6 Steps to Successfully Setting Up a Marketing Automation Campaign

We all know that writing and processing content for your content marketing strategy is thirsty work. The entire process is time-consuming, and you never know whether or not your hard work is going to pay off until you’ve published it unless you’re prepared.

6 Steps to Successfully Setting Up a Marketing Automation Campaign

One of the best ways to save yourself some time so you can focus on promoting your content and writing content to the highest possible quality for the highest possible engagement rates is to automate some of your processes.

If you’re not using marketing automation tactics already, you’re in for a treat. Not only can you accurately and effectively manage some of your processes to give your customers and leads a better experience, but you’ll also be able to focus on the more important aspects of your campaign, allowing you to maximise your chances for success.

To get you started, here are six key steps to take when starting to automate your marketing strategy.

Implementing Segmentation

Since you’re running a website, the chances are that you’ll have a tonne of analytical data coming out of your ears. Consider how often you run reports on your website, whether you’re looking for information like page views or how many customers have brought a certain product in the last 28 days.

“You can streamline with an automated process by adding in segmentation guidelines. This level of segmenting, or ‘filtering’ your results, means you can access the precise information you need quickly and in no time at all” – says Barbara Kuster, a Digital marketing strategist at Resumention.

This will help you make important business decisions, such as which popular products to promote next, or what content is performing the best.

Using Retargeting Strategies

Landing pages are one of the most effective forms of marketing a website can use. However, like all marketing processes, they’re not a 100% guaranteed sale but using automation techniques, you can dramatically increase the chance of conversion.

Let’s say a lead lands on one of your landing pages but doesn’t fill out the form or makes a purchase. Using email automation, you can automatically email the lead several days later, perhaps offering an exclusive discount or offer that tempts them to return to the site to make a purchase.

There is a tonne of tools out there that can help you with retargeting and ‘link retargeting’ processes. Services like Rebrandly have a large selection of tools and features at your disposal.

Using Dynamic Emails on Your Website

Are you already using dynamic content for your business? If so, you’re probably already using it in emails but why not use this form of content on your website? For example, instead of just having a ‘brochure’ layout on your website, why not have customised content, based on the user’s location, industry or any other demographical information you have from their browser.

For more information on creating dynamic web pages, content for your website, content for your social media pages or even services that can create it on your behalf, check out State of writing or Viawriting.

Automating Your Social Media Accounts

If you’re not already automating your social media accounts, there’s so much time that can be saved in addition to being able to streamline your social media marketing strategy, so you can achieve more, increase your reach and your engagement rates.

The most common form of automation here is post scheduling, which can be achieved on any social media site. This is where you write and perfect your posts in advance to publishing them, automatically setting them up to post a certain time and date.

This allows you to reach your audience at the best times based on your analytical data while planning your social media strategy and post publishing campaign down to a tee. However, be aware that not all posts need to be automated, only the non-urgent ones or ones that are part of a planned campaign.

If you want to take things a step further, you can automate your content production using content creation tools like My writing way and Grammarix that will be able to create content to the deadline and requirements that you specify.

Scoring Categories to Plan a Customer Journey

Category scoring is no new business technique, but if you’re a company that sells multiple products or services, it can be an incredibly worthwhile venture to invest your time in.

For example, let’s imagine you’re a company who is selling a range of running trainers of all different brands. Now let’s say a customer comes online and is looking through your products. Let’s say the customer scores 50 points looking at Nike trainers and only 10 points looking at Adidas trainers. Using this information, it’s clear to see that the customer is much more interesting in Nike trainers.

Using marketing automation software, when a customer reaches a certain score for a certain category, in this case, Nike trainers, you can automatically send them an email which can include discounts on the specific products or pass this information onto your sales team for a more personalised style of sale.

Refer to Email Client Reports (Using Data)

As I mentioned above, running a website, and social media pages means that you probably have a tonne of data on your customer’s activity on your website. One of biggest statistics that you should be referring to is how many of your customers are viewing your website on a mobile device.

Statistically, a 2015 report claims that over 56% of all internet traffic is processed through mobile devices and that number is only ever increasing. If you’ve ever been onto a website from a smartphone or tablet and found the experience to be less than easy, such as having to zoom in or certain areas or the page not fitting properly into your screen, you’ll know the level of dissatisfaction that this causes.

Refer to your reports and if a lot of your customers are accessing your website from one of these devices, try tailoring your content to mobile-specific formats for a better customer experience and ultimately higher conversion rates.

“You can automate this entire process by getting your website reports and analytics automatically delivered to your inbox on a regular basis. The more information you have, the better the business decisions you can make” – explains Rosa Tramel, a Marketing Manager at Revieweal and Huffingtonpost contributor.

As you can see, there is a tonne of automation processes you can implement into your business that will allow you to carry out tasks easily, on time, and with maximum impact for your customers. In addition to better customer experience, you’ll also be able to save precious hours in the day that can help you carry out more important tasks, all of which come together to boost the success of your business.

Author

Gloria Kopp is a communication manager at Paperfellows. She is a founder of Studydemic blog and is a journalist at Microsoft and Australian help blogs