How to succeed with Marketing Automation

Do you want to create more targeted communication for your digital customers and leads? Then you should invest in marketing automation. Here we explain what it is and how you can work with it.

Caring for customer relationships and meeting the customer with the right communication and information at the right stage of the customer journey is extremely important. There is a difference between a curious visitor who mindlessly browses around and a visitor ready to buy. Different visitors may need to be handled in different ways for us to successfully guide them to conversion. If you also have large numbers of visitors to your website, it is important to be able to process leads automatically. This is where marketing automation can help you and your company.

What is marketing automation?

As the name suggests, marketing automation is automated marketing. It is about optimizing and automating a company's marketing and sales processes. The purpose is, with the help of the right technology, to be able to send automated messages and individually targeted communication — all based on visitors' behaviour and where they are in the customer journey. This tailors the digital experience and allows you to communicate more precisely and facilitates lead management.

How does automated marketing work?

You may have heard that we leave digital footprints online. With the help of software you can collect and store these footprints and see what visitors and customers do on your website. For example what they click on, download or how they found your site. That way you can get to know your visitors and their behaviour and based on that send out tailored content.

Marketing automation in practice

A marketing automation process can include everything from automated emails, advertising, marketing on social media, integration with CMS systems, optimized landing pages, data analysis and content. At the same time it is a combination of several different processes, tools and software together with manual work. Here we describe some parts of the process:

The automated process

Trigger and action

In short you can say that the technology consists of a tool or software that collects data and sends out content automatically. For something to happen automatically there first and foremost needs to be some form of trigger and a subsequent action. A trigger is usually an event on your website and something we want the visitor to do, e.g. fill in a form or click a button. Action is the task that occurs afterwards, e.g. that we update a contact in our database when someone has provided their contact details, that we create a reminder for a salesperson to call a lead, or that we send out an offer related to what the customer has shown interest in. For this to happen automatically an initial manual effort is required to determine which triggers should cause which actions.

Lead scoring - scoring the visitor's engagement

Scoring or lead scoring is about improving lead management. The software measures and scores the visitor's engagement based on their digital behaviour. Each time a visitor performs one of the predetermined triggers (e.g. clicks a button) their score increases. When a certain score level is reached we can decide that a certain action should take place. For example that a salesperson is notified that it's time to make contact. The score therefore helps us see how hot or cold a lead is and when a potential customer is most ready to convert.

Lead capturing – creating interest profiles

When a visitor leaves contact details, for example provides their email address to download a document, these details can be linked to the person's interest profile. This is called "lead capturing". Besides having the visitor's email we then know that the visitor is interested in this specific area. A person who buys dog food can be tagged with that specific interest area. Then you don't need to sell cat food, but can focus on promoting other dog products since that is likely more interesting for that person.

Lead management – segment and group

When we know more about each visitor we can segment and group them and adapt our communication accordingly. This is called "lead management". By preparing different campaigns, landing pages or email sends that can be sent automatically depending on the visitor's scoring and interest area, lead handling is facilitated. In this way we achieve more effective communication.
Instead of sending a standardized email we can send more individualized or segmented ones. A webinar taking place in Stockholm may not need to be sent to customers in Umeå. The goal is for the information to become more relevant so that the chance of the visitor converting increases. Content is therefore crucial so that we can meet customers' and leads' different needs.

Examples of how you can group and segment your customers and leads:

• Type of customer - existing or potential?
• Target audience - gender, age etc
• Location - where they live or are located?
• Interest area - what are they interested in?
• Customer journey - where in the customer journey are they - before, during or after a purchase?
• Knowledge level - novices or experts?
• Digital maturity - low or high?
• How do they want to be contacted - by email or SMS?
• How often they want to hear from you - every day, every week or once a month?

How you can use marketing automation

• A customer has bought dog food from an online store. A week later the customer receives an email with a favorable offer on other related dog products.
• A customer has downloaded a white paper from your website in exchange for leaving their contact details. The contact is added to your CRM and, since the downloaded document is about property development, we can store that information as an area of interest the visitor has. A reminder is created to call the contact within three days. A month later the person receives an email about an "early-bird discount" for a webinar specifically on property development.
• A logged-in customer has put items in a shopping cart in your online store and abandoned it. A few days later the customer receives an email reminding them that they have items waiting in the cart. The email also includes a discount code that applies if they purchase the items within a certain time
• For customers who haven't interacted with you for a while, you can automatically send a so-called "win-back email" after a certain period of inactivity. You need to give the customer a reason to come back by reminding them of your great products or services.

What are the benefits of marketing automation?

• You can optimize your website or digital service with personalized communication, which can lead to a better customer experience, more satisfied customers and improved profitability.
• The contact database is continuously updated.
• Salespeople get help identifying warm leads and important business opportunities.
• You can decide how, when and which digital communication should be sent to which customer type or customer group. This gives you more targeted and effective communication.
• Marketing automation saves both time and resources once you're up and running.
• With better insight into your data and your customers' behavior, you can make smarter decisions.

What is required to get started?

The right technology and software are needed to be able to create the automated processes. Setting up everything also requires some manual work initially. Then you need engaging content on your website or digital service. The content should entice visitors to convert or to dive deeper into your material so that you can collect information about them and thereby create interest profiles.

To use the technology optimally, it's important to find the right method for your company and decide how you want to interact with your customers. Do you want help defining what your triggers and specific actions should be? Or do you need help setting up an automated flow? Contact us and we'll tell you more about how we can help you.

Also read