Marketing Automation Software used by digital marketers refers to software technologies and platforms designed for online productive marketing channels such as websites, social media, email, etc to automate tasks that are repetitive in nature. They allow follow up of the prospects’ top-funnel activities eg the visits to your website, reading a blog post, fill a form or open emails. It has provisions to manage market campaign tracking and scheduling company-customer communications & email campaigns. To get started with Marketing Automation you will require an email list and software. Create a mailing list for your audience, draft captivating messages, and target them with your mail campaigns. Decide on automating tasks for retargeting follow up messages on social media ad networks. Write website copy and ad content for your campaigns to engage with your audience from your list through CTA and landing pages. Use analytics to measure the performance of your campaigns.
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Marketing Automation helps you to understand your audience and address routine tasks such as lead generation, nurture leads through workflows or drip marketing, optimize conversion rates, and personalization of emails that result in a purchase. A workflow is made of conditions, actions, and filters. If certain conditions exist filter and take a specific action.
Some examples for Marketing Automation tools serving different variation & purpose for solving the modern day business challenges are-
- MailChimp.
- GetResponse
- Constant Contact
- Marketo
- ActiveCampaign
- Infusionsoft
SMBs wanting to venture in Marketing Automation can derive better results from marketing campaigns to boost lead nurturing and conversion. Manual processes can be streamlined and time savings and resources can be applied to other work areas.
Why Automate Campaigns?
Automating your email marketing campaigns results in
-time-saving
-reaching users
-the generation of qualified leads
-personalized messages to leads based on their behavior
-optimization of lead conversions
-cooperation between sales and marketing teams increases UX.
Set up Automation workflows
Use an e-mail marketing automation software for workflows and create personalized and automated email workflows that get triggered when a contact:
-is tagged
-added to a list
-submission of a form on your website
-Click a link in your email.
In a Drip campaign, all contacts (such as a lead or a prospect or a customer) get the same treatment who receive the same content which can be a pre-written set of messages. Drip Campaigns are automated workflows. In a nutshell, for drip marketing campaigns nurture leads, plan constructive emails, and filter your sales funnel for prospects (at every stage of the sales funnel), measure, and analyze results with marketing automation strategy.
In an automated email marketing campaign, if personalized email messages based on user behavior are to be sent then you have to use conditions such as – whether subscribers are on the list? whether subscribers have opened an email? whether subscribers have clicked on a link? or whether a subscriber has a tag?. Trigger relevant messages based on conditions to bring leads progressing towards a purchase in the customer journey. Automation with conditions is not a drip campaign.
Filters
Filters change a workflow based on whether certain events or actions occur and can be used to refine the actions of a workflow. They can be applied to dynamic and specific subscribers in your list of contacts.
Rules
Rules are a set of actions such as a task, field records, email notifications that get executed when certain specified conditions are met. These rules automate and process the actions when a rule gets triggered. An action can be automated or immediate or time-dependent. Automated actions set the criteria for your workflow rule and identify what is to be done when the criteria are met. Immediate actions get executed no sooner the workflow rule finishes assessing the record. Time-dependent actions get executed at a specific time. After the specified time has passed, the workflow rule re-assesses the record and makes sure that it still meets the rule criteria. However if the record has met the criteria, then the workflow rule executes those actions.
Scoring and Tagging
Scoring and tagging is a part of marketing automation. The tool assists to know your users and analyze their preferences and habits. The tool may be used separately or in combination. Individually the tool can aid you to track or segment users activity. In combination, they create a customer profile and a perfect automation workflow.
Workflows
Workflows can be grouped to segment and nurture leads based on different properties and behaviors to target users specific needs and interests through email.
Marketing Automation eCommerce
Enhance Customer Experience
Use marketing automation to enhance your customer experience for engaging with customers, growing your relationships with them for buying services or products. introduce your e-commerce store to your customers and walk them through the different links on your website.
Connect with Customers
Use marketing automation to connect with customers after the sale by sending e-mail messages to thank users for their orders. If need be, confirm order details and let them know about delivery & shipping. Also, connect with customers to remind them about cross-selling – addon products or services or upselling – related products which make customers spend more money on your product or services
Feedback from Customers
Use marketing automation to get feedback from existing customers. This can be done by making your customers to take some time to fill survey forms.
