Marketing automation has been a buzz word for the last few years… Clients and agencies alike are talking about automation. The digital landscape is changing and technology evolving, but do businesses really understand how to implement a successful marketing automation strategy?

More often than not, the answer is: No, they don’t know how to implement a successful automation strategy that will result in an increase in sales, revenue and ultimately profits.

Creating an effective marketing automation strategy will take time, planning and will require inputs from different departments, but the good news is: once this is done and you’ve successfully implemented your strategy, you will have more insights into your customers than ever before…

1. Dynamic content

According to Business 2 Community, ‘to get the best results out of any automated marketing tool, you must have dynamic content. Dynamic content is what drives your interaction with leads. To give your automated marketing efforts the best chance of success, you must have the right content that aligns with the customer’s past behaviours and satisfies their interest.’ This is crucial.

2. Drip campaign

This is an automation that takes action based on your customer’s online behaviour. Drip campaigns are great, as it is all about the customer and their needs / behaviour etc. Business 2 Community mentioned that ‘drip campaigns have about 80% higher open rates and 3x click through rates than a message that is blasted to everyone at the same time.’ This is a great way to build trust with your customers and nurture a relationship. Example:

Source: Business 2 Community

3. Nurture campaigns in your funnel

Not every person visiting your website is ready to buy, but they might be potential buyers. The strategy you implement will determine whether the lead will become a regular client or a wasted lead. If they are not ready to buy, nurture them by using dynamic content that is tailored to their needs. It is now your responsibility to give them what they are want.

It is rather likely that the leads will take different paths, based on their online behaviour, but whatever path they opt for, use your content to nurture them until they make a purchase.

4. Email sequence to follow up prospects that filled out a lead form

They’ve filled in your form and opted-in to receive information, so now what? What is your plan with this lead? An automated marketing tool can assist you in scheduling welcoming mailers etc. A sequence can be created and applied to different leads, based on their behaviour. Done correctly, this will turn your lead into a paying customer.

5. Leverage marketing automation in list segmentation

Your leads gave you information, thus it is easier to group the leads into different segments. List segmentation can be done manually, but to save time and erase human error, it is easier to use a marketing automation tool. With marketing automation tools you can segment your list in your settings etc. based on e.g. demographics, transactional behaviour et.

List segmentation can differ, based on the information you have captured, but it is great to send the relevant information to the specific list.

If this is all new to you and you feel a bit overwhelmed, don’t be… start with the basics, e.g. set up trigger messages, e.g. welcome and thank you emails, along with any emails that can be automated by submitting details via a form.

Moving ahead, use segmentation to send personalised emails / text messages etc. to specific groups, based on demographics / transactional information etc.

By incorporating more complex web data, marketing automation can exploit data across different touch points, e.g. email, web, mobile offering. Our goal is to consolidate customer data from.