How To Use Marketing Automation in 2020 To Sell More

The adoption and market growth of Marketing Automation is growing every year. On average 51% of companies are currently using Marketing automation. With more than half of B2B companies (58%) plan to adopt the technology. 

The reason for such an astonishing growth rate of Marketing Automation is, it comes with huge promises: more leads, more conversions, more sales … less work.

But here is the problem: marketing automation can be overwhelming – especially for those of us who lack the technical expertise or don’t have room in their budget for a dedicated team.

But it’s not impossible to use this strategy effectively. The fact that marketing automation is no longer a new, mysterious technology provides small businesses with the one resource they need to capitalize on this software: best practices.

The biggest risk of automating your marketing is that you will do it incorrectly, and your customers will be left confused and alienated. But by using other marketers as a guide, you’ll be better positioned to avoid the common pitfalls of automation. Here are a few:

What exactly is marketing automation?

Marketing automation involves using software to automate many of the marketing and lead gen tasks that you currently manage yourself.

The most common form of marketing automation is email marketing automation. Using software like Drip, ConvertKit or Mailchimp, you can automate your entire email marketing process, from the initial opt-in and follow-up sequence to behavioral email.

This means that when a potential customer opts-in to receive your emails, you can send them a sequence of messages designed to increase their interest in your product or service, then adjust your emails automatically based on their behavior.

Each campaign you run is controlled by an automation workflow — a series of rules you create to control what content the recipient receives and the actions they need to take to receive it.

If a customer makes a small purchase, your marketing automation software can automatically add them to a “buyer” list and send them content that’s designed to encourage them to make a larger purchase, sign a service agreement or complete any other objective.

If a customer visits a specific page on your website, you can add them to a specific list and send content related to the subject in which they’re interested.

In a sense, marketing automation lets you respond to customer behavior the way a real person would, letting you automate your marketing efforts while keeping your marketing as relevant as possible for every prospect.

How to use marketing automation software?

the most effective way to use marketing automation for lead generation is with a simple content-to-email workflow that warms up readers and uses a specific piece of content to qualify them as prospects.

Below, we’ve created a sample marketing automation workflow, broken down into steps:

Step 1: Encourage readers to opt-in to your email list

If you already have a website that receives traffic from search or social media, the best way to build your marketing automation list is to capture email addresses from your readers by giving away content.

There are several ways you can do this. The first is to offer a lead magnet, like a free report or eBook. ConversionXL does this by offering a free guide to conversion optimization for readers that opt-in to receive email content:

Another option is to repurpose your existing content as a reason to opt-in. ConvertKit does this by offering all of its blog posts as downloadable PDF files:

ConversionXL repurposes existing content as a reason to opt-in to their email marketing automation. 

Step 2: Deliver on your opt-in promise

Once a user opts-in to receive your emails, it’s time to start a conversation. The best way to do this is to deliver on your promise and send the content you offered as part of your opt-in form.

Step 3: Offer extra content to identify highly motivated subscribers

One of the simplest ways to make your sales efforts more efficient is to spend less time on low-interest subscribers and more time on highly motivated, interested prospects.

To do this, you need to identify the subscribers that have the strongest interest in your product or service. An easy way to do this is to offer a second helping of content and use it to separate warm leads from people that just aren’t ready to become customers.

When a subscriber downloads the extra content, you can use an automation workflow to move them to a new list. For example, software like Drip lets you automatically segment subscribers into separate lists using simple yes/no automation rules:

Use an automation workflow to move subscribers to a new list.

Step 4: Give warm leads to your sales team

With your warmest leads identified and segmented automatically, all that your sales team needs to do is follow up with the subscribers to download your extra content. Most marketing automation software will even notify your sales staff of new leads, letting you follow up quickly and easily.

Step 5: Warm-up cold leads and re-engage

The final step in this process is to gradually warm up the rest of your subscribers.

Unless you have a highly motivated audience, most of your subscribers won’t choose to receive your extra content right away. However, you can warm them up over time by sending interesting, helpful email content before re-engaging weeks or months in the future.

The best marketing automation software for beginners

The marketing automation software marketplace has grown at a tremendous pace over the last five years, making it easy to find great quality tools designed with your needs in mind.

Below, we’ve listed several of the best marketing automation tools for beginners, most of which are available either as a free trial or with an inexpensive monthly usage fee.

For small businesses

Drip is a simple but powerful marketing automation toolkit designed specifically for solo entrepreneurs and small, growing businesses.

ConvertKit is designed for bloggers and content marketers, with one of the best user interfaces of any marketing automation platform.

Vero is an event-driven email marketing automation platform that’s perfect for software companies.

MailChimp is a freemium email marketing automation platform that includes a range of pre-built automation workflows.

For mid-sized businesses

Marketo is one of the most powerful SME marketing automation tools available, but it has a steep learning curve and requires the purchase of a training package.

ActiveCampaign is another powerful marketing automation platform designed for SMEs and startups.

Bottom Line

At the end of the day, marketing automation has a growing track record that proves its impact on business returns. It allows you to assess your content in-depth in order to develop processes that lead your prospects straight to your products, with less and less involvement on your part over time. If you want to have your custom marketing automation tool then contact efrog- award-winning software development company in Melbourne.

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