To be fair, we did get a bit carried away with things like using a marketing automation platform to remind us to make the team a cup of tea or coffee (we all know how important caffeine is!) by email, SMS or twitter etc. But we also looked at tasks like our marketing update to the company – we use Podio – and wouldn’t it be great if we could automatically pull our completed tasks with detail and links into an email that was sent to the company at the end of every week?
We do have a few programs on our hit list. And here’s one that we’ve already checked off: using a pop up to capture our blog visitors’ data which enters them into an automation program. An email gets sent to this list every week with a roundup of our blog content. It had such little impact on our resources that half our team didn’t even know it was up and running until I started this blog. How cool is that?
Anyway, when we put our heads together and got down to business, we came up with 9 different programs you can create using a marketing automation platform. And 5 cool things that a marketing automation platform enables you to do.
We don’t want to overload you with information in one blog so have split it into a two part series. Whether you’re an SME, Enterprise business, in B2B or B2C, there’s something here for you.
So let’s get started with the more strategic part of marketing automation and look at 5 cool things you can automate with a marketing automation solution.
1. Email Marketing
As you might have heard, email marketing isn’t dead. In fact, 90% of consumers prefer to receive updates via an email newsletter, and 60% of marketers say that email marketing is producing ROI for their organization.
By using a marketing automation platform you can automate your email marketing from basic things like welcome emails, website engagement emails (i.e. thanks for downloading our whitepaper!) to full on nurture programs like cart abandonment or product replenishment. In our next blog post we’ll delve into more detail, with actual examples from B2B and B2C companies.
2. Landing Pages
I can’t stress how important landing pages are. A targeted landing page will increase your conversion rates and subsequently your ROI. It’s as simple as that. And every marketer’s objective is to increase conversion rates! However, according to MarketingSherpa, the number one reason businesses don’t use landing pages is because their marketing department either doesn’t know how to set them up – or that they’re too overloaded.
A good marketing automation platform will let you easily and quickly create targeted landing pages. But more importantly, they’ll let you personalize them and customize them in the same way you do with your email marketing. And all automatically. Whether that be pulling in your customer’s demographic data, their behavior and engagement with your brand, social interests or lead score. Which takes me nicely onto my next point.
3. Lead Score
If you’re in B2B you want to know who your hot leads are so you can pass them on to the sales team. And who your cold leads are so you can warm them up and keep them moving through the sales funnel. If you’re in B2C, you want to know your customers intent to purchase and be able to influence it and increase customer retention.
It might take time to set up but once you’ve decided on your demographic and engagement scores you’re well on your way to lead scoring. And using a marketing automation tool means that every time someone in your database performs an action or you find out a bit more about them, their score will automatically get updated.
The best thing about this is that it’s intertwined with the other parts of your marketing automation platform. Based on a contacts score they’ll be automatically removed and moved into different email automation programs you have set up. Content they see will change dynamically in emails or on landing pages. And they could receive content in different formats – for example a hot lead could be sent a direct mail piece like a freebie or your brand new high gloss brochure. So your contacts are constantly getting nurtured, all without you lifting a finger.
4. Multichannel Marketing
Every customer is different. And they all expect to be able to engage with you on a platform of their choice and at a time of their choice. Hello multichannel marketing. In a nutshell, multichannel marketing lets you interact with your customers across multiple channels (like email, SMS, social and direct mail) and maintain a consistent customer experience the entire time.
The right marketing automation platform will let you integrate your traditional and digital marketing activities so you have your data, channels and campaigns all in one place. This means you can automatically reach that person via their preferred channel without spending more time on ad hoc campaigns and still get better response rates. Win win!
5. Advanced Personalization
In today’s digital world where customers are getting contacted on a mass scale, it’s important you get noticed. Not only do you need to add personality to your emails, you need to craft an email that sounds as if it was written by a real person for a real person.
Being able to automatically personalize your emails is a good start. Being able to automatically display different content in the same email to hundreds or thousands of people is even better. And having the ability to take this to another level is where advanced personalization is at. And all automatically of course.
The next big thing in marketing automation is having the freedom to personalize not just the recipient name or the images but the body of your text too with information specific to each individual customer. You can set multiple rules and send to multiple segments all completely customized. It’s exactly the 1 to 1 service your customer would expect when talking to them face to face, but all within your email and landing page. Clever huh?