Small businesses work with a single marketer or a small team to manage the entire marketing process. The struggle for maximizing the ROI is much higher when one person or a small team of marketers try to run the activities for the whole organization. Automation of the marketing activities helps save a lot of time and cost.
However, it is vital to adhere to the Marketing Automation best practices for the growth of any business.
What is special about your company? What makes you stand out from the competition? What added value does your company give your customers? Why does your company exist? These are precisely the questions that are at stake when it comes to the topic of "Brand Purpose".
When you begin using a marketing automation tool, you can manage all the activities with the help of one person coordinating. Revenue growth is not an issue anymore when you begin using a marketing automation tool.Promote WordPress plugin.
However, Marketing Automation best practices help businesses optimize the tool and make the most out of it. Let us discuss the Marketing Automation best practices in detail.
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Mapping lead stages
Generating leads and nurturing them can take a lot of time and effort when managed manually. However, it is effortless when you use a marketing automation tool for the same. It is beneficial when you map the various stages involved for a qualified lead to reach the conversion.
Adding potential leads in the sales funnel and creating custom fields in the system helps track them at each stage, identify any bottlenecks, and address them to ensure a smooth flow in the pipeline.
Lead Stages
1 . Unknown visitors: A visitor of the website appeared in the system but is yet to provide any personal information.
2 . Known visitors: Website visitors with personal data and has made it to the list of targets for the marketing campaigns.
- Engagement: The potential lead is engaged by clicking on the emails and downloading content. It is when the sales team has to nurture the lead and move them towards the qualified part.
- Qualified lead: A prospective lead that has been through the lead scoring process and moved to the sales team for outreach.
- Sales Lead: As soon as a qualified lead moves to the sales team, they assess and determine the next steps. If the lead is not yet ready for conversation, it will move back to the marketing team towards the next step if they are available for communication.
- Qualified sales lead - After determining the interest, the sales team creates an opportunity and enters them into the SQL.
- Closure: The lead conversion takes place.
- Lost the lead: The sales team could not convert the lead into a customer for various reasons and is lost.
- Recycle: All the leads at the MQL that have not moved to the SQL stage are sent back for further nurturing.
- Disqualified leads: The leads that have no interest in buying and have only filled their details for various purposes and are not potential customers.
Ten Best Marketing automation best practices to drive growth for your business!
1. Lead scoring
A lead scoring process helps better understand when the lead is qualified and moved to the sales team. In addition, valuable insights are available from web page visitors, customer behaviour, and it helps to score demographic-based leads.
2. The process of the lead qualification
Determining the lead qualification level if they pass through all the criteria is vital to move them to the sales team. Revisiting the qualifying process helps to ensure accuracy in qualifying the leads. Regular analysis of the lead qualifying process is one of the essential marketing automation best practices.
3. Set up triggers to streamline lead progression
Marketing automation helps to set system triggers based on specific actions. For example, when a qualified marketing lead enters the system, you can set up system triggers to create tasks to follow-up, update leads, and do much more effortlessly.
The system helps you to decide the time and place of the actions that you want it to perform. Initiating actions through triggers is also made possible with an automation tool. For example, pre-designed email helps trigger sign-ups.
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4. Personalization, segmentation, and targeting
An automation tool helps to save tons of contact data. But when you use a single platform for your sales, marketing, customer support, and CRM needs, the tool already has a humongous amount of data available to you.
This data helps you to segment, personalize, and target content based on attributes and behaviour. Targeted email campaigns become a lot easier when you have so much data at hand at your disposal.
5. Email drip campaigns
A preferred schedule is possible for pre-drafted emails. Nurturing campaigns, welcoming/onboarding new clients, reminding customers about renewals, and many other activities are made possible through the automation process.
The email drip campaign helps to generate results far more effectively when you use features like drag and drop campaign builder.
6. Send email newsletters
Email newsletters are helpful to keep prospective leads informed about any company updates and other useful information. sending an email newsletter is one of the oldest marketing techniques and a vital one among the marketing automation best practices.
In addition, some automation tools offer pre-styled templates with intuitive drag and drop features that make building an email campaign effortless.
7. Multichannel campaigns
Running multichannel campaigns is a breeze when you have the right kind of marketing automation tool. Whether you are drafting the content for social media or SMS, the multichannel marketing campaigns help you incorporate content accordingly.
However, it is essential to consider the versatile segment of target customers and their unique behaviours while designing the content. Multichannel campaigns are also an excellent technique for achieving the maximum number of contacts.
8.Leverage lead generation tools
Lead generation is the first and essential part of the marketing process. Streamlining the lead generation process with the help of in-built tools is vital for the growth of your business. If you design the forms and landing pages well, it is sure to engage higher traffic and convert more leads.
9.Use popups to manage exit intent.
The popups that appear on the screen while browsing a website can send helpful information, offer discounts, and other content. Some marketing automation tools provide features that predict the exit intent making it easier to pop up appropriate content.
In addition, AI/ML help the system to think and act accordingly. These intuitive actions help offer content about incentives for the visitors to stay on the site like a discount coupon, free trial etc.
10. Measure measure measure !
Imagine tracking data for every touchpoint with the contacts. It is a big task in itself. But a marketing automation tool can keep track of site visits, downloads of the content, campaign outcomes, and conversions. All the insights about click-through rates and unsubscribes are helpful to understand what works and what doesn't.
Forming strategies and making data-driven decisions are a breeze with marketing automation tools like Aritic Pinpoint. It not only helps to improve results it also contributes to driving more revenue.
Conclusion
The marketing process involves tons of activities other than customer interaction. While these repetitive activities are vital to running the show smoothly, managing all this can put the team into spending a lot of time and effort on them and focus on the most crucial part, building relationships with the potential leads.
Introducing a marketing automation tool helps the team increase lead generation, improve conversions, and better manage customer relationships. Various CRM tools are available for lower and free of cost. However, it is essential to consider the one with the most suitable features for your business.
About the author:
Ankit Prakash is a technology entrepreneur at Aritic – Full Stack Marketing Automation software platform for digital business at Aritic with Sales CRM, Transactional Mail, and Desk. Ankit also spends the majority of his time reviewing various marketing tools and platforms on his marketing blog- Sprout24.
He has successfully contributed to platforms like Smart Insights, Jeff Bullas, LeadsBridge, Scoop.it, and G2 Crowd. Follow Ankit on Twitter at @ankitpr89
