If done well, Marketing automation can help raise a business’s sales and customer numbers in a very short space of time. People have a tendency to think that marketing automation is a complicated minefield of numbers and programmes, but with a bit of research and a clear idea about what you want to achieve, you’ll soon see how incredibly beneficial it is to automate your marketing.
Below is our guide to marketing automation for dummies. It consists of a few simple marketing automation tips that can make the whole process an easier one.
Start with small campaigns
Instead of trying to go big straight off the bat, focus on building a few small, solid campaigns. If you focus on smaller projects to begin with it gives you time to find your feet and test out automation avenues on a manageable sized leads list. This will make the data easy to track and give you a good idea of what works well and what doesn’t. You can then gradually expand once you have some solid leads under your belt. Also starting small allows you to get to know your client base better and tailor your marketing automation to make it more personal to them. Taking the time to make sure personal ties are made from the get go will give your database a strong foundation.
Quality landing page
The key to generating custom and building a solid database is making sure that you have a good landing page. One of the things to keep in mind when building a landing page is that any text is engaging and easy to read. People don’t want to be scrolling through masses of writing. They want content that is going to convince them to be filling in forms, signing up for emails and downloading content. Short bullet points are most effective when it comes to this. Making the page look appealing with graphics, a well thought out colour scheme and imagery is vital too. A few pictures or graphics will help break up text and make it easier to consume. If it looks simple but professional people will be on board. The last thing to make sure is that the forms you are getting people to fill out are short and simple. Again people don’t want to feel like they are being tasked, so keep the info they are asked to provide down to ‘Name’, ‘Email’, ‘Location’ etc. To make it easier to collect and manage data, make the answer fields into drop down selections. For more on effective landing pages read: 11 Steps To Create A Killer Landing Page For Your SEO Or PPC Campaign
Don’t flood people with calls and emails
Whatever side of the industry you’re on, we all know that there is nothing worse than getting inundated with emails and calls. Most of these are non-personal and become a nuisance. If you flood people with lots of automated emails and calls, they are going to get annoyed and are likely to block or ignore any future correspondence. This is going to quickly lose you a large chunk of custom. When contacting people via automated emails and phone calls, make sure to take the extra time to personalise them. Tailoring content to specific customers by adding in links to products or articles similar to what they have been already purchasing is a great way of doing this. The customer will feel valued therefore securing future interactions.
Email pacing
As mentioned previously if you send too many emails it will be considered an annoyance, but if you don’t send enough then people are likely to forget about you. So as well as making sure the content of the automated emails draws people in, you need to make sure you are getting the frequency right too. For a main lead it is advised that correspondence is sent out every two to three weeks. However, this should be monitored and frequently altered as some of your target groups might need a bit more encouragement and some might need less, to keep them keen without pushing them away.
Track activity
Seems like an obvious point but it is easy, once your automation software is running, to forget about it. The marketing world changes so frequently it is important to use the automation tool to help track how your campaigns are working and alter them if necessary.
Teamwork
This point comes up all the time, but it is a fundamental part of anything you do. Without a team, you aren’t going to get the jobs done. When it comes to automated marketing, it is impossible to have one pair of eyes on everything, so it is crucial to have a team of people working together to spot and help you move with the rises and falls of the data. The better you work as a team the more knowledge and control over your data you will have.
And lastly…
Get creative – Have fun with marketing automation. Just because the premise is based around generating numbers and sales, it doesn’t mean drawing in those numbers and sales shouldn’t fun. Behind the suits and behind the customer are real people wanting to be impressed and feel like they are getting something they can’t get anywhere else.
As Winston Churchill once said “If You Make Someone Laugh, You Give Them a Little Vacation". If you are making people laugh through your marketing automation, whether that be through well written, entertaining emails or social media videos, they will feel like they are getting more than just a product. They will feel invested and want to be in it for the long haul.
