Quick guide to marketing automation: Getting started

Sunday, March 13, 2011 // B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Blog, Marketing, Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is about making repetitive tasks happen automatically. Most marketers focus on the obvious marketing automation benefits of doing more in less time and with less money. But some find that the nurturing and preference building capabilities of automation is the greatest benefit. Here are some thoughts to consider for your own marketing automation plans.

Have you ever considered automating your marketing processes? Have you ever wondered how you can ensure a better and more compelling dialogue with – for example – your email newsletter recipients – or the targeted audiences receiving your quarterly email marketing promotions?

I think you have. However, if you have not, I bet you could think of two or three direct marketing activities that you could automate.

Having been in the marketing automation management game for quite some time, marketers I have spoken to over the years seem to have intent to automate certain crucial marketing processes. Typically processes that focus at qualifying and nurturing leads. Some marketers do manage to get started, but sadly most never get beyond the very basic levels. Most often because the organization behind the initiative failed to understand that there are a number of keystones to success.

Here are just some of the keystones to success with marketing automation:

Data and control of data; good clean data and solid data management procedures is a prerequisite for successful marketing automation. Unfortunately that is also a real challenge for many organizations.

A good master plan; marketing automation requires planning and dedication to be successful.
Dedication to succeed; like most other direct and digital marketing disciplines you have to expect that things take time – and most often much longer than you anticipated. You might also find that results do not present themselves as soon as you had anticipated. It is important to keep at it and continue to work to improve your processes.

Acquire new marketing skills; to be successful with your marketing automation activities, you need different people with specific skill sets. If you do not have them aboard, you would do well to hire additional staff or work with external specialists.

In my experience you need a good master plan to become successful and effective with marketing automation. The plan should start with a random thought process outlining anything and everything you could potentially do to benefit from marketing automation. This is actually a marketing automation service we offer in our Discover the Horizon workshop.

To get your own marketing automation thought process going here are a few random thoughts to consider before taking the next step, which we will cover in a future 360 Dialogue Brief newsletter:

Outline your customers typical buying process. There are several different stages that a customer goes through before making a buying decision. Outlining the typical buying process is a crucial component of your marketing automation efforts. Once you have staged the process, you need to understand what type of information a potential customer need in each stage of the buying process. Setup your marketing automation to address each of these steps with relevant information served through the most appropriate channel.

Prioritize marketing automation based on highest needs. Assess the areas of the revenue cycle needing the most improvement, such as lead generation, lead nurturing or sales and marketing alignment. Focus on those areas first to get quick wins that can help you get support internally.

Create marketing content to generate interest during every stage of the buying process. For example, instead of creating solution-oriented content, produce educational content for the beginning of the process. Outline the areas that potential customers typically find difficult to understand and then educate them. A lot of prospects never buy from you because they fail to understand exactly how you add value to them.

Improve auto-response emails and welcoming flows. Say someone sign up for your email communication. What is the first thing you do? Send an auto-response email, right? But you can improve the standard auto-response flow by turning it into a welcoming flow – perhaps a series of 2, 5, 7 emails to introduce your prospect to what you do.

Focus on differentiation You know it, but you do you act on the knowledge you have about treating people different? As a minimum ensure that you set up one flow for customers and a different flow for prospects.

Develop simple, automated work-flows in the beginning. Save the advanced techniques for later. Instead, create workflows such as following up a form submission with a series of emails. But be careful how you do it. If you cannot track actions and reactions in real-time, there are limits to what you can safely implement.

Consider your communication channels mix carefully. Many marketers find that the email channel need to be supplemented with the mobile marketing channel. Others are looking to integrate all channels as part of their multi-channel marketing communication setup – some even want to integrate their IVR into their communication flow. And the most ambitious organizations want to allow their customers to respond to an email through their mobile phone, or respond to a mobile message via the IVR. The opportunities are endless, but you do need a master plan to take advantage.

Triggered communication is a big part of marketing automation. We think that if you are currently a seasoned email marketer, you might also consider triggers as part of your setup.