Analyzing Marketing Automation In Email Marketing

Analyzing Marketing Automation In Email Marketing

 

 

First of all, what is marketing automation? Marketing automation is a set of software tools that make the lives of marketers better. It’s goal is to automate marketing actions including email, social, landing pages, and other web actions. This technology makes daily tasks easier to perform and automate alot of repetitive tasks that marketers perform.

 

Marketing automation helps execute your marketing tasks in a more streamlined and efficient way. Marketing automation provides many benefits including:

marketing automation in email marketing

#1 Time-saving

Marketing automation for email marketing will help to save alot of time. With it, you will not want to waste time doing some things. It will enable the marketer and content creators to focus on other things that matters on there website. 

 

#2 Improved marketing results via testing and optimization

Marketing automation in email marketing will also lead to improved result in test and optimization. With it, you will be able to manage the business and marketing effective and spend less time on content creation. You will be able to focus on analytics and continue to tweak your marketing activities until better results are achieved. 

 

 

#3 Impact on marketing teams:

Also, It gives them more time to focus on important projects. With it, they would have taken care of other things that are important and have time to focus on other aspects of their marketing activities. This will also make the team to be more productive.

 

#4 Data synchronization helps sales teams save time.

With extensive marketing automation, you will be able to synchronize all data that are spread across various departments in the organisation. They can create a centralized database where all marketing and sales data will be stored. This will allow the team to make informed decisions. 

 

#5 Better experience for website visitors/users because of personalized content

Marketing automation in email marketing will ultimately improved user experience on your website. It will ensure that users are only presented with contents that really matter to them. It will also ensure that the website and its content are optimized in order to get the best out of their mobile experience. 

 

The top 5 established players in the marketing automation space are:

  • HubSpot
  • Marketo
  • Pardot
  • Eloqua
  • Act-On

 

When choosing the right marketing automation software for your business, there are many factors to take into consideration. You should spend lots of time shopping around, because the ROI of this kind of software takes at least 6 months to 1 year to prove. It is a long-term investment that should not be taken lightly. That being said, if you find that a certain software does not suit your needs in practice, most of these providers will go to great lengths to help you tractor your marketing assets and marketing data into there platforms.

 

Use TrustRadius, G2 crowd, and other independent review sites to do your research, avail of free trials of the software, and check out customer testimonials to find out of similar businesses in your industry have seen success in the implementation of a software. At your industry conferences, discuss with others what they have found to be the pros and cons. Only than should you make the commitment to marketing automation software.

 

Lets take a look at the key building blocks for any marketing automation:

  • Action: What did your contact do? This is any action the user performed such as clicked an email, downloaded an eBook or registered for an event.
  • Decision: Where do they go? After they performed the action, something should happen. For example, after they register for an event they should be redirected to a thank you page and also sent a thank you email.
  • Timing: When should the response function happen? Timing is a key component. For example, if the user is registered for an upcoming event, email them to remind them a few days beforehand, or if they downloaded an eBook, a sale rep should reach out to them in 1-2 days.

Let’s take a look at each building block in more detail and see a real-world example of automation in place.

 

The first building block is Action. An action is something the users performs that causes a trigger such as:

  • Submitting a form
  • Visiting a page
  • Replying to an email
  • Clicking a link

The action in the example above is a registration form for an event, the trigger happens when the user fills out the form and clicks submit.

 

The next step is decision. What should happen after the action is performed, where does the contact go?

 

 

Some of the decisions that can happen include:

  • Conditions (if/else): If the user submits a form, perform action A, otherwise perform action B.
  • TAGs and Footprints: Tags can be used as part of lead scoring and help you identify highly engaged users. For example, if a user downloads an eBook, they can than be ‘tagged’ in your contact database as interested in the topic of that eBook.
  • Stop/start sequence: If a user unsubscribes, stop all future emails being sent to them.

For example, in this slide, the user has submitted the event form, so the decision is to:

1.Redirect the user to a ‘Thank you/Confirmation’ page after submitting

2. Send the submitter a ‘Thank you/Confirmation’ email

3. Send a ‘Reminder’ email about the event

 

 

The last step is the timing. After the user performs an action and the decision is made, when should the response function happen?

Different timings include:

  • Certain day of the week
  • Wait time
  • Based on Tags
  • Before and after date

In the example above, the response function for the three decisions should happen:

  1. Redirect the user to a Thank you – immediately

2. Send the user a ‘Thank You’ email – immediately

3. Send the user and a ‘Reminder’ email about the event – the user should be put in a wait period until 1-2 days before the event, when a ‘Reminder’ email should than be sent letting the user know that the event is about to happen.

 

Automation allows an email to be automatically sent after the user performs a certain action.

  • Webform submission: the action that triggers the automation flow
  • Tag: assigning a tag to the user which helps identify them and for use in segmentation (This can be more than one tag)
  • Delay/Wait: a period of time the user waits before proceeding to the next step
  • Send Email: send the specified email to all users who enter this step

E.g. A new user visits your website and fills out a form to find out more information about your products. You tag the user as a subscriber and with the topic, they are specified they’re interested in. The – minute delay is added to tempt users with special offers and promotions before they leave the website. After the waiting period expires, you send the user an email with more information about your products.

Without the use of marketing automation in email marketing, each step would have to be done manually, drastically increasing the effort and time for setting up a simple campaign.

 

 

Now tell us your own side of this story.

We would also like to hear what you feel about the topic we discussed today. Your feedback is very important to us. Feel free to drop your comments and recommendations. If you have a contrary opinion, you can drop that too.

 

You can also joint our Facebook Page CRMNigeria for more updates. You can do that by clicking on the link or searching for our page on Facebook.

 

You can also joint our WhatsApp Group Here.

 

Finding the right Long-tail Keywords? Start your journey here.