THE BLUEPRINT FOR
MARKETINGAUTOMATION
Marketing automation adoption will grow by approximately 50% by 2015.
-Sirius Decisions, How Marketing Automation Has Evolved in the Last 12 Months, 2012
Way More Than a Lead Generation ToolMarketing Automation is a strategy that helps you
streamline your marketing efforts, drive revenue growth,
target your communications, and better measure impact.
It’s pretty common knowledge that audiences engage
more with messages that are targeted toward their
interests and behaviors. Yet so many organizations seem
to forget that and resort to blasting mass emails out to
their entire list, trying to rack up the number of the always-
important “touch point.” The more messages you send
that are not relevant to your customers, the less they pay
attention to your brand as a whole. Thus, the less they read
those specific messages that might actually resonate with
their interests.
The key is segmenting your customers and targeting
content that aligns with each segment’s interests. It’s all
about delivering the right message to the right person
at the right time. It sounds simple, but few organizations
take the time or have the expertise to truly pull it off with
impact. That’s where Choptank can help.
Generate new leads
Nurture relationships and qualify leads
Capture behaviors indicating what key audiences care most about
Engage customers at a key moment of influence
Drive sales, adoption or donations
Reconnect with less engaged customers
Increase measurement of overall marketing strategy and impact
Why Marketing Automation?
What Marketing Automation Looks LikeMarketing Automation is an extremely versatile tool that
can be leveraged to serve any industry in a variety of
ways. From driving donations and membership in the
non-profit sector to delivering an educational content
marketing strategy to insurance subscribers, Marketing
Automation is a flexible platform that supports your
marketing goals with a tactical, targeted approach.
As you might have guessed, Marketing Automation is
largely based on email campaigns, but ideally includes
multiple other tactics (landing pages, web banners, etc.)
depending on the behavior of your target audiences
and needs of the campaign. Additionally, it relies heavily
on analytics and data to measure impact and drive
systematic changes to increase effectiveness. This is one
of the biggest benefits of digital communications on the
whole, and a big focus of Marketing Automation.
“Without marketing automation, you are just guessing – just hoping that people will take the bait and be ready to buy your products. Statistics
show that buyers don’t do that. They want to learn at their own pace and be reached when they need more information or are ready to buy. A well-
constructed marketing automation strategy makes that a reality.”
– John McTigue, Kuno Creative
Email, as with most digital channels, is a great way to get hard-and-fast metrics. Although critical to an integrated
marketing strategy, other channels like direct mail, earned media, and advertising make it more difficult to know
exactly who is interacting with your message and how. With email and Marketing Automation you can not only
see who and how, but you can track an individual’s or group’s engagement with your brand over time. Whether
you are generating new leads or simply nurturing your relationships, these metrics can help you be more effective
throughout your engagement with a potential lead or help you know the right things to say to your customer base.
Not only can you get your standard email metrics (deliverability, open rates, click-through rates, opt-out rates,
etc.), but Marketing Automation helps your learn so much more about the behaviors of your audience. Also, with
proper tracking and applied analytics, you can very concretely determine your program ROI.
You can create a more predictable revenue cycle by ensuring you use customer-preferred tactics and channels
which result in higher conversions, and strongly support relationship nurturing which accelerates the sales process.
Additionally, for future campaigns, you should have a much better idea of what will resonate with your target
audiences. With this powerful information, you can more accurately calculate potential ROI to make your business
case, or make revenue and profit projections.
What Marketing Automation Can Tell You
As we said before, Marketing Automation can be used in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes. Below
are a few examples of how you could use Marketing Automation:
Examples of How to Leverage Marketing Automation
Welcome Series
You may have a new customer sign up for a service or a membership, and you need a way to deliver critical information about their new status. Ditch the paper-based welcome folder stuffed with brochures, and set up an automated welcome series with convenient links to the information your customers need. You not only deliver relevant information at the most opportune time, but you save tons on printing costs.
Content Marketing Strategy
You have content and you need a way to get it out to your audience. Marketing Automation is a great tool to deliver key pieces of content to your customer base and to target to your most relevant segments.
