Creating a marketing automation strategy is essential for your business, but how do you make it happen? Marketing campaigns are most successful when you create a specific message targeted to a segmented audience with the right offer at the right time.
To ensure your company has marketing automation set up and ready for future campaigns, make sure you complete the following:
Identify the right tasks to automate
You want to ensure you understand your team's most repetitive marketing tasks. Then you can plot out your current marketing tasks and choose the most time-consuming and compatible with automation.
Choose the right marketing automation software
Make sure it serves your customers and is tailored to your business, considering what it will take to implement the program effectively. Consider bringing in an automation consultant.
Integrating the software tool into your website and other platforms
Make sure your technical configurations and systems are set up and working properly. First, clean and import your data, then integrate it with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
Train your team
Automation makes marketing more efficient, but some front-end training may be necessary to get your team up to speed.
You’ve chosen your automation software, integrated it into your business, and trained your team. Now let’s look at best practices and the steps for the successful creation and implementation of your automation campaign:
Best Practices:
Be intentional
Set goals before starting your campaign and understand what business strategy supports each one.
Quality over quantity
Focus on the quality of your marketing communications. Use high-value marketing content and initiatives instead of overloading customers with excessive messages.
Personalize interactions
Make sure you create a personalized buyer's journey for each channel a customer may take so the journey is smooth and feels authentic.
Segment according to buyer behaviors
Your audience consists of multiple buyer personas; each customer will interact with your business and content differently.
Keep content updated and relevant
Valuable content is critical to a successful marketing automation strategy. You can experiment and develop templates for your campaigns that feel personal but can still be repurposed.
Analyze and make corrections when needed
Take time to examine how the audience interacts with the campaign and make changes throughout to improve your strategy.
Essential steps for creating a marketing automation campaign:
Define your goals and requirements upfront Set realistic goals utilizing the S.M.A.R.T. framework. Make sure they are:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Timely
Define your customer engagement pattern
Determine where your customer saw your ad and what device they use
Find out how many times they logged into your website before checking out
Ascertain if they contacted customer support to finish the checkout process
Calculate how many touchpoints the customer had with your business before converting
Create and map your customer journey
Consider scenarios that may play out for a customer on their journey
Ensure your customer is receiving the right message at the right time
Craft a personalized content strategy based on the journey and goals
Build up your email distribution list
Put a subscribe button on your homepage
Make customers into ambassadors
Create pop-ups directing people to a landing page or website
Provide offers that give value to your visitors
Create signup forms for landing pages and webpages
Provide a multi-channel experience
Send personalized emails to engage with customers
Educate and inform your contacts through blogs and newsletters
Put a plan and process in place
Create a punch list or guide to assist in your planning
Start with a simple aspect of your automation software and expand from there
Get your team on board
Allow your team to contribute their ideas to the campaign
Ensure your team understands the campaign objectives and their roles
Monitor and optimize constantly
Automate data segmentation
Personalize your automation based on segmentation
Check out the companion piece for Implementing a Marketing Automation Campaign for practical examples of automation campaigns. If your business needs help navigating the automation journey, contact MLC Expert Consulting at 843.819.0103 or through our website.
Marketing Automation: Implementing a Marketing Automation Campaign (Blog 5 of 5)
