Top 3 Marketing Automation Strategies
It earns revenue with practically no effort.
But marketing automation is easier said than done.
The term marketing automation doesn’t actually refer to one single concept, though. Instead, it’s a collection of strategies that encourages you to set up a marketing process and let it run on its own.
On this page, we’ll take a look at the three most popular marketing automation processes that companies use online.
With them, you can make an automated marketing process that’ll bring people to your site, place them in your sales funnel, and turn them into paying customers.
Keep reading, and give us a call at 888-601-5359 if you want to learn more about using marketing automation for your business!
And don’t forget, WebFX is a top marketing automation agency that provides tons of services to clients across the world. So whether you need a web design for your Columbus business or an advertising campaign right here in Harrisburg, WebFX is here for you.
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- Leads
- Transactions
- Calls
- Revenue
1. Lead qualification
Lead qualification is the process of identifying common characteristics among your customers and appealing to those characteristics with marketing materials.
So if you’re a B2B and you notice that most of your customers come from accounting managers in mid-sized businesses headquartered in urban Kansas, you can create content based on those specific criteria.
Then, instead of talking about your products, you’re talking to your reader in terms they understand.
Marketing materials designed in this way feel much more conversational than other materials, which helps your reader feel that they’re speaking with you instead of reading yet another page.
In general, that means more engaged users on your site, more customers every month, and more revenue.
If you’d like to pursue lead qualification, you have two major options at your disposal. They can work independently of one another, but you can also use them together for better results.
Analytics data
Analytics data is your first source of information for lead qualification.
This is where you can find out the demographic and firmographic information about every person who comes to your site.
With platforms like Google Analytics and MarketingCloudFX, that data is gathered automatically, so all you have to do is look.
Just like that, you can start looking for patterns among your customers or leads. Their IP address will tell you where they’re located, where they work, and even their company’s industry.
We suggest keeping a spreadsheet of characteristics you find among your leads, with how many times you see that specific characteristic. That’ll show you trends among your leads and customers.
Then, you can double-down on those demographics to earn more customers similar to those you’ve already converted.
But even once you have your customer demographics, how do you know when a customer is ready to convert?
Lead scoring
Lead scoring is the practice of assigning numerical values to certain actions on your site, assigning those values to individual leads, and determining the perfect sum of those values to move in for a sale.
So when someone signs up for your newsletter, that could be 20 points. When they’re on your pricing pages for five minutes, that could be another 10 points.
Then, through trial and error, you can determine the ideal number of points for a lead to have before you attempt to convert them into paying customers.
Depending on the point values you assign to certain actions, your ideal number might be 75 points. It could also be 100.
You’ll have to figure it out for your own company – every one is different.
But once you’ve narrowed down that number, you’ll see at a glance who’s ready to become a paying customer.
Bonus video: Learn more about how marketing automation works
2. Email list segmentation
Email marketing is another crucial part of marketing automation.
In a nutshell, whenever someone willingly gives you their email address, you place them into an email marketing list to receive messages specific to their needs.
You identify these needs by qualifying your leads above and locating patterns in your leads’ behaviors.
Then, you can create email lists that correspond to those leads’ pain points.
That lets you set up individual email campaigns for customers depending on where they convert on your site.
So if someone signs up for your newsletter, they’ll get different messages from someone who gives you their contact information for a free quote.
It’s important to create these lists because not everyone comes to your site for the same reason. If you add every new email into a generic campaign, you won’t connect with your leads, and you might even get flagged for spam.
But when you segment your email marketing strategy into lists, you’ll have more success. You can have a separate list for your company updates, industry news, and — most importantly — drip campaigns.
3. Drip email marketing
Drip email marketing is the practice of sending sales-oriented messages to qualified recipients who have shown interest in your company.
Drip email marketing gets its name from how it works. You send an introduction email when someone signs up, then a follow-up email with more information a few weeks later, and a final email encouraging someone to contact you to set up a contract.
This automation strategy is exceptionally successful because it combines elements of our last two strategies into one concept. Like email segmentation, and lead qualification, drip email marketing is also customizable, trackable, and ultra-specific.
This means you can constantly build and rebuild your company’s marketing automation to best work for your customers.
So, how do you set up your drip email marketing campaign in the first place?
Create content
Like most parts of Internet marketing, the first step of drip email is to create content.
You’ll need pages on your site designed to convert new leads for different purposes.
Most companies do this by creating a blog newsletter, which readers can sign up for right on the company blog.
Many businesses also create pricing pages to show customers what they can get for their money.
Both of these are important because blog newsletters reinforce your authority in your industry and your conversion pages earn new customers.
But still, content can’t do the job alone. You need another key element to get started.
Calls to action
Calls to action (CTAs) are concise phrases at the end of a page that tell someone what to do next. Most of the time, that means contacting your business or giving you their contact information.
That brings someone one step closer to becoming a customer.
You may see a lot of calls to action look something like this:
You can also add form fields directly to your conversion pages to make it easier for visitors to sign up.
Another option is to funnel all of your potential leads into a single contact page.
Ultimately, it’s up to you. But no matter what you choose, you’ll need a crucial next step.
Email campaign setup
Once your pages are set up, you need to connect them to your email marketing provider.
This means creating different lists for the pages you’ve created already. So people who sign up for your blog newsletter will go into your newsletter list, and others who sign up on pricing pages can go into your leads list.
Then, you have to create campaigns for each list.
You might create a new message for your newsletter list every week or so, and those don’t have to be done too far in advance.
But for marketing automation to achieve its fullest potential, you should have a structured campaign set up for lead-based lists.
Email campaign refinement
As more people opt into your campaigns, you can see which messages do well at converting new customers and which could use improvements.
This opens the door to A/B testing for your emails, which can have a serious impact on your overall revenue.
The idea is that you test different elements of your emails over periods of a few months to see if you can increase conversions by making minor tweaks here and there.
As you repeat this process for multiple email lists, you’ll become more efficient at converting new customers in every list.
That reinforces your business’s position as an authority in your industry, and it also funnels more revenue to your bottom line.
Full drip campaign automation
While you can always customize your email campaigns for the best possible results, the point of marketing automation is to step back, take a load off, and watch your website convert its own new customers.
That’s why it’s important to let your marketing automation run on its own more often than testing it.
When you do that, you’ll earn the passive customers you need to grow while working on other tasks that are more demanding.
This sets your company up to convert as many new customers as possible with as little effort as possible.
Essentially, you earn more by spending less.
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WebFX is a marketing automation agency
WebFX is the #1 performance-based Internet marketing company in the United States.
We claimed that title by knowing marketing like the backs of our hands — and that goes double for marketing automation.
Our talented team of marketers has implemented every marketing automation strategy available for our clients, including the three listed on this page.
Does it take some time to set up? Yes.
But marketing automation pays for weeks, months, and years on end. And it pays on its own!
We’ve earned huge revenue for our clients in the past. Now, our marketing automation agency will do it for you.
Contact us today to set up a marketing automation strategy for your business!
