Marketing Automation

What is Marketing Automation?

Put simply marketing automation is delivering premade content to interested users who provide their contact information to you. 

It can be as simple as sending a congratulations message via email upon filling out a form on your website. Or it can be as complex as setting a whole campaign in motion based on the customer's interests and choices made on your website.

Let's say Sally visited your services page and then a product page. We have already gained information from her visit. We know from some analytics that she is interested in our product, she spent a good amount of time on that page and that she knows about our particular service. We also can probably determine her age and her likes and dislikes. Once we have that information we can trigger a series of events that she begins when entering our contact form. This can include an email designed for the specific product that she was interested in with a shout out to the service that she read about. if Sally agreed to keep informed about our business then we send her another email triggered by a two-week delay that asks Sally to evaluate our product with a 14-day trial. With marketing automation, we can cover several scenarios and create customer journeys for each and every one.

What is the benefit of Marketing Automation?

Once set up marketing automation can provide you with valuable insights into your customers, your website, your engagement and more. Data is the driver of all efforts to increase your business with more sales while providing more targeted and refined services and products. And this can all be done with the submission of an email into your database.

How does it Marketing Automation work?

Marketing Automation starts when someone interacts with your business in some way. The may visit your website, email you, call you one the phone, visit your Facebook page, like your Instagram photo, or enter a contest. As soon as you have a persons contact info you can start a chain of marketing content that educates your prospect about your business.

It can be as simple as signing up for a newsletter or as detailed as sending emails, registrations, industry info, product info, postcards, coupons and letters to a contact. The contact helps decide the path of the automation.

Some companies track your interests and your level of engagement. If you are in their database and you recently visited the website to learn about a particular service you might find an email the next  day offering an online information session about that subject.  There are several software packages that can help design marketing automation on a large scale.

Let's use an example:

Chris has a business selling widgets. These widgets are fine quality and made to measure. At a tradeshow sponsored by an association he offered a draw for a free widget. He asked for names and emails. When Chris' booth was slow he would open up his laptop and enter the persons name, email and the rest of the information he collected from talking with the prospect. On the last day of the trade show just after lunch he randomly chose a winner of the free widget.

Here is where the automation starts. Chris had written 2 emails - one for the winner and one for the rest of the participants. All he had to do was press send and his automation started. The winner was notified by email and could come by the booth or fill out a form on Chris' website to receive the widget. The participants all received an email announcing the winner and offering a 20% discount on widgets by using a promotional code during an online purchase.

A few prospects ordered some widgets online where Chris asked them information about their industry and invited them to a presentation on how to maximise the use of the widget. Several purchasers opted into the presentation.

Chris now has a segmented list of customers that he can tailor messages to. For example:

Linda works in aerospace and bought 5 widgets. Chris knows that the widgets have a high turnover in aerospace. The next contact with Linda is a letter from Chris explaining the benefits of the widget and ways you can increase the lifetime of the widget. Linda requests a meeting.

Daryl is creating a startup and entered Chris' draw. He received the email announcing the winner and noticed that there was an information session about the widget and its uses. Daryl registered for the session and indicated he was interested in buying something in the next 90 days and it was in the automotive space. A confirmation was sent to Daryl with a promotional code and when he attended the session Chris made sure to mention how it could be used in the automotive industry. Chris and Daryl had a conversation after the event.

Boost your business with marketing automation.

Have some questions? Want to gain some insight how marketing automation might work for your business? Give us a half hour and we can point you in the right direction.