Use Automated Marketing to Generate More Revenues
Marketing automation is an increasingly popular term in the business world, and with good reason. Who wouldn't want to implement tools that perform several repetitive tasks, often with low added value, to save time and focus their efforts on what pays off? This technique is extremely profitable and, when executed well, can help propel your overall strategy. What are the possibilities behind automated marketing and how can you implement it in such a way as to generate new customers for your business? This is what we will discuss in this article.
What is Marketing Automation in Canada?
Before we get to the nitty-gritty, let's take a few moments to explain what marketing automation is.
Automated marketing is a communication strategy based on an action/reaction approach that allows you to act on the interactions and behaviors that users take on your website.
According to specific scenarios, a series of actions are triggered in order to engage your leads or customers with the content, products and services that interest them. This is done in order to move them forward in their buyer’s journey, convert them into a buying customer and increase your revenue.
Triggers can also be set up to automatically update data, your contacts' profiles, their browsing history, etc.
How to create Automated Marketing Campaigns
Automated marketing allows you to carry out ultra-targeted messages based on the actions taken by visitors on your site. It is a strategy that is part of the Inbound Marketing methodology, which consists of offering your contacts relevant and useful content according to their profile, their interest and their needs at the right time.
To run automation campaigns, you first need to develop your inbound strategy to drive traffic to your website and convert your visitors into leads. Once converted, meaning you’ve collected an email address or a phone number through your website, you can use marketing automation to help your contacts move forward in their buying journey. This step is crucial for performing marketing automation because without an email address, phone number and consent, you will not be able to carry out your campaigns.
You can also set up automation campaigns to improve your relationships with your customers and to ensure that no follow-ups are forgotten. For example, if your company offers annual services, you can send an email to your customers so that they can renew their subscription one month before it expires. Or, if you have an e-commerce store and a customer leaves an item in their cart, you can send them an email to remind them to complete the purchase.
Let’s get back to basics. To run a successful automated marketing campaign, you'll need two things:
- Your prospects' and customers' email addresses or phone numbers (and their consent);
- A CRM to:
- convert your visitors into prospects;
- record user actions and behaviors on your site;
- access automation tools (workflows) capable of sending personalized emails or text messages.
Steps to Creating Successful Marketing Automation Campaigns
Defining Your Needs and Goals
Before you begin developing a marketing automation campaign, you will need to identify which tasks you want to automate. What results do you want to achieve with this marketing tactic? Who are the people you would like to engage with and why?
The possibilities in marketing automation are numerous. You will therefore have to be as precise as possible when defining your needs. I strongly suggest that you set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, achievable and time-bound) goals to help you.
Choosing the Right Tool to Perform Your Marketing Automation Campaigns
Now that you have defined your end goals, you will need to choose a system that will allow you to achieve them. At this point, you should take a few minutes to list the features you will need to create your automated marketing campaigns.
Features to Focus on When Doing Marketing Automation:
- A database that groups together all of your contacts and their profile information;
- Tracking options to record user activity on your site;
- API integration possibilities with two-way synchronization to communicate with your internal tools;
- A tool for creating forms and pop-ups to convert your visitors into contacts;
- A landing page design tool;
- Segmentation features;
- A tool for creating workflows;
- An email marketing tool;
- An SMS sending tool to automate promotion by text message;
- Reporting tools to analyze your results and optimize your campaigns.
I would also add that personalization and smart content features would be relevant for your automation campaigns, to further tailor your messages to your customers.
What tools provide these features? There are several options varying in price range and performance. I encourage you to use a CRM like HubSpot which will not only allow you to set up automation campaigns, but also support all of your efforts associated with marketing, sales and customer service.
Define Your Conversion Processes and the Path to Purchase
As I mentioned above, to automate marketing campaigns, you must have your prospect’s contact information to be able to send them the right messages according to their profile. It's important to include forms in strategic places on your site that encourage visitors to convert into leads for your contact database. The idea here is not to bombard your website visitors with pop-ups, but to offer them an incentive to encourage them to share their email address and allow you to communicate with them. For example, you can put a pop-up to invite them to subscribe to your newsletter, grant the use of free templates, give access to exclusive training, etc. You will certainly have a better conversion rate if you offer something to your visitor in exchange for their information.
However, your forms will not all have the same conversion value. Let me explain: a person who subscribes to your newsletter will not be at the same stage in their decision-making process as an individual who registers to obtain a demonstration of your services. Or a person who downloads free content once will not have the same value as a prospect who asks for new free content regularly. You therefore need to define your customers' path to purchase so that you can adapt your automated promotional campaigns accordingly.
To do this, I mainly use HubSpot’s methodology and divide the buyer’s journey into three stages:
- Awareness: The person begins to realize that they have a problem to solve.
- Consideration: The contact has now clearly defined their problem and is researching possible solutions to resolve it.
- Decision: The person has chosen the solution or product that suits them best and is ready to buy.
The important thing to remember is that in order to create an automated marketing campaign, you will need to tailor your communications to where the person is in the buying journey. You must inform them of their options and move them forward in their process, until they reach the decision-making stage. You will have to categorize your forms according to these three stages in order to understand where your contact is in the journey at the time of the first conversion. You can then determine which content to send to their inbox to help them move forward in their journey.
If you don't yet have downloadable content to offer your visitors, consider developing a content strategy for each of the stages presented above. While waiting to implement it, you can still offer other types of incentives, for example a 15% rebate on your products when subscribing to the newsletter, a free demo of your service or even a one-month free trial period. In short, the possibilities are endless.
Defining Scenarios and Workflows
Once you have your landing pages or conversion forms in place, it's time to define your scenarios in order to create your workflow. At this point, you will need to identify:
Your workflow triggers:
For example, someone filling out your form for a free demo.
The actions that need to be initiated:
Would you like to automatically send an email with a link to add the date of the demo to the leads’ agenda? And then a reminder email a few hours before the demo to ensure participation?
Event conditions and the actions to trigger when they are met:
Let's say your contact participates in your demo, you might want to send them a thank you email with a copy of the recorded video of the demo. Maybe make them an exclusive offer to thank them and encourage them to subscribe? And if the person misses your demo, what would you like to do? Ignore it, or try to contact them again to ask if they want to sign up for another session?
Testing Your Campaign
Now that your campaign is created, all you have to do is test it to ensure that the process in place works correctly.
Once the tests are complete, you can activate your marketing automation campaign.
Analyze Your Campaign Performance and Optimize It
An automated marketing campaign can be executed for a specific period of time, but can also have an indefinite duration. However, just because you don't have an end date doesn't mean you shouldn't analyze it and try to improve it over time.
If you don't take the time to assess the success rate of your workflow, how do you know if you are achieving your goals?
Marketing automation is just one component of your inbound strategy. When done well, it helps you reduce repetitive tasks and move your prospects forward in their buying journey to become paying customers. Helping your team put these workflows together is something a web agency like ours can do, especially in the context of the current labor shortage. Don’t hesitate, contact us and find out how we can help you generate revenue through marketing automation.
Alexandra Thibaudeau
Holder of several HubSpot Academy certifications, she uses her expertise to ensure the creation and development of the company's Inbound Marketing strategy.
