Automation is a great tool for streamlining and maximising your marketing processes, with automation software allowing you to schedule and deliver marketing communications with ease. It helps to save your business time by completing repetitive tasks, such as sending emails or posting on social media, all while ensuring these marketing activities are customised and targeted to specific audiences with ease.
Here are a few other ways you can use marketing automation to benefit your business.
Concentrate your marketing efforts into niche segments
Omnisend’s 2019 Omnichannel Marketing Automation Statistics Report revealed that segmented campaigns provided a 34.7 per cent higher open rate than non-segmented campaigns. Segmented marketing campaigns focus on the division of marketing communication into targeted groups, based on characteristics like demographics, needs and common interests. Non-segmented campaigns are broader and more general, with a lack of focus leading to generic communications that don’t engage all types of customers.
Once upon a time such initiatives of segmentation would’ve involved considerable effort – both in terms of time and money. However, many now stock-standard automated platforms, such as MailChimp, Campaign Monitor and Hootsuite, have segmentation options built-in.
Set concrete goals
It’s important to know how to automate elements of your marketing campaigns without spamming potential or existing customers with messages that don’t apply to them. To avoid this, set clear goals for your automated marketing efforts, with both sales and marketing teams closely aligned throughout the process.
These goals should target the needs of your intended audience, categorising them by interests and demographics for example. This will help you build a clear segmented list to use for marketing automation. This list can help your communications achieve a higher engagement, as social media posts or emails speak to what your audience actually wants.
Make it sound more human with lead nurturing
By personalising your marketing automation, you can eliminate any potential robotic elements that could deter your customers. Automating your marketing for a lead nurturing schedule is one way this can be achieved.
This involves creating frequent but lower risk engagements, which focus on building a relationship between customers and your brand. Delivering targeted content across channels, with multiple points of contact, and following up with the customer assists to improve engagement.
Continually nurturing their pathway from marketing material to purchase helps map a buyer’s journey. And you can then use this data to see what is and what isn’t working in your marketing strategy and business.
Use data analytics and keep evolving your marketing
To succeed at automated marketing, it’s not about just letting software run and then watching customers click through to your product or service. You need to be constantly monitoring customer data to understand what they want and need.
Marketing platforms like HubSpot, MailChimp and Marketo enable you to see analytics of the customer journey. You’ll be able to spot the parts of your site your customers are spending time on and where they’re dropping off. Constantly monitoring your online experience and its data helps to foster and develop customer engagement – as their needs change, your marketing strategies should as well.
Automating for further success
Automation can help your marketing in more ways than just emails – it can be useful in:
- Social media – schedule and automate posts for Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn
- Landing pages – track traffic to your landing page and see whether users convert, or where they go to from there
- Prediction/scoring – when a lead passes a certain score, this can automatically trigger an email to close the sale.
While a powerful tool, it’s important that you continue to strategise, study and evolve your marketing automations. This tool doesn’t replace the marketing work you do; it makes delivery easier and allows you more time to focus on what your customers want.
At Redline Digital, we’re experts at digital marketing and can assist with implementing marketing automation within your business. Our team works hard to stay ahead of the curve in digital marketing, so we can understand the best approach for you. Contact the Redline Digital team today to conquer your marketing goals.