What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is a concept allowing you to manage your marketing campaigns automatically. By using different software created especially for this purpose, you can program actions that will be triggered following a specific event or scenario. Marketing automation can provide specific content for a particular audience, analyze performances like client behaviors, create A/B tests, landing pages, forms, and much more. We will not hide from you the fact that automation can be complicated; you must take the time to understand it and ask questions if needed. Let us now see the basics of marketing automation.
The benefits of marketing automation
There are many benefits of automating some marketing tasks. Let us see a few examples.
First, time-saving is one of the most important benefits. Indeed, your employees or yourself will not have to lose time doing the same repetitive tasks every week or every month since everything will be already ready. You will then increase your productivity because you can use this time to focus on other more interesting tasks. And when we talk about saving time, it often rhymes with saving money.
Marketing automation can also allow you to simplify and plan your email campaigns. Indeed, this benefit is linked in a certain way to the first one mentioned. Once your email campaigns are created and prepared, you will no longer have to worry about them. For example, your contacts will be sorted out automatically according to the created automations.
You will also have the possibility to monitor and optimize your investments, whether it is to test the profitability of a landing page, a form, compare offers, etc. You will know where to invest your money. In the same vein, you will have access to many statistics and reports.
One of the main benefits of marketing automation is the possibility to manage your leads; however, it can be challenging to implement this when we are not familiar with automation. These leads allow you to gather contacts in different groups and organize them from the most loyal customer to the least, for example. You might want to thank your most loyal customers by sending them a promo code. You might also try to understand why some clients are loyal when others are not.
Finally, you will have the possibility to customize your communications, whether it is regarding the email campaigns you send for birthdays, welcoming emails, forms, surveys, etc. Many things can be automated, but we recommend not automating everything to avoid losing the relationships you have with your customers.
Indeed, when you automatize too much, your business can seem cold and distant. You must also ensure that everything is correctly done since an automated mistake can harm your credibility. Once again, feel free to ask for help if needed.
A few steps to follow if you want to implement marketing automation
Before starting creating your automated campaigns, here are some steps to follow and questions to ask yourself.
Your main goal
As is the case with many projects, the marketing automation process should start with defining your goals. Why do you want to automate your marketing? What do you want to automate first? Is it to get more customer loyalty, to get new clients, create promo codes or specific forms?
Your target audience
Once you have defined your main goals, what about your buyer persona? If you have many buyers personas, make some lists to separate them into categories. What plan did they choose? Where are they located? What languages do they speak? Are they new customers?
Creating forms
With this tool, you will be able to collect contacts, whether by sending them an ebook, a guide, or inviting them to a webinar. Whatever the way, you will need to send them a confirmation email. Your forms must be easy to understand and quick to fill.
Creating workflows
The workflow includes a trigger that starts an action. For example, if your client downloaded your ebook, you will need to send them a confirmation email. When your client opens this email, it will trigger another email in 6 days to know what they thought of your ebook.
Choosing the perfect tool
You can work on your forms and workflows before finding the right tool for your needs. In other words, you can imagine your content and write everything down on paper. It might help you understand your needs better. You can also choose the marketing automation tool before starting creating your workflows to learn how it works. We recommend you have an idea of what you want to make in order to find the best marketing automation tool for your business.
A few marketing automation tools
Before concluding everything, here is a list of software and tools that could help you with marketing automation.
On our side, the WebSelf team uses ActiveCampaign. We did not have the chance to try other products since it met our needs.
Regarding basic marketing automation, you can use:
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MailChimp
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Aweber
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Autopilot
If you need a more advanced solution, we suggest you:
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ActiveCampaign
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Hubspot
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Plezi
In conclusion, the most challenging part of marketing automation is to start the process and trust the software and campaigns you will create. Once done, everything will run smoothly. Be patient, and do not forget to monitor your results. If you want to find other tips on how to increase your sales, take a look at our article: How to Create a Landing Page that Increases Your Conversion Rate.