How To Setup A Marketing Automation Strategy

Automated marketing has become increasingly popular in recent years, and the trend is only set to grow, with more and more service providers cropping up every few months.

Because of this rise in third-party suppliers, what was once only a realistic option for large companies due to the software required, has become much more widely used by small and mid-sized businesses; in fact, they are currently the largest growing group in the market.

According to EmailMonday, around 49 percent of companies are currently utilising some form of marketing automation, with 79 percent of top-performing companies having been using the technology for two or more years. So what exactly is marketing automation, and what are the benefits? We've put together a detailed guide to explain everything you need to know about the practice, and, most importantly, how to implement it in your business.

What is Marketing Automation?

In simple terms, marketing automation is when a company uses software to complete marketing tasks on their behalf. The kinds of tasks that such platforms can undertake could be as simple as sending out shopping cart abandonment emails or something more complicated such as customer segmentation. The main goals in using it are to free up your employees' time for more pressing projects, and also to create a more specifically targeted range of communications with your customer base.

According to Regalix, the most commonly used features of marketing automation are email marketing (89%), lead nurturing (84%), integrations with other software (CRM, mobile, social media, etc.) for centralizing customer intelligence (80%) and cross-channel campaign management (82%).

What are the Benefits?

According to Marketo and Ascend2's 2015 report “Marketing Automation Strategies for Sustaining Success, 91 percent of the most successful users agreed that marketing automation is 'very important' to their overall marketing success. Here are some of the reasons why using an automation platform can be a great asset to your business:

Time and Money Saving

Using an automated system for small and repetitive tasks such as sending emails for new subscribes can free up a lot of time, and therefore cut down on labour costs; particularly helpful for smaller businesses who may only have a few employees. In fact, Nucleus Research estimates that marketing automation can lead to a 12.2% reduction in marketing overheads. Being able to create and schedule multiple campaigns ahead of time is another big advantage that means your team can focus on other, more pressing matters.

Analytics

Automated marketing platforms provide you with helpful data from each campaign you run, whether it be through email, social media or SMS. Most services will display this information in a clear and easy to read way, so you can really get a great insight into what's working and what isn't, which can be extremely useful when designing your next campaigns.

Personalisation

An automated platform will automatically be collecting data about your customers based on what they bought, their engagement with your emails and website, their selected preferences and more. You can then use this information to personalise the experience for each user and ultimately reach out to them in a way that suits them the most. This alone could see much better response rates and sales; according to the Aberdeen Group personalised emails improve click-through rates by 14 percent, and conversion rates by 10 percent, and they also drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails, notes Jupiter Research.

Lead Scoring

According to DecisionTree, only 44 percent of companies are using any kind of lead scoring system, despite the benefits it can offer in terms of driving sales. With an automated marketing platform you can assign scores to your leads that depend on how engaged they are with your messages and website, and they will be automatically tracked and monitored for you. You'll then be able to segment your customer base using those scores and send emails targeting them specifically as they are more likely to make a purchase from you.

Multichannel

Using automatic marketing means you can manage a number of channels that your customers are on, such as email, Facebook, Twitter, and SMS. Having a consistent presence for your brand across all of these channels is vital in this day and age, as it means your customers can interact with your business at their convenience, as well as making your company more visible to potential new leads.

Ways to use Marketing Automation

There are a number of ways that marketing automation can be implemented in your business' marketing strategy. These include:

Driving sales

Lead nurturing is an extremely important, if often underused, aspect of marketing. According to Marketing Donut, 63 percent of people requesting information from your company today will not purchase for at least three months; and 20 percent will take more than 12 months to buy. However, being patient and persistent ultimately does pay off; nurtured leads make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads, according to The Annuitas Group.

Sending out welcome emails to new subscribes is one of the most popular uses for automated marketing, as it helps to build a positive relationship between you and your clients from the get-go. You could also schedule upselling emails for those who purchase a product or service from you, although these should be used sparingly to avoid having your clients feel hassled. Follow up emails, such as shopping cart abandonment messages, can be very good at driving sales, particularly if timed just right; according to InsideSales.com of you follow up with web leads within five minutes you are nine times more likely to convert them.

Keeping Customers Engaged

Using marketing automation to keep in contact with your current clients can also be extremely effective. Regular updates in the form of newsletters can notify them of any new products or other offerings as well as help to keep your company top of mind. You can also invite them to events such as trade shows or webinars, or send them a scheduled notification for when their product or service is about to expire, or when they are due to re-purchase a regular product or attend an appointment.

Lead scoring and user segmentation can come in particularly well here; you can send certain emails to your most engaged clients who are the most likely to share your content, and target different groups based on what other products they have bought from your business.

Re-Engaging Past Customers

Don't forget about your past clients when putting your automated marketing strategy. You can try and win them back with a limited-time deal such as a discount code or free trial, or simply introduce them to a new product or service that you think they could benefit from. You can use your automated platform to set when to send such emails, for example, after they have been inactive on your website for a certain length of time.

Making Your Campaign a Success

When putting your automated marketing campaign into action, there are several key factors that you should pay particular attention to in order to give it the best chance of success, including:

• Subject lines - Given that 33 percent of email recipients open emails based solely on the subject line according to Convince and Convert, it is clearly of vital importance to make yours as intriguing and attention-grabbing as possible. Research by Retention Science found that personalised emails that include the recipient's first name have higher open rates, and according to ContactMonkey, the shorter the subject line the better; they found that those with more than three words had a drop in open rates by over 60 percent.

• Content - Another of the most important factors of your campaign is ensuring that your content is interesting and valuable. Try including facts, charts, anecdotes and pictures in your messages; according to HubSpot, 65 percent of users prefer emails to contain mostly images, compared to 35 percent who prefer text. One thing that you definitely don't want to do however, is go in for the hard sell; 75 percent of buyers want marketers to curb the sales-speak in their content, according to a study conducted by DemandGen.

• Call to action - Always make sure to add a clear and direct call to action your messages. Even better; make it a button instead of a text link - according to Campaign Monitor this can increase conversion rates by as much as 28 percent.

• When to send - Being able to schedule your emails ahead of time with marketing automation means that you can be sure to send your campaigns out at the optimum time. According to GetResponse this is either 8am or 3pm, and Experian notes that Tuesday emails have the highest open rates compared to other weekdays. As for how often you should send them, at Global Database we recommend sending updates no more than once every 15 days, in order to ensure you are not being intrusive and likely to end up being reported for spamming.

• Follow up – Given that your first email campaign will usually have the lowest response rates, don't be afraid to send follow ups; research has shown that these often get much better response rates – when it comes to email marketing persistence really is key!

Implementing marketing automation into your business' marketing strategy is an extremely good idea if you're looking to save time and resources and ultimately increase sales. Not only will your staff have more time to focus on other projects, they'll also have access to a range of analytics that will give your company a greater insight into your customers' behaviour and how you can target them in the most effective way possible in the future.

Looking for high quality contacts for your next marketing campaign? At Global Database we have over 5 million contacts across 195 countries, and our high data accuracy rate of 93% means you can build efficient lists from scratch without having to compromise on quality.

Ready to get started? Contact us on [phone] or [e-mail]