Marketing Automation Strategies

Oct 15, 2022

As consumers are flooded with marketing messages from every angle, developing a successful marketing campaign can be challenging and time-consuming. Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to simplify it? Maybe even automate them?

In other words, marketing automation. The concept of marketing automation involves leveraging technology and software to automate repetitive marketing tasks such as creating email marketing campaigns, running ads, and tracking results.

By automating your follow-ups and conversion funnels, for instance, it’s possible for brands to create an automated lead generation funnel that gathers an email address, sends a recording of a demo, and then invites prospects to schedule a live demo of that product.

Marketing automation has the potential to save you time and money as well as improve your marketing efficiency. In this special report, we’ll discuss how to create a marketing automation strategy and how to implement it.

In addition, we’ll discuss market segmentation, how to develop an automation plan and the best marketing automation platform you can use for free.

Data-Driven Marketing Automation

The evolution of big data and advanced automation technologies is allowing marketers to create more personalized content, campaigns, and experiences for their customers.

It is important to note, however, that data by itself is not a tangible resource. Data can only be used effectively if you set realistic, measurable objectives and see how your data stacks up against them.

So, what exactly is data-driven marketing automation? Why is it necessary, and how can you create a data-driven marketing automation strategy for your business?

What Is a Data-Driven Marketing Automation Strategy?

Data-driven marketing is extracting actionable information from extensive collections of customer data to aid in developing new products, positioning existing products, creating targeted marketing campaigns, and creating highly personalized customer experiences.

Marketing automation strategies based on data help companies predict customer behaviour and better understand their customers.

For instance, based on typical consumer behaviour, you can use a data-driven marketing automation strategy to enhance your products and design better user experiences.

Mass personalization is possible once you have access to enough data. Personalized responses can be sent to customers who exhibit specific characteristics or behaviours instead of reaching out to all customers with the same approach.

By modifying these messages for each group, you can establish a stronger connection with your intended audience.

Still not convinced? Okay. Let's talk about the critical benefits of data-driven marketing automation.

Critical Benefits of Data-Driven Marketing Automation

Since you now understand how a data-driven marketing automation strategy works, let's go over some of its key benefits.

It enables tailored ads and content:

With data-driven marketing, data is collected and analyzed automatically, providing insights into customer demographics, needs, behaviours, and purchasing patterns, allowing for highly customized products, campaigns, and content.

With the correct data, you can deliver the most relevant message at the right time to the right customer.

For example, let's say you run a cosmetics e-commerce site, and a specific group of customers only purchase men's cologne.

Personalized offers can be sent to these users based on their past purchases (and other purchase patterns). There's no point in sending this group makeup discounts, for example.

It improves the ability to make strategic decisions:

You can improve your strategic decisions regarding your marketing, your products, and your entire business by utilizing the detailed insights made possible by data-driven marketing and marketing analytics tools.

Utilizing marketing data allows you to understand your customers individually and make more informed decisions.

As a result, you will be more confident in your ability to predict customer behaviour and the success of your product and marketing initiatives.

It provides you with a competitive advantage:

Consumer data specificity may also give you a competitive edge over rival businesses. It follows that the more specific your customer data is, the simpler it will be to base your marketing automation strategy on it.

Data-driven decisions and strategies put you ahead of the pack because you can identify trends and behaviours that will guide your decisions and improve your customer experience.

Improves your ROI:

Naturally, your sales and ROI will increase when you speak your customers' language and tailor your products and services to them.

It has been shown that businesses that utilize data-driven marketing see a return on investment of 5 to 8 times greater than those that do not.

You can boost sales and ROI by better understanding customer personas and acting accordingly. It's very straightforward. Data should serve as the basis for all of your marketing initiatives.

Now that we've established how a data-driven marketing automation strategy can benefit your company, the next question is: how do you create your data-driven strategy?

Tips & Strategies

Follow these steps to transition to a data-driven marketing automation strategy:

Set Realistic Goals:

The objectives of your data-driven marketing automation strategy need to be clearly defined. It all comes down to thoroughly understanding your brand’s overall goals and your target market.

It’s easier to understand where you're going and what needs to be done to get there when your goals are realistic and straightforward, such as boosting engagement, enhancing customer experience, increasing monthly revenue, etc.

Build a Multidisciplinary Team:

This step depends on the number of departments and employees in your organization. Your marketing and sales responsibilities might fall under the same team if you have a small business.

However, if you have a larger team working for you, including marketers, public relations specialists, and sales representatives, you can assemble various experts to form a dedicated task force.

This entails gathering employees from sales, data management, market research, digital marketing, and other departments and assigning them the tasks outlined in the following sections.

