Any kind of marketing is a lot of work, especially digital marketing. It requires a constant upkeep of high quality content to push products and services, chasing leads and sending e-mails to keep people on the hook. Thankfully, marketing automation provides a way to reduce the workload by cutting out small and repetitive tasks, without compromising quality.
Generally, marketing automation only requires: a central marketing database, with somewhere to store data such as information on your audience; an engagement marketing engine to manage and automate processes such as e-mail; and an analytics engine to measure the impact of marketing techniques on your business.
How it Works
Marketing automation encourages interaction from existing clients and helps to nurture any leads you have.
For example, if you send an e-mail about a product or service to a targeted list of leads, you can use marketing automation to note who clicks the link or downloads the product. Then, these people can receive a thank you e-mail to build a personal relationship with clients. Next, you can send out another e-mail to these people with promotional offers, more information or to push more products.
This technique is so effective because you can still write the e-mails in an amicable and personalised way in order to make you seem trustworthy. This in turn leads to better engagement and a better rapport with clients, encouraging them to continue working with you or buying from you in the future. Of course having you e-mails written by a copywriter may enhance their performance.
What it is Not
Since marketing automation is often used for e-mails, it can be confused with e-mail marketing. However, this technique can also be applied to phone campaigns, direct mail, and it also includes analytics elements to help you improve.
Additionally, marketing automation should not be used to send spam. The end goal of this strategy is to nurture leads and encourage clients to work with or buy from you. Spam will achieve the opposite effect by pushing clients away and is therefore not a useful application of marketing automation.
How to Use Marketing Automation Effectively
In order to achieve the most out of marketing automation, you should be using it along with other digital marketing strategies. This tactic will not work at all unless you have a strong foundation for your business. Other marketing strategies, such as search engine optimization, social media marketing, and many more, should be central to your promotional tactics, with marketing automation used as a bonus.
It is also important to create personalised, highly-targeted content. Since you are wanting to target customers and follow leads, the promotional material you create should really connect with the audience. Creating a relationship with customers is important if you are aiming for success. Ensure that you stay in contact with previous clients to continue building the relationship.
Finally, make sure you have some way of tracking analytics to check your performance. If something doesn’t work, change it as quickly as possible. This is the best way to get the most out of any digital marketing, because it will ensure that clients are getting the best out our your services.