Re-engage with Customers
Use marketing automation to reengage lost customers. Of about 60% online shopping carts are abandoned. Cart abandonment is a real issue for many e-commerce businesses who react by starting a retention action plan. e-commerce workflow aims at winning back abandoned carts by configuring elements such as providing them with discounts and incentives to attract them back to your website and complete their purchases.
Target Prospects through Google Ads
Use search and display Ads to reach target prospects and customers who visited your website but did not buy your product or service through Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or online display ads/ banner ads. Target them with images in your Ad of the product that was about to be purchased so that when they click on the image they are taken to your website from where they can buy the product.
Personalize Customer Experience
Use marketing automation to personalize your customer experience. Segment customers based on demographics behaviors or other selected criteria. Tags can be used to score customers based on where they are in the sales funnel. Tags identify people who are ready to buy versus people that need to be nurtured. The ready to buy customer should get information that will help them close the deal and have to be tagged accordingly. The people who are at the top of the sales funnel are not ready to buy The not ready to buy customers need to be nurtured over the long run in order to get them to buy online and have to be tagged separately,
Marketing Automation Retargeting
Retargeting is part of the marketing automation platform that sends personalized automated messages based on a series of predetermined triggers which help convert users to ‘leads’ and increase e-commerce sales.
The retargeting workflow begins by sending an email to your list of new subscribers and old users who have not engaged and provide eg- a toolkit download link in this email. In the workflow add a link-click condition for tracking those clicking the link and taken to the landing page.
After the user downloads the toolkit, tag them as a ‘lead’ and provide a gap before sending a second mailing shot to learn about their engagement for offering other products related to the toolkit. If they open the email the user gets tagged as a ‘qualified lead’ on a positive path and a salesperson will contact them to ensure the purchase is completed.
For other users on a negative path, they will not click the link to download the toolkit. After a gap, a follow-up email is to be sent. At this point, some users may click the link and download the toolkit. These users are then tagged as a ‘lead’ and the ones that never clicked will be tagged as ‘not-engaged’ and directed to a re-targeted campaign.
Marketing Automation KPIs
Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurable value say a number or a percentage that evaluates your success for having reached the target. eg with e-mail marketing your KPI should be to increase revenue. There are many KPI metrics but you need to select those that would be worth tracking and are in line with your business goals.
List growth metrics
Grow your list into a long list of subscribers which will ultimately convert into satisfied customers.
Engagement
Engagement is the key to email marketing. Do users open and share your emails? What type of content works best? How long does it take to convert them? How many of your contacts actually become customers? Answers to the above questions will help optimize your efforts.
Qualified leads
The prime task of any marketing department is to bring qualified leads to a company.
Customer Lifetime value
CLV is a forecast of the total net profit your company makes from an individual customer.
Revenue
The revenue per email metric divides the revenue from an email by the number of opens. Email and its offer are effective if the revenue per open is high. Calculate your revenue and find out ways to increase it with your email marketing.
Churn rate
Churn rate is the discontinued percentage of subscribers within a given time frame. The List churn rate could be about 25- 30 percent on an average for email list each year. That is why building your list should be a priority. Emails that target audience for meeting user preferences and needs should be regular.
Conclusion
The key benefits of Marketing automation software are time-saving, productivity, CRM- customer relationship marketing, and cost-efficiency. Marketing automation and CRM systems are two different platforms. Select a marketing automation system that integrates with the CRM so that all prospect activities get accessed through one solution. Marketing automation software cultivates leads and is preparatory for the sales team. Leads progress to the bottom of the funnel and become a qualified sales lead and finally, a customer At this stage company starts to track their interactions through a CRM. Marketing automation software is marketing-focused. But CRM software focuses on sales.
Users expect more from online businesses. They expect content focused on their needs and presented at times most suited. Marketing Automation address this criterion by creating strategies and following best workflow practices for segmentation, tagging & scoring and e-commerce integration. The technology allows you to generate more revenues, increase the number of qualified leads ultimately leading to conversions.