Use the Right Data:

You need access to the correct data to get the most out of data-driven marketing. Look beyond basic demographics to identify the data that will help you customize your marketing and sales initiatives - and use the most current data sets.

In today's fast-paced world, you can't use more than a year or two of old data.

Utilize Marketing Automation Software to Analyze the Data:

You need to embrace marketing automation technology with more data at your disposal.

To achieve the best results with marketing automation, you need tools capable of analyzing large amounts of data in near-real time.

Automate Processes to Improve the Customer Experience:

Utilize the data analysis to give customers a more tailored experience.

The better you get to know your customers, the better you'll be able to cater to their needs in terms of offers, products, and shopping experiences.

Optimize the shopping experience for each customer to achieve the best results.

Measure the Appropriate Outcomes:

Is your data-driven marketing strategy measuring success? Looking back at your objectives from step one will allow you to determine how well you've achieved them.

Those metrics could include customer engagement, lead generation, conversions, ad click-throughs, and overall ROI. To gauge your ongoing success, measure carefully and frequently.

How to Put Marketing Automation to Work for You

Marketing automation aims to provide website visitors and customers with a personalized experience while saving marketers time and resources.

To automate marketing activities, you'll need a tool that triggers an automatic flow or strategic action whenever a specific condition occurs.

But ultimately, it comes down to using tried-and-tested marketing automation techniques for your campaigns.

Here are some of the most effective ways to use marketing automation.

Engage your audience with dynamic content:

Dynamic content is necessary to get the best results from any automated marketing tool.

Your interactions with leads are driven by dynamic content. A potential customer might leave your business if you have no content or send the wrong content to your leads.

Studies have shown that nearly 50% of consumers engage with 3-5 pieces of content before speaking with a sales representative.

This is why it is crucial not only to create content but to create content of high quality and credibility. Unsurprisingly, 96% of B2B buyers want more content from industry experts.

If you want your automated marketing efforts to be successful, you need content that aligns with customers' past behaviour and meets their needs.

Not all forms of content are created equally. For instance, blog posts and articles are effective at the top of the sales funnel.

Still, when potential customers consider purchasing your goods, you need visual content (such as videos, slide shows, and product demos).

Run an online store selling a product, for example. Visual content like product images and videos of other customers using it may be particularly effective in persuading potential customers.

Create a drip campaign that is triggered by specific events:

Marketing is best when you use a drip campaign for your automated marketing initiatives.

Why? Because it is all about your customers.

For example, your system may send a welcome message to a lead when they sign up for your mailing list.

When prospective customers visit a product page on your website, it sends them content that discusses that product and includes an offer or discount.

As a result, you can customize your content for each lead using a drip campaign based on their behaviour.

The opening rates of messages sent through drip campaigns are about 80% higher than those of generic campaigns, according to Martech Zone: https://martech.zone/email-drip-campaign/

The benefit of drip campaigns is that you can cultivate relationships with your leads without interacting directly with them.

With such leads, you can gradually increase your credibility and trust.

Incorporate automatic nurturing campaigns into your funnel:

Not every website visitor is prepared to purchase the products you sell. Most of them are prospective customers who need more time and details before making a purchase.

This requires a nurturing campaign that automatically moves your leads from the awareness phase to the consideration phase and ultimately to winning the sale.

Using a marketing automation strategy, you can send your leads personalized content that is tailored to their individual needs.

By automating this process, you can significantly improve the effectiveness of the content you send to your contacts and ease their progression through the funnel.

A 2021 study found that utilizing marketing automation for lead nurturing results in a 451% rise in qualified leads!

Follow up with prospects via an email sequence:

What are your plans for following up with a prospect who has completed a form, poll or survey?

You can prepare a welcome email list and send it automatically through an automated marketing tool.

You can also create multiple sequences that will be applied to different leads based on changes in their behaviour.

An email sequence is a set of emails sent to leads to convert them into paying customers.
Did you know that you can make up to $38 in return on investment for every dollar spent on email?

As a result, it is crucial to create an email sequence that will convert your leads into actual paying customers.

Use marketing automation to segment your contact list:

You can create audience segments using the information you collect from your leads. You can then send custom campaigns to those audiences.

Often, manual segmentation is not entirely accurate and takes a great deal of time. Segmentation can be done more accurately and reliably with marketing automation software integrated with your CRM.

To strategically segment your market and the products you sell, you can use demographics, geography, engagement, purchasing patterns of website visitors, etc.

Market Segmentation

An outstanding customer experience is based on user segmentation.

Businesses must deliver more thoughtful and meaningful experiences to their customers, regardless of the industry.

Market segmentation enables you to deliver the right message to your audience by effectively focusing on particular consumer groups.

This chapter will define market segmentation, discuss its benefits, and show you how to start.

What is Market Segmentation?

