Our recent Automation blog series has explored all things marketing automation. But how do you use these tools to get the most out of your effort?
One easy way to do this is to use automation hacks. Whilst these aren’t cheat codes to instant success or revenue, they are easy things that any company can implement to help boost their growth. From small business owners to huge corporations, anyone can use effective marketing automation tools imaginatively to boost your company’s website traffic, acquisition, activation, and retention rates.
Here are a few top hacks that we think can easily help you grow your digital marketing efforts.
1. Create super targeted content
One of the best applications for marketing automation is a targeted content marketing strategy, such as email campaigns. Marketing automation lets you use any and all information you gather about your leads (such as needs, pain points, and triggers) and tailor your content to fit each individual.
Think about it as if you were having a one-on-one conversation with them.
This is too good an opportunity to miss, so definitely make sure that all email content sent out is deeply personalised, making the lead feel more special, more like your product or service will address their overall need, and more ready to buy.
2. Take advantage of email alerts
Marketers are not mind readers, so it can be difficult to know at what point you should start contacting any new leads.
Automation can help with this. Many automation software have alerts built in, which you can set up to go off for pre-defined things.
For example:
• When a lead attends one of your webinars or virtual events
• Activity alerts when a lead visits your website or landing page
• If a lead requests a demo or trial
• When a lead watches a video on your website
Striking whilst the iron’s hot can give your sales team a huge advantage.
3. Use drip campaigns to retain customers
You’ve made a sale – great! But as most businesses know, the key is retention. It costs five times more to attract a new customer than to simply keep an existing one, so making sure your existing customers keep coming back for more could be key to your revenue growth.
In other words, you want to keep people interested in your product or service long after they’ve made the purchase.
Automation lets you use post-purchase drip campaigns to keep the conversation going. This could be anything from a simple weekly newsletter to tips on how to use your product.
Keeping the communication channels open will make sure your customer remembers you and sees you as providing useful insight.
4. Nurture old leads into new prospects
In an ideal world, every sales person would close every lead that makes it through the sales process. But it’s natural that some slip through. At any given time, a lead might lose interest or stop engaging.
This actually is a great opportunity. You can move inactive leads into an automated re-engagement drip campaign, which will help revitalize interest in your company’s offerings.
This is quite simple to set up with behaviour flows and automation technology, but could make a huge difference to your business.
5. Use what you know about your customers
Information is all around us, including what behaviours leads and customers show. Learning something about a lead is fantastic, but you should never let that information sit and gather dust. Instead, you should use this knowledge to segment your customer base and customise your marketing message accordingly.
Your segments might include:
• Previous activity – whether they bought something, spent time on your website, looked at your pricing page, engaged with emails, etc
• Personal information – such as name or location
• Preferred products or services – what they’ve bought before or have spent time looking at
Whilst this isn’t an exhaustive list of every single automation hack out there, these hacks are a fantastic place to start if you’re new to automation or want easy ways to oost your sales and marketing efforts.
Implementing small and easy changes could be the key to increasing your revenue and growing your business.