Event Campaigns
If you are hosting a fund-raising event or an online webinar, you can use an automated campaign to drive sign-ups, capture sign-up information via forms on landing pages, and send reminders and thank-you messages.
Behavioral Follow-Ups
If a customer interacts with an email or call to action in a certain way, you can track that behavior and provide a follow-up specific to that customer’s interest. It’s also a great way to thank your customers for interacting with you.
Launching Pads fora Campaign
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You can use almost anything as a jumping off point for a Marketing
Automation campaign. It’s important that you use an already
popular channel in order to maximize your reach and impact.
Below are a few examples of good places to start:
• Digital launch points are the easiest – Start from an email link,
newsletter article, web banner ad, or a landing page action / form.
• From your email list – You don’t need a launch point from another
tactic. If you have an existing email list, you can launch your
campaign just like you would any other email.
• Even launch from paper-based marketing (direct mail, letters, etc.)
– Drive customers to a digital tactic (landing pages work best in this
situation) from a mailer or signage, and launch the campaign from
there. You’ll have a smaller list, but due to the effort it takes on the
customer’s behalf, you have already identified your most heavily
engaged leads.
“On average, only 20% of leads are
sales-ready when they first come in.
This means you need a disciplined
process – known as lead nurturing – to
develop qualified leads until they are
sales-ready. Done well, nurturing can
result in 50% more sales leads at 33%
lower cost per lead.”
-Marketo, The Definitive Guide to Marketing
Automation, 2013
When to Gracefully Bow Out
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Multiple touch points with customers are important; when you get your brand in front of them you stay top-of-mind and
increase the chances that they’ll interact with your message. But there’s a point where you need to gracefully let your
customers ignore you, if they so choose. It’s in their best interest, but it’s also in yours:
Don’t pester your audience – If a customer has ignored your emails thus far, it’s likely that a standard email communication
is not going to engage them and they’ll likely start perceiving your brand as annoying. Try something different: a direct
mail campaign, a social media effort, even a new approach with a creative email campaign optimized through testing.
Find new ways to target – It’s alright that some of your customers won’t engage with your email. While email is the
universally preferred channel of communication1, not everyone prefers it. Segment your list by behaviors and
preferences and approach people by their preferred channels. If it’s not email, try something else.
Monitor your online reputation – Everyone has different definitions of spam. While nothing you or Choptank would
ever send to your customers would fall into the spam category in the legal sense of the word, some contacts are
more likely to report your messages as spam if you continue to send to them after they have indicated they are not
interested in hearing from you. Choptank also recommends that our clients avoid purchased email lists. Mailing to
purchased lists is typically not as effective and can potentially destroy your sender reputation.
Improve your metrics – It’s simple math that the fewer non-engagers you have on a list, the higher your engagement
rates will be. Removing those who don’t engage gives you a better idea of what is resonating with your target groups,
and skyrockets your open and click rates.
Save money – Keep list maintenance a top priority in any type of digital marketing campaign, particularly with email.
Removing non-engagers will keep your deployment costs down.
1 Litmus, Email Preferred Communication Channel; Commands More Clicks & ROI, February 20, 2013
What Marketing Automation Is Not
Marketing Automation is not a comprehensive
marketing strategy. It’s part of your marketing
program and is largely a tactical approach. It can
be used as a strategic fulcrum to deliver your
content marketing program, to grow your sales
leads, or to simply drive engagement through a
targeted campaign. While it does provide your
marketing group with extra arms and legs, it
will not replace your internal marketing staff or
eliminate your need for vendors. It is also not
a spam platform. It is a dynamic tactic that can
help drive your marketing strategies for years to
come with data-driven insights and behavioral
segmentation.
Contact Choptank to Get StartedChoptank can build your Marketing
Automation strategy from the ground up.
Whether it’s to support your other direct
marketing campaigns or to be the driver
behind a new one, our experienced team of
digital marketers, strategists, and developers
can help you meet your objectives through
a targeted and evolving strategy that adapts
to your customer’s demands.
We want to talk to you about how Marketing
Automation can support your organization.
Contact us today.243 N Fifth Street / Suite 120
Columbus / Oh / 43215E: [email protected]
WWW.CHOPTANKAGENCY.COM
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