How to: Marketing Automation

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is software that efficiently creates a workflow to nurture relationships with clients, customers, prospects, and/or partners.

An automated marketing flow can use multiple marketing channels for multiple campaigns. This will allow the businesses’ marketer to communicate with several audience segments without having to do the manual work for each push notification, SMS, and/or email send. 

The outcome of implementing an automated personalized journey may increase revenue, generate new leads and understand user behavior for a small fraction of manual work.  

What are some steps for implementing marketing automation for businesses in the introductory phases?  

1. Identifying business needs for marketing automation  

Determining where there is an opportunity for improvement will give the marketer a foundation for what to look for when finding the right software to automate marketing workflows.

• Is there an opportunity to instantly communicate with a lead when they’ve shown interest by their browsing activity?
• Is there an opportunity to improve the member onboarding experience?
• Is there an opportunity to learn more about user behavior through customer experience?

Whatever the case may be, this will set the foundation for selecting the right software.  

2. Selecting the right marketing automation platform 

After defining the areas for improvement, it is important to do research on the right software for the marketing team.

There are many different types of platforms that aid in marketing automation such as social media management platforms, customer relationship management platforms, and customer data platforms.

Some marketing teams have all the above, but it is important to do a comparison with the many different types of platforms and leverage their capabilities to your business’s advantage. Get access to product demos, compare pricing, and read the companies’ case studies. Some marketing automation platforms offer free trials.

3. Create a plan

Identify the members of your team to help implement the new platform. Members of the team may consist of a technical lead, marketing lead, data lead, product lead, and more depending on which platform was selected.

Work with the team to identify data needs, KPIs, OKRs, and areas where there needs to be additional support. After the implementation, some platforms strongly recommend undergoing training and receiving a certification of completion. It takes time to learn how to use the platforms’ capabilities and apply the knowledge to fit the business’s needs.  

4. Set goals with the team, how to achieve them, and measure results

The quote, “You can’t improve what you can’t measure” by Peter Drucker is a great quote to refer to when setting goals and measuring results.

After doing the initial research and reading successful client case studies, it is important to remember to start with reasonable goals by leveraging the platforms’ capabilities.

Setting goals can include implementing the first automated marketing campaign. 

• How did it perform?
• Where did the consumer drop off?
• Did it convert or get any new business? 
• Are there areas for improvement? 

Summary

Need more help?

Some platforms may have tons of capabilities to choose from and implement.

Need help selecting a platform, implementing the platform, architecture design, and recommendations for campaigns? 

We understand implementing a new CDP and a CRM can be difficult and we’re happy to help with all the above. Reach out to our team at CDXP. We are the one-stop shop to help your business improve its customer experience and help your business grow.