Marketing Automation for Beginners (3 Tips for Success)

In this article, we will go over the most important things to know about marketing automation. Consider this our 3 tip guide to succeed in your automation processes.

Marketing automation technology is taking the marketing world by storm. Disrupting routine tasks and changing the dynamics of everyday work operations. Not only does marketing automation create tailored customer journeys, but it also saves time and resources, a valuable asset for any growing team.

Moreover, marketing automation allows you to create personalized customer journeys and improve marketing operations. Due to the amount of data and touch-points, automation can be used for every stage of the marketing funnel.

To learn more about marketing automation and its benefits, read this article.

1. Prepare for success

A. Set a list of goals

Start off by writing down a set of goals that the business wants to achieve and accomplish.

The goals will serve as a direction for the set-up of the workflow. The clearer your goals and intended outcome, the more tailored you can become with an automation workflow.

Moreover, you’ll be able to measure the rate of progress. After all, you'll want to pinpoint exactly which step in the customer journey was responsible for the increase in sales. This way, you'll be able to learn and incorporate it in other business operations.

B. Understand your audience

Understanding your audience is key. They should be the North Star of all the strategies, automation, and content creation.

How does your audience interact? What are their interests? What content works best for them? These are all questions that are important to tailor workflows for the most amount of impact. The goal is to know exactly how to target your audience.

Consider segmenting your audience for ease of organization and strategy development. Each different segment should have a different approach.

Segmenting your audience and attaching them to different goals is the perfect base to start off the automation design process.

C. Design a workflow

Start writing down the customer journey on a piece of paper. The easiest way to do so is by using triggers “if/ then” to set up a custom workflow.

Remember to pay close attention to time delays, you want to play around with urgency and remove any frustration a customer may have.

Once the design is developed, prepare all the content for each “ if/then” statement so that the workflow is ready to be fired up and automated.

Here is an example of a custom workflow:

D. Don’t forget to test

After all the time, work, effort, and large amounts of coffee consumption, it’s time to put your automation to the test.

In this testing phase, test out the trigger actions, the copy, time delay, CTA’s, and that the customers are going through the correct workflow.

Make sure to test out all the CTA buttons to ensure that they have been linked to the proper material. Moreover, make sure all your workflows have the attached metric touch-points for correct measurement and if/then statement branches.

2. When talking with humans, be human

Marketing automation unlocks the possibility to directly target thousands of your leads personally and instantly. Although it’s automatic, setting up your content approach in the most humane possible way will differentiate your brand from competitors.  

Think of it this way, no one wants to get sold to. Moreover, nobody wants to feel like they are just another number in the system.

On the other hand, a little personal touch goes a long way. So, keep a human touch to all your digital communication.

When creating your marketing workflow be acutely aware of not becoming robotic. Instead ask yourself these two questions:

1. Can this be personalised with information we have on file? ( for example, their first name, their birthday, their last product purchased…)
2. Does this piece of content resonate with the receiver? Does it solve their pain-points?

3. Remember “Content is king”

The backbone of any automated workflow is content.

Although cliche in the marketing landscape, “Content is king” stands true in automation practices.

Therefore, creating content that is high-quality, relevant and interesting is a big driver to the success of a company. Moreover, not only does it contribute to sales increase, but also to improve customer advocacy.

The better and more relevant the content, the more impactful and directional the customer journey.

As such, create content for each customer segment that is relevant and impactful. Ask yourself the goal, why, and the tone of each content piece.

Bear Tip 🐻 Once the content has been created, attach helpful and clear next steps to each piece. The result of clear CTA’s will help the client make educated decisions and also provide insightful data to potential roadblocks in the journey, or how relevant the steps are.

Next steps

Now that you know which tips you need for success, it's time to put the theory into action.

Choose your goals, understand your audience, design a workflow, select your integration softwares, and put the automation to the test.

Here is an article to start you off with some workflow inspiration 👀.