You’ve all already heard of marketing automation platforms and tools developed for one reason only – to make marketing more efficient.
These advanced marketing automation tools help us market through multiple channels and help us automate repetitive tasks. This saves time and enables us to design and execute timely and data-backed marketing campaigns.
Marketing automation usage is growing at an astonishing rate and, as reported in 2017, 67% of marketing leaders currently use a marketing automation platform.
Also, another research from the last year showed that 70% of those who use marketing automation found that improved targeting of messages is the most important benefit of automated marketing campaigns. Along with this, marketing automation enables us to target potential customer across multiple online and offline channels and helps us reduce the staffing costs by setting up automatically triggered campaigns.
Automation-friendly marketing activities
Many people associate marketing automation with email marketing automation as automated email campaigns are well-known to every marketer out there. But the truth is, you can apply marketing automation to much more. Many marketing activities are automation-friendly and, if used properly, marketing automation platform such as smoove can forever change the ways you do marketing.
As an all-in-one marketing automation platform, smoove is a tool which enables businesses to grow with its four core solutions: marketing automation, email marketing, SMS marketing, and landing page solutions.
This means more time for your team to focus on the tasks that still need to be handled by humans. Think of developing a strategy or creating content. Also, when necessary, engaging in a direct, human-to-human communication with prospects and customers.
How to automate your marketing with smoove
We all know that the benefits of marketing automation are many. But it’s often challenging for businesses to quickly set up and start running automated marketing campaigns.
So if you’re considering marketing automation for your company (and you should!), it’s important to have a good understanding of how long it should take to automate your marketing, or which steps to undertake to get started with marketing automation:
#1 Centralize and segment your customers’ database
Your first task is to collect all of your contacts in one place. Don’t forget those paper sign-ups from your recent event and various business cards you have laying on your desk. After completing the list, import it into the marketing automation software. Segment each group by criteria which is important for your business. This can be their location, expressed interests in your business and products, stage in the buying process and more.
Never forget that email lists and segmentation are the foundation of effective marketing automation. Actually, it’s best to put it this way: The automation makes sense only with segmentation of your target audience – whether we talk about potential leads, existing leads or current customers.
With smoove, you can easily import your contacts from an Excel sheet or directly from your Gmail and segment your contacts into different lists based on any wanted criteria and the previously collected data. This feature also enables you to subscribe each contact to the multiple lists you may have.
Another great thing offered by smoove is that our Contacts menu includes a powerful search engine you can use to query your contacts according to different fields. You can bundle each search result into a new list you can later use for your marketing purposes.
#2 Capture and nurture your leads
To grow your email list(s) and make the best use of those lists you already have, you will need to capture leads from your forms. These can be newsletter opt-in boxes, “Contact us” pages and more, but usually, those are custom-made landing pages where your visitors can get something valuable in exchange for their personal information.
Good news is that smoove has a solution for this one too!
Smoove’s landing page builder is a simple and effective tool designed to advance your marketing campaigns and capture your visitor’s contact information easier than ever. It enables you to simply design your landing page by using its modular template system. You can add a customized registration form and define which list of the subscribers it will be directed to.
This tool is designed for marketers who need an efficient and reliable tool to support and execute their campaigns. Along with its drag-and-drop interface, simple forms and pre-designed templates, smoove’s landing page builder is enriched with a bunch of smart hacks such as easy-to-add CTA buttons, social media buttons and more.
#3 Set triggers and actions
Triggers are defined conditions which can spark the desired action from a specific marketing automation solution. For example, the trigger can be your customer’s birthday. It can prompt your automation software to send out a discount offer as a birthday gift via email. One of the simplest triggers is an opt-in form for an email newsletter. It will result in action – your email automation tool sending that prospect a welcome email!
With the help of smoove’s marketing automation tool, you can use customer data and behavior as a trigger to set conditions and respond with appropriate actions in a few simple steps. This feature has a very convenient drag-and-drop interface so you can easily add and remove email lists and individual subscribers, send out automatic emails based on the landing page responses and provide a relevant, personalized experience for each member of your target audience.
With smoove you can also maximize your customer experience by setting multi-triggered actions. Depending on your visitor interaction with your offer (such as an email or landing page form) you can create multiple actions (put a user on a different list, send a specific response via email, etc.)
#4 Create automated workflows
Automated workflow is a preset series of automated actions which enables you to send the right message to the right customer at the right time. Your job is to determine the scenarios and conditions in which the workflow would best serve your needs, set it up and let the smoove’s email marketing automation tool do the rest.
For example, these can be a welcome email series for your new subscribers. The first email should be welcoming. The second can contain more information on your business or potentially offer a one-time discount. Finally, you can ask your subscriber to provide more personal data so you can serve them better. This will provide you with valuable data for the further segmentation and more personalized approach to that very subscriber.
Same goes for the drip email campaigns for the customers that just purchased from you. You can start with an automated ‘Thank you’ email. Follow that with an email providing them with more information on the product (such as guides, how-to videos, etc.). Round it up with an email with educational resources such as your blog or a free eBook.
Smoove has a simple answer to this one too. Its Autoresponders tool helps you set different triggers that will automatically launch email campaigns you have in place. You can send these series of emails to an individual customer or to a specific list of customers. Along with setting up drip campaigns, this tool enables you to automatically send out reminders. Think birthday cards and other special event emails. These can significantly improve the customer experience with your brand.
Wrap Up
In 2018, you can apply marketing automation to much more than just emails. Other marketing activities are automation-friendly too. With the all-in-one marketing automation tool like smoove, you can find an efficient way to automate them, too.
Smoove enables businesses to grow with its other core solutions such as marketing automation, SMS marketing, and landing page solutions.
Still, to start automating your marketing the right way and in shortest possible time, you will need to undertake these 4 steps:
- Organize your customer’s database, import it into smoove and segment your customers in order to fulfill their specific needs
- Capture and nurture your leads via strategically crafted landing pages and convert more customers than ever
- Set triggers and actions for your workflows with smoove’s marketing automation tool
- Create workflows and send the relevant, timely offers to the specific audience/li>
