Contact Management 101

Know your sales process

How you use marketing automation will depend on your sales process. Companies with a long sales cycle with multiple interactions generally benefit most from marketing automation as they can automate each part of the complex sales process. Although, it can also work with shorter sales cycles. For example, sending customers email reminders when they leave items in their basket without checking out. The important thing is that you understand how your sales process pushes people from being leads to customers.

Know your customers

Marketing automation revolves around tailoring your marketing funnel based on how your customers interact with your company. To do this effectively, you need a good understanding of who your customers are and what they want from your business, and what touchpoints they have with your product or service.

Have a defined strategy

Companies that succeed with marketing automation know the steps customers want to take at each stage of the funnel and can direct customers to these steps. Ensure you know what customers want before implementing your own marketing automation strategy.

Create the required materials

Marketing automation requires you to have materials your customers can interact with. For example, blog posts, videos, and eBooks. If you already have this material, you can use it in your marketing automation efforts. If not, you’ll need to create some content first.

Keep everyone in the loop

Successful marketing automation strategies receive input from teams throughout your organization. Sales teams should communicate to marketing about the type of lead that converts so marketing can use this in their lead scoring system. Meanwhile, customer support could provide marketing with feedback about the type of challenges customers have.

Test your strategy

You aren’t finished once you implement your marketing strategy. You now need to analyze and test your strategy to ensure each part of it works at an optimal level. Use data on metrics like click-through rates, conversions, time on page, and open rates to discover black holes where you lose more customers than you should. Use A/B testing to discover more effective methods