Good marketing is a critical piece of any successful business strategy. While quality marketing is effective, it takes time, work and money. It’s a worthwhile investment that packs a punch for the future success of your business.
Part of this strategy is putting the right tools and practices in place to make a noticeable difference in your bottom line. An integral piece to consider: Marketing automation. The right marketing automation tool will increase efficiency across your company while giving you and your team much needed time to focus on what keeps your business thriving: Your customers.
Automated marketing is used in many parts of a successful marketing strategy, but there are five specific fundamentals that will really make marketing automation pay off.
1. Focus On Dynamic Content
Whether you are sending out emails, crafting an ad or creating a new section on a website, dynamic content is designed to change based on the behavior or interests of your customer. A common use of dynamic content is an email that will insert the customer’s name into the body of the text.
One stunning example of the success of dynamic automation is from Capterra, a business software vendor. After investing in automated marketing technology, the company was able to increase its sales by 400%.
2. Make Collaboration Automatic
The workplace environment with different departments is an ideal place for people with various skill sets to shine. Unfortunately, communication and collaboration between departments can often be difficult and inefficient, especially when it comes to customer data. Automating collaboration seamlessly brings all the information together, such as letting the accounting and marketing departments share insights.
3. Decode Your Analytics
Your marketing analytics offer invaluable information about your customers and business pipeline. For example, you can look at your analytics to see how much time it takes for a potential customer to buy your product.
A marketing automation strategy can identify where buyers can get stuck in the process and help you reduce conversion time.
4. Use A Drip Campaign
A drip campaign is one of the best ways to implement automated marketing. Instead of sending out the same message to each of your subscribers, a drip campaign sends messages that correspond to a particular customer’s behavior.
As an example, when a lead first signs up for email messages, the drip campaign will send a welcome message. If they visit a specific page on your website, it could trigger another email with specific promotional messages.
Drip campaigns can quickly grow your sales. The best drip campaigns deliver 80% more sales while saving you one-third of the usual costs.
5. Let Automation Do Your List Segmentation
You have a lot of information on your leads. However, these potential customers do not have the same needs or want the same products. The best way to organize them is through list segmentation. This can be done manually, but it takes a long time and is prone to errors.
Marketing automation software can take over this work and group your leads by whatever settings you choose. You can sort them by the level of engagement, demographics, buying behavior or geographical location.
With this segmented information, you can create customized content for each group. Paperstyle.com was able to improve its email open rate by 244% with an email campaign focused on customers who were planning a wedding. The company also saw its revenue per mailing increase by 330%.
When To Apply Automation In Marketing Strategies
While the thought of not having to worry about your marketing can seem appealing, your business still needs a human touch to fully serve your customers.
Reserve automation for these key areas to get the best results:
- Send messages during the purchase process;
- Sorting through data; and
- Handling repeatable tasks, such as reminders about upcoming webinars.
However, the areas that still need human attention include:
- Handling customer complaints;
- Monitoring social media; and
- Crafting content.
With the ideal combination of automated and human-controlled marketing, you should see your business growth start to accelerate.
Marketing strategies are ever evolving, and they should be. When you put in the work, you’ll discover a perfect mix of automated processes to optimize your business and deliver real results. There is a right way and a wrong way to use automation in your marketing; be sure to focus on the principles that get your message out to customers in a way that feels natural and customized.
Danna Tongate is a Marketing Specialist for Televerde, a global revenue creation partner supporting marketing, sales and customer success for B2B businesses around the world. Tongate is incarcerated at the Arizona Department of Corrections Perryville in Goodyear, Ariz.
