Get More Out of Your Marketing Automation Platform in 3 Steps

2 min read
Oct 26, 2015 1:34:00 PM
As marketers today are spending at least 50 percent of their time on content, companies are coming up with more ways to automate marketing. Marketing automation alone is worth $5.5 billion and is leading the way in lead generation and prospect nurturing.

Using a marketing automation platform makes it easier to schedule emails, segment contacts, automate social media posting, manage your content, and track the lifecycle of customers in your marketing funnel. This automation trend also highlights the growth of convergence, which allows you to stay lean, focused, and as profitable as possible without compromising on quality.

Properly utilizing your marketing automation tool requires integrating it into a complete inbound marketing strategy and using it as a support rather than a replacement. Here are 3 key ways to get the most out of your marketing automation.

  

  1. Think of Recipients as More Than Buyers
The golden opportunity with marketing automation may not rest with driving sales alone – maybe it's in the Awareness stage, for instance. Think about other ways you can leverage behavior-driven communications to inform and advance your company or organization, such as: 
  • Request feedback from anyone who downloaded an ebook. Ask them what other topics they’d like to hear about in the future.
  • Offer help to existing customers who have viewed the cancelation of returns page.
  • Thank social media advocates who promote your company on Twitter.

By shaking loose from a single objective, you can garner engagement and get valuable information to help you shape future marketing efforts, improve the product, or prevent churn.

 

  1. Use Marketing Automation for Internal Notifications

Typically, marketing automation is used to send customers automated emails based on their activity. But sometimes, a personal phone call or email is the better route. For those instances, think about also connecting your marketing automation tool to an internal system. Doing so will enable your team to get alerts when a highly qualified lead looks at the pricing page, for example, or when a valuable customer stops logging into your software as a service platform. Setting internal notifications for major events in the customer lifecycle lets your account managers and sales team make a better decision about whether a more personal kind of outreach is necessary. 

 

  1. It Still All Comes Down to Content
All of the technology in the world can’t beat a thoughtful and compelling message. Your marketing automation campaign could be perfectly timed and tuned into customer motivations, but if the content is falling short, it still won’t deliver. To get the most out of your marketing automation, make sure you continually test different messages and subject lines to find the right match to your customers’ needs.

With even more focus on marketing to deliver results, marketing managers and CMOs should be taking stock of their team’s skills, noting the gaps and defining a robust automation strategy to move visitors and leads down the sales funnel. These 3 important steps will help you get more meaningful results from your marketing automation! 

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