Marketing automation is more than just a trendy buzzword. It is a tool that, utilised properly, enables businesses to truly align their sales and marketing, and deliver a consistent customer experience!
Though still often seen as something that only ‘larger, B2C companies’ need to concern themselves with, the use of marketing automation has benefits for businesses of all sizes. In this post, we’ll take a look at 3 key scenarios where using a marketing automation tool can pay real dividends.
One of the common blockers to getting started with a tool like this is that they are seen as expensive and resource-intensive to setup. However, if you can find a marketing automation tool that’s fully integrated with, and backed up by, an email marketing and CRM system, then it can be both affordable and easy.
Before we get started, let’s have a quick reminder of some of the benefits of marketing automation…
A recap of the benefits of marketing automation
Marketing automation (sometimes shortened to MA) can be applied to the entire customer lifecycle. Once you’ve gone through your initial set-up, it can be largely left to run itself, freeing-up time for your sales and marketing teams to generate more leads and convert more sales!
MA – which includes email marketing, engagement scoring and lead nurturing – enables you to contact the right people at the right time and place in their customer journey.
There are numerous MA tools on the market, but having a tool that’s fully integrated within your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform gives some additional benefits, including:
- All your data in one place – no need to download/upload data between different platforms
- You can personalise and automate workflows based on customer activity using data from your support teams, website touch points, email engagement and more as triggers
- You can measure & analyse impact – get a complete overview of how your campaigns impact the bottom line
3 scenarios made easier by using marketing automation
1. Managing GDPR privacy notices
GDPR is upon us. Though we’ve all now got a handle on our data management (hopefully!), keeping on top of all the different data processing regulations and ensuring you’ve got the right ‘consent’ (in readiness for the arrival of new ePrivacy regulations), can still be a very manual, resource-heavy process.
This is perhaps the number one reason we’re seeing customers add marketing automation to their armoury this year.
Using MA, you can set up a simple automated flow to ensure any new contacts added to your CRM database receive a copy of your Privacy Notice the same day (which means you’ll be compliant with GDPR Article 13). Automating this process removes the risk of breaching the 30-day limit for notification if you’re receiving your data via a third party (GDPR Article 14), and means you won’t have to rely on your users to ensure this is maintained.
An example automated GDPR marketing campaign
An automated campaign might look as follows:
Step 1 – A campaign source is created and added to the first stage which includes all contacts created today.
Step 2 – The mailshot is scheduled to send to “New Recipients Only” on a repeated schedule which might be the same time each day, or even hourly.
NB Gold-Vision Campaigns allow you to manage when privacy notices are sent and can automatically write to a contact “Privacy Log” to ensure the date and time of notification is logged.
Step 3 – Create an automated template in Gold-Vision Connect to manage automated privacy notifications and send them at the required schedule.
Step 4 – Create a follow-up stage with a second email to the contact requesting they update their contact preferences. When the contact updates their preferences this data will link straight back to their contact information in Gold-Vision.
Step 5 – Marketing automation isn’t just for email, you can also manage rules for additional stages that require a different type of follow-up. For example, you may wish to create a follow-up campaign which runs at the end of the day to automatically create a follow-up activity for the Account manager. This could be used to remind them to call anyone to whom the Privacy Notice email bounced.
2. Lead nurture
What do you do with a lead that is relevant to your business, but not yet ready to buy? You could use a lead nurture campaign. This will help to keep you front-of-mind with your prospect, and by using ‘touch points’ you can pick up on their buying signals to contact them at the right time.
Lead nurture is probably the number 1 most commonly cited use of MA by businesses of any size. So, if you’re not already doing so yourself then you really are missing out: it’s a game changer!
Setting up a lead nurture campaign
In this following example, we’ll look at setting up an automated series which sends an email every 10 days to all leads with a status of ‘Keep Warm’ using the following workflow:
- Whenever a Lead clicks on the link in the email, they receive a score of 10 Connect touch points
- When a Lead reaches a high enough score, the Lead owner receives an alert – this is a prompt to see if the Lead is ready to buy
- If they are, the Lead owner will change the Lead status which will automatically remove the Lead from the nurture cycle
- Each time a mailshot is opened or a link is clicked, the Gold-Vision touch point alerting system will allow scores to be tracked against your leads. If they aren’t ready to buy then they will stay in the cycle
- The Lead owner will get another alert once a target touch point score is reached that suggests the lead is now marketing qualified (MQL)
You can be selective as to who is included in your lead nurture campaign by ensuring only leads/contacts which are specifically marked are added. You can also use rules to ensure contacts are excluded from further stages in the campaign when an opportunity reaches a certain stage or is progressed to a contact after responding.
This can sometimes be a difficult concept to understand and is actually beyond the capabilities of a number of marketing automation tools. However, within Gold-Vision it’s standard functionality and couldn’t be easier to set up.
3. New customer onboarding
If you’re running effective lead nurture campaigns, it hopefully means you’re adding lots of new customers. So how do you ensure you continue to deliver a great customer experience once they’ve signed on the dotted line?
Again, marketing automation comes into its own here. Used properly, it can save time, resource, and ensure consistent, timely communication with your contacts far beyond the initial sales process.
In this third scenario, you could use MA to set up a basic new customer onboarding campaign that will get your new customer relationships off to a great start. This could include:
- A welcome email introducing either a project or account manager and vital business numbers
- A follow-up email introducing them to help and support contact details
- A final email including an event calendar and invitation to an event which is due to run soon
- A follow-up phone call from their Account Manager after their first week or two as a customer
NB Automating a welcome email based on a status changing from a Prospect to a Customer can be managed easily in Gold-Vision. Simply set the campaigns to run daily and, as a result, new customers will be provided with all of the information they need to know when first starting to work with you.
Getting started with marketing automation
The 3 scenarios highlighted in this post are just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many ways in which marketing automation can be utilised to deliver real business value and great customer experience.
The key to success is to start small, then scale up once you’re comfortable with the basic principles. Once you’re finding success using email-only campaigns, you can then start adding in the use of additional touch points and follow-up mediums such as phone, SMS or even direct mail.
Gold-Vision’s MA module consists of two key concepts: automating Gold-Vision campaigns and touch point alerting. Adding the MA module also includes 10,000 monthly Connect email credits, (which is usually more than enough when you’re first getting started), and you can purchase additional credits as needed at any point.
Ready to start automating your marketing? Arrange a demo to find out more about Gold-Vision’s marketing automation functionality and to see first-hand how simple getting started can be.
