I hope you are doing well this week. Today, I want to introduce you to the topic of marketing automation. Marketing automation refers to the software that manages marketing processes across multiple channels automatically. In this day and age, you'd be wasting your time by manually performing repetitive tasks like sending email newsletters or posting on social media, when there is technology that exists to do it all for you.
The benefits of using marketing automation
- Improve efficiency so employees are free to tackle higher-order problems
- It reduces human error
- You can plan ahead with your content and marketing campaigns
- You can automatically trigger actions based on schedules and customer behaviour. This tailors every customer interaction based on data to create a seamless journey for the consumer.
- It promotes streamlined messaging across multiple channels
- It can increase lead generation and conversions
- Ultimately, it increases revenue!
Steps to marketing automation
1. Define your marketing goals.
For example, "We want to build our email list by X" or "We want to increase consumer enquiries by X" or "We want to increase email open rates by X".
2. Decide on the best marketing automation platform for your business.
Popular platforms include Marketo, Eloqua, Hubspot, Pardot by Salesforce and ActiveCampaign. There are many more out there, but choose based on your budget, goals, business type and needs.
3. Create visuals or diagrams of your marketing automation workflow to represent the big picture.
This needs to include every marketing channel of your business, such as email, social media etc.
4. Begin to segment your data.
Who is your audience? Why are you trying to reach and engage them? How can you best tailor your marketing to the individual? For example, you might be an osteopathy practice trying to engage the chronic pain population - how could you segment your audience to make marketing relevant to them?
5. Prepare your content strategy.
6. Create your content.
This can be done a few weeks or months ahead of time. Content needs to be interesting, engaging and have your brand messaging and aesthetic consistently throughout.
7. Plan for a slow rollout of your content launches.
Test and aim to improve your content - don't forget about your A/B testing we spoke about in email 19!
8. Analyse results.
Determine what is effective and what needs improvement. Don't be afraid to make changes based on your data. This is how you grow your audience and business!
Key Takeaways
Marketing automation is technology that manages marketing processes automatically across all channels. It saves time, improves efficiency, increases revenue and allows you to analyse your marketing campaigns from a birds eye view to ultimately grow your business.
Originally published on Aug 19, 2021
