The modern possibilities of marketing automation offer an enormous amount of potential for attract more customers to your company and to generate qualified leads from loose prospects. For this, however, it is important that these mechanisms and Measures specifically included in own marketing portfolio become. We reveal seven functional measures that can be decisive for success.
Seven steps to success through marketing automation
Some of the measures suggested below seem self-evident at first glance. However, anyone who takes a closer look at the measures and examines them in their own company will quickly discover that these Self-evident facts are neglected in almost all companies. For this reason, understand some of these measures to be Wake-up callto awaken the full potential in the company.
1. check the quality of your own data
The basis for all marketing activities are the existing records. However, you need these for effective marketing automation on Completeness and Correctness check
Some of these checks can be done directly in the marketing efforts, but others should be done up front if possible. For example Incorrect or no longer correct e-mail addresses can be detected from returns. A incorrect salutation on the other hand, will seldom be so easily correctable, and can Scare customers away permanently.
2. merge existing data sets
Which brings us directly to the second step. Because in many companies, data and data sets are dominated by a Silo mentality before. Each department maintains and uses its own data sets.
All this data must be effectively merged and centrally stored so that the marketing automation and later all responsible employees can access this information. If a lead is addressed by marketing automation on the basis of this data, the sales employee should also be able to access precisely these data records.
3. create the buyer persona
In order to achieve the most Effective addressing of customers through the automated processes, you must use the existing customer data to create various Buyers Personas create. These are practically the prototypes of the individual target groups, which are similar in interest, background and experience.
With the help of these buyer personas you can automated reactions of your marketing together and optimize. Divide your customers into individual target groups, they can connect them with your marketing care much easier. The art here lies in the Addressing customers individually, but still reaching them on the basis of the previously defined buyer persona.
4. categorize customers and target groups
The buyer persona alone is already important, but beyond that you also need to decide which of the target groups or customers is stronger in the first place. cared for by the automated processes in your online marketing will be. These options are particularly effective for products or services that do not require much explanation. These customers can be assigned to specific categories and be identified for the Marketing Automation be released.
Other customers who are interested in higher-priced goods or goods that require more explanation should have more contact with human operators. The automated processes simplify and above all accelerate the contact here as well.
The better you categorize, the more you will benefit from each category in the long run.
5. marketing automation along the customer journey
From the first Interest of a visitor up to the Ready for sale and the Purchase of a product or service often pass long times. Times when the customer is always comes into contact with the company and must always be continued. An enormous challenge for traditional marketing, an easy exercise for marketing automation.
Thanks to matching data sets you can for each touch point along the customer journey Provide appropriate content for the lead let. It is important that you take into account the different Interests and also the various States of the leads precisely into account. All further work is taken over by the automated rollout of the desired content according to the user interactions.
6. bundle marketing automation across different channels
Many marketers see the Automation in marketing only to the various E-mail contacts limited. Thereby this is just one of the many areas of application of marketing automation. Because you can use the underlying technology also use for many other contact points of the customer journey.
Thanks to dynamic page content and thanks to the Use of the social networks most solutions can be much more involved in this area. The more you consider the various possibilities and make use of them, the more comprehensively you can integrate your Look after leads and convert them into qualified leads.
The path to sales readiness can be driven much more effectively through many channels than solely through email marketing.
7. from marketing automation to sales
When the big part of marketing is supported and complemented by automation and your employees can focus primarily on customers and individual cases, which require a higher level of attention, then at first glance everything seems fine.
However, marketing alone is not enough if you want to Do not also encourage leads to buy directly or by the sales department. Also this Transition can be perfectly complemented by marketing automation and expand. You only need to define from which point in time or at which point in the customer journey a lead is considered "ready for sale". Here you can define different Reactions and inputs use to define this state.
Once this state is reached, your marketing automation can forward the lead, including all available data, to the sales department. Thus, in the optimal case, from the first contact to the sale, the lead is in large part managed by the marketing automation and optimally managed.
Test, check and always improve
Remember that all Allow processes to be improved and optimized again and again. Even if the entire interface between humans and automation has run smoothly so far, this does not mean that no Potential for improvement would be available. Through Split tests you can very easily and quickly check which adjusting screws you can work on and which areas can hardly be optimized anymore.