In marketing automation, segmentation groups users leads, and customers into categories based on shared traits.

To better understand the target audience, these characteristics may be based on demographics, location, needs, blog subscribers, paying customers, shared interests, people who have visited the pricing page, and other psychographic or behavioural criteria to understand the target audience better.

When you segment your audience, you can improve the relevance of your marketing campaigns, ads, landing pages, and emails.

The benefits of market segmentation:

Market segmentation that is done correctly can benefit businesses greatly.

Some of these benefits include:

Stronger marketing messages:

You no longer need to be general and ambiguous; instead, you can speak directly to a particular audience in a manner they can relate to because you are aware of their traits, preferences, and requirements.

Targeted digital advertising:

Market segmentation enables you to identify and define the characteristics of your audience so that you can focus your marketing efforts on customers with particular ages, locations, buying preferences, interests, etc.

Creating successful marketing strategies:

Understanding your target market gives you a head start on the approaches, techniques, and solutions to which they will be most receptive.

Getting the right clients:

Market segmentation enables you to develop targeted, direct, and clear messaging that draws in the clients you want to do business with.

Promoting brand loyalty:

Customers are likelier to stick with your brand when they feel heard, individually well-served, and trusted.

Driving growth:

You can persuade customers to make additional purchases from you or to upgrade from a lower-priced good or service.

Increased profits:

Prices can be set according to how much a customer is willing to spend because each customer has a different disposable income. By being aware of this, you can prevent yourself from overselling or underselling.

Product development:

You'll be able to create different products tailored to your various customer bases while keeping your customers' needs at the forefront of your design process.

Now that you understand the benefits of market segmentation let's move on to market segmentation models.

Common Market Segmentation Models

The most successful digital marketers use segmentation to create highly personalized recommendations, craft targeted copy, nurture leads, and convert free users into paying customers.

The following characteristics can be used to categorize any audience or group of users:

· Demographic — Age, income, gender, education, marital status, etc.
· Geographic — A country, state, city, or region
· Psychographics — Personality, outlook, principles, interests, and pastimes
· Technographic — users of your website who are on mobile devices, desktop users, app users, etc.
· Behavioral — How users interact with your product, including everyday actions, features used, email activity, and usage patterns.
· Need-based — What prompted them to use your product/service? The features they seek in a product. The pain points they are attempting to alleviate.

The list above is merely a few examples. You can think of them as guiding milestones in your email marketing or marketing automation tool to help you organize your users into buckets.

How can you Implement Market Segmentation?

Here's how to develop a dynamic strategy to keep segments updated with your customers' changing behaviour:

Set a goal and gather data:

Before you start, you must ask yourself what you hope to accomplish from this exercise. You must specify your motivations for segmenting your user base.

Your objectives must be precise and particular to your business trajectory because they will determine how you categorize your clients or leads.

Build your segments:

The next step is to start grouping your users into segments after you collect the appropriate data and have some ideas about what segments you want to create.

Your market should be segmented according to the criteria you decide to use.

Try each one and find out which one works best for you. Remember, most brands use more than one - so don't be afraid to experiment.

When segmenting, keep your underlying goals in mind.

Improvise, refine, and repeat:

As was previously stated, segmentation is a continuous process. As a result, you'll need to update your segments to reflect shifting needs and behaviours continually.

You should communicate with your team, observe user behaviour, and occasionally modify your user segments.

Directly engaging your users through surveys and feedback prompts is another exciting method of improving your segments.

In addition, if you are a startup developing a product and are in the early stages of the process, make sure you adapt your user segments as you fine-tune your solution, rebrand your service, or reorganize your buyer personas.

It is essential to keep in mind that user habits and behaviours change over time. As such, continue to revise your segments and improve them.

Developing your Automation Marketing Plan

Now is the time to consider the marketing automation strategy you want to create for your company.

The first steps in developing a marketing automation plan are capturing your customers' attention, establishing a benchmark, conducting research, and finally, nurturing your leads.

Let's now expand on these.

Capturing the attention of potential leads or customers:

The use of automation can be beneficial before a conversion takes place to let potential customers know who you are, what you're offering, and why your business is superior.

A potential customer wants to learn more about you early in decision-making.
Similarly, you want to get to know them better... and probably want to get their email address to continue the conversation.

Automate both inbound and outbound marketing. Content marketing and search engine optimization can help you attract leads by ranking well for specific keywords on Google, publishing engaging content, and filming tutorials.

Establish benchmarks:

Templates are a crucial component of a successful marketing automation strategy. This enables scaling and transfer of experience.

Starting the following benchmarks is an excellent place to start:

· Email and direct message templates:

You must create sample adjustable subject lines and copies for all occasions, including cold outreach, welcoming new subscribers, offering a deal, and sending regular newsletters.

