Sometimes it’s all about the amount of control that is applied to a particular situation. Too much can be obsessive, while too little can lead to chaos. Applying just the right amount of control, however, leads to a smoothly-functioning operation. Since consumers now exert more control over the purchasing process and determine when and how they are going to receive communications, marketers will need to respond by increasing the amount of control they have over the marketing process. Marketing automation makes it much easier to create, implement, direct and track today’s multi-channel marketing efforts.
Marketing automation is the process of automating and customizing the communications process with prospects and customers across multiple marketing channels. It involves everything from email marketing, web content and landing page development, to mobile messaging and enhanced social experiences. Because it can get so complex to keep track of individual prospects and customers, along with the various available marketing efforts, the entire process can be easily automated using software platforms like the one available through Experiture. Here are five easy steps that will help you improve your next marketing automation campaign:
- Assessment and awareness: Most of the B2B and B2C companies that currently utilize marketing automation agree that it is worth the time and money they have invested into the process. The first step in maximizing return on investment is to fully assess and determine exactly what your marketing automation platform can and cannot do. Make sure you take advantage of all of its capabilities, but don’t exceed its reach because that will result in a failure to meet expectations. You also need to involve and completely train your marketing and sales team to ensure they have the skills necessary to exploit the capabilities of your marketing automation platform.
- Housekeeping: A smoothly-performing marketing automation platform runs best on precise data. Don’t get lazy on the information you put into your database. Set standards regarding the information that is necessary to make marketing decisions, and then clean the customer data in your CRM and marketing automation to make sure you have what you need to get the best results.
- Familiarity: You need to know your prospects and customers and understand what their problems are before you can demonstrate how you can help make things better. Conduct frequent short polls and study the information in your database to determine whether your customers or their needs have changed.
- Get personal: Don’t eliminate personalization just because you are using automation. In fact, your automation should actually help increase your customization efforts. People like the fact that you try to get to know them and offer products or services that are suited to their particular needs. Develop buyer personas for the various demographic groups that you are targeting and personalize your messaging directly to them. Never use a one-size-fits-all strategy when you can personalize.
- Stay connected: Very few prospects will buy what you offer the first time they receive a message from you, no matter how good your offer may be. It will require a concerted effort on your part to stay in touch and provide messages that propel the prospect through the sales funnel. Nurture your prospects by providing them with just the right content at just the right time. Experiture’s marketing automation platform allows you to create and automate complex multi-channel marketing programs and deliver highly-personalized multi-channel messaging that generates leads and boosts the bottom line.
Experiture offers an all-in-one customer engagement marketing platform that helps B2C and B2B marketers generate leads and interact more effectively with target audiences, without needing ongoing help from their IT department. Use it to uncover more leads, convert those leads into opportunities, and close more sales. Visit the Experiture website and Facebook page, or call 888-950-0700 today to learn how to improve your next marketing campaign with marketing automation.
