5 Easy Marketing Automation Workflows to Implement in 2019
Published by Spinutech on June 19, 2019
Forget about autonomous cars, let’s talk about self-driving marketing campaigns.
Today’s marketers are having to do more with less. Fortunately, marketing automation offers a way to deliver smart, on-target messages to a business’s audience without having to manually manage campaigns on a daily basis, thus saving marketers precious time and resources.
Sounds great, right? Let’s dive deeper to understand what marketing automation is and how it can help your business.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation, in its simplest form, is technology that automatically deploys and manages marketing campaigns and processes across multiple channels. Businesses utilizing marketing automation can save time, money, and resources by automating certain tasks within the customer or lead life cycle. For example, marketing automation can:
- Deliver welcome emails to new newsletter subscribers
- Dynamically swap content on your website based on a user’s previous website engagement
- Send notifications to internal sales reps if a prospect or customer engages with certain content on the website or in an email
- Trigger emails based on a customer’s engagement with your business
There are countless strategies and workflows that can be implemented using marketing automation, but first, we need to discuss what a business needs in order to set up and run successful marketing automation campaigns.
What You Need to Start Using Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is “automated,” but there are still tools, technology, and setup processes required before you can launch your first marketing automation campaign. So, before you start planning vacations due to all of the newfound free time you will have thanks to marketing automation, read through some of the basic requirements below.
Strategy
As with any marketing campaign, you first need to develop a strategy for marketing automation that outlines how your business will utilize the technology, the messages that you will send, and the overall goal of automation.
Platform
Next, you’ll need to find a marketing automation platform to help execute your marketing automation strategy. There are numerous email marketing and marketing automation platforms available so you will need to choose one that best fits your business (TIP: most marketing automation partners and agencies will already have a platform that they use for their clients).
Data
Data is an integral part of marketing automation. You need to ensure your customer database and lists are accurate and up-to-date to make sure that your messages are being delivered to the right audience. Additionally, proper tracking and data capture techniques need to be put in place to ensure workflows and campaigns trigger at the right time.
Content
Similar to any other type of marketing campaign, content needs to be delivered to the right audience, at the right time, and with the right message. Marketing automation helps deliver messages to your audience at exactly the right time, but the content that is delivered must be strategically created to ensure the message will resonate with your audience.
Expertise
Marketing automation can be intimidating to businesses new to the technology and strategy. As seen above, there is a lot to consider before launching your first campaign. This is why it’s a good idea to work with a seasoned marketing automation partner to get you started on the right foot.
Now that we’ve discussed some of the basic requirements needed to get started with marketing automation, let’s take a look at some workflows that you can begin implementing this year for your business.
5 Easy Workflows to Implement in 2019
As mentioned earlier, there are numerous workflows that can be created using some basic marketing automation logic. Here are five easy marketing automation workflows that you can start using in 2019.
Newsletter Welcome Email
Businesses spend a lot of time and money on blog and newsletter content. Therefore, when a website visitor subscribes and asks to receive the content on a continual basis, you should thank them for their interest and give them a preview of the additional content they should expect to receive in the future.
Subscriber welcome emails are easy to set up and are triggered when a visitor submits the subscriber form on your website.
Reminder Emails
Reminder emails are a great way to keep customers informed about upcoming appointments, events, or other important dates. While these emails are normally used to reduce the number of “no-show” appointments, they can also be a revenue driver by sending promotional reminder emails to past customers who haven’t purchased or scheduled a service for an extended period of time.
To implement a reminder email workflow, you will need data fields that track appointments, events, or last service or purchase dates and times. Emails are then triggered to send a certain number of days before or after an event.
New Customer Cadence
We all know it’s cheaper to retain customers than acquire new ones. Therefore, businesses need to ensure new customers feel welcomed and valued. A new customer email cadence is an impactful way to thank a new customer for their business and provide additional information around next steps, training, or other products and services that your business offers. The cadence, or series of emails, can extend for just a few days or span several weeks — even months — following the initial purchase.
A new customer cadence would be triggered when a new customer is added to your database (first purchase date field). The workflow would contain all of the emails in the cadence and be set to deliver each email after certain time intervals.
Birthday Email
An automated birthday email is an easy, yet effective, way to send a personalized email to your customers on their special day. Birthday emails, due to their personalization, usually have higher engagement than other emails. So, when sending birthday emails, take advantage of the increased engagement and include a personalized promo code to drive additional revenue for your business.
All you need to send a personalized birthday email is a date of birth field in your customer database. Birthday emails can then be triggered to send a few days before the customer’s birthday or on the actual day.
Content or Topic Triggered Emails
Once you have contacts in your marketing automation database, you will have visibility into their interactions with your website, emails, and other marketing campaigns. Using these insights, you can trigger emails based on the content that was consumed to deliver even more valuable content to the user. This type of automation helps keep your business top-of-mind and generates even more engagement throughout your marketing.
Various triggers and logic can be set up to ensure you are sending the right message to the right audience. Possible triggers could be a pageview or download on the website, or specific engagement within an email.
Start Using Marketing Automation Today
Marketing automation continues to transform the marketing landscape by giving marketers the ability to send personalized, one-to-one messages to consumers at exactly the right moment. This level of personalization helps companies stand out amongst the competition, which translates to higher customer engagement and increased sales.
If marketing automation is not a part of your current marketing strategy, think about how you could leverage the technology to streamline processes and deliver improved communication to your customers and prospects.