· Drip campaign examples:

Email sequences triggered by user actions have higher open rates than single emails.

Depending on your business type, you may require templates for the following campaigns: verifying new email addresses, promoting a new product or service, collecting feedback, increasing user engagement, and reminding about upcoming events.

· Creating business offer templates allows marketers and salespeople to personalize and re-send prospective clients standard forms for solicited and unsolicited proposals.

Research:

Flexibility is key to an effective automation strategy. Your marketing efforts should evolve along with your target audience's preferences, interests, and concerns. You can:

· Keep an eye on Google Trends to see what people in your area or country are searching for.
· Monitor and analyze social media mentions of your and competitors' brands to make informed decisions about future promotion.
· Gather customer feedback or conduct a poll survey.
· Compile advanced website analytics, such as monitoring heat maps.
· Monitor your competitors' marketing efforts.

Lead nurturing:

The majority of people prefer to receive messages that are relevant and personalized.

It is therefore impossible to achieve a successful automation strategy without custom content paths for every single lead.

Lead nurturing begins with segmentation and results in specific campaign content.

Before implementing automation, take the following steps:

· Determine target audiences - create profiles for crucial accounts or buyer personas.
· Establish a scouring system or criteria for determining qualified leads
· Segment the data in the initial stage
· Determine the points of contact with each segment
· Prepare content strategies for segments, including messages, ads, and visuals.
· Analyzing what combination of content and creativity performs better for each segment of the audience in A/B test campaigns
· Analyze segments and adjust them according to client behaviour, e.g., engagement level or loyalty level.

Marketing Automation Platforms

Selecting the best marketing automation software can be difficult, especially if your budget is limited.

However, you do want your company to grow, right? So, here's the key, the missing piece, the hidden treasure: Free marketing automation software.

Many free marketing automation tools can assist you with time-consuming, monotonous, redundant, and repetitive tasks to concentrate on the crucial and exciting creative part of developing your business.

Top Free Marketing Automation Software for Your Business:

HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com

Over 86,000 clients are using HubSpot to expand their businesses in more than 120 countries.

HubSpot is a marketing automation tool that will assist you in automating your sales, customer service, and marketing.

With this powerful CRM platform, you can take advantage of many free tools that will help you grow your business:

· Free CRM tools include email integration, app store integrations, email templates, etc.
· Free marketing resources include list segmentation, ad management, landing pages, email marketing, and more.
· Free sales tools include a reporting dashboard, email scheduling, and live chat.

· Free service tools include messenger integration, chatbots, tracking of emails, notifications, and more. Zoho: https://www.zoho.com

One of the best marketing software options for small businesses is Zoho Campaigns. Businesses looking to increase sales can use its cloud-based email marketing solutions.

For its free plan, Zoho Campaigns allows you to send up to 12,000 emails per month to up to 2,000 subscribers.

Zoho offers some great pre-designed templates for creating campaigns for different social media platforms. MailChimp: https://mailchimp.com

Check out MailChimp if you're looking for a free way to automate marketing campaigns and management.

MailChimp might be the best free tool for you if you use powerful and highly creative newsletters that need to be distributed via social media.

MailChimp's free plan includes the following features:
· Lists can be segmented into different categories using this tool
· Managing customer relationships (CRM)
· Creates landing pages, forms, and websites
· Marketing campaigns on Facebook and Instagram using social media
· Analytics for newsletters

Send Pulse: https://sendpulse.com

Send Pulse is a good option if your company relies heavily on mass marketing to niche markets.

You can utilize Send Pulse for your marketing strategy needs by combining SMS text, emails, web pushes, Viber, and Facebook.

Send Pulse offers the following features as part of their free plan:
· Email marketing automation
· Scheduler & email templates
· A/B testing to determine whether your email strategy is working
· Statistics and analysis
· Autoresponders with SMS text/push functionality

Sendinblue: https://www.sendinblue.com

Sendinblue offers a wide range of marketing tools specifically designed for small- and medium-sized businesses.

According to business reviews on Finances Online, more than 180,000 companies use Sendinblue for their marketing campaigns.

Sendinblue provides a free plan that includes some of its most powerful tools:
· Tracking the customer journey for the campaign
· A maximum of 300 emails per day can be sent to unlimited recipients
· Email campaigns personalized for each recipient
· Templates for all kinds of emails
· Workflow editor with extensive functionality

Final Words

There’s no doubt about it; automating your marketing is one of the best things you can do for your business.

Marketing automation enhances personalization, improves efficiency, accelerates revenue, drives more leads, and increases vital performance indicators.

Using these tools, marketing teams can track and understand customers' marketing journeys via a unified communication platform.

And that will result in higher levels of engagement and conversion while enhancing the customer journey!