
Why isn’t my marketing automation strategy working?
My guess is there’s no top-of-funnel foundation put in place to support the middle-of-the-funnel leads. Without a steady flow of leads to work with, it’s hard to set up an effective marketing automation strategy. So prioritizing top-funnel-leads is a great place to start for those with a skint database.
Do you have the leads you need to hit revenue goals in your database already? Are you dipping into what the market has to offer?
Even if your database is filled with leads that have been deemed as qualified, you should still consider how effective your marketing automation strategy will be after converting those leads into customers.
Taking into consideration that a large database of leads is required, many marketers choose the easy way out and buy lists of contacts to nurture with marketing automation. However, spammy tactics produce a less than favorable ROI. These lists can also result in low engagement, a damaged IP address reputation and lower deliverability rates.
So before you buy leads or invest in marketing automation without a database of qualified leads, consider this or your campaign may fail.
When should I invest in marketing automation?
If you’re generating a steady flow of new, organic leads, publishing good content and ready to scale your efforts, it may be time to kick-start your marketing automation strategy and nurture your leads into paying customers!
It’s important to remember that forward-planning your automation strategy prior to launch can help you better understand and align with the long-term goals of your business.
How do I choose the best automation strategy?
Not sure where to start with your marketing automation strategy? Our team of marketing automation experts can help develop a strategy that prioritizes the data, shows your customers what they’re looking for and gives your sales team the information they need to swing them over the line.
Get in touch today.
