Introduction to Marketing Automation

A brief introduction to what Marketing Automation is and what it is not.

Marketing automation is so ubiquitous today that it’s almost impossible not to do any marketing automation if you run an online business.

What is marketing automation?

The use of marketing automation makes processes that would have otherwise been performed manually much more efficient and makes new processes possible. – SearchCRM

In a nutshell, marketing automation helps you:

What? Deliver personalized messages.

Where? On multiple channels: email, SMS, push, social media, paid media, direct mail.

Who? To a targeted audience.

When? At the right time.

How? Using software.

Why? To attract, convert and retain more customers with fewer resources, more efficiently.

What are the benefits of using marketing automation?

Here are some insightful statistics about marketing automation:

70% of people find improved targeting of messages to be the most important benefit of marketing automation.

Business owners and marketers asked to identify the biggest benefit of Marketing Automation for them, say it is:

Saving time (30%)
Lead Generation (22%)
Increase in Revenue (17%)

The most useful metrics for measuring marketing automation performance are Conversion Rate and Revenue Generated – say 58% of best in class Marketing Automation users.

Across all reports, high-performing marketers find marketing automation beneficial in:

Increasing revenue.
Improving the customer experience.
Improving the targeting of messages.
Getting more and better quality leads.
Saving time
It’s not just about being more efficient; marketing automation has a profound impact on your revenue.

( Source)

What can you do with marketing automation?

With Encharge and marketing automation, the use cases are endless.

Here are some examples:

Capture leads and prospects with a lead magnet and send a nurturing email sequence.
Remind a person to Download an eBook or report.
Double the open rate of an email broadcast.
Onboard trial users and help them reach the first moment of value.
Convert trialing users with trigger-based email sequences.
Push unfinished registrations to complete the signup process.
Survey expired trialists.
Engage important leads on Facebook with ads.
Increase adoption of premium features.
Revive dead product leads.
Educate users about a recently activated feature.
Prevent inactive customers from churning.
Upsell long-term customers.
Get Feedback from a recently churned customer.
Capture leads from a Typeform, and segment based on value.
Follow up on Pricing page visit.
Streamline your sales process and orchestrate it along with your inbound marketing efforts.
Add customers at risk of churning to your CRM to be proactively approached by your customer success department.
Automate repetitive sales tasks like adding a new trial user to your sales pipeline.
Change the deal stage of a potential lead in your CRM to "Booked a demo" when they book a Calendly call.
Notify your team members in Slack each time you get a new customer.

What marketing automation is Not?

1. Blasting spam emails

If you start sending emails (or other messages) to a list full of prospects with a questionable quality you can expect high bounces, low open rates, and spam reports.

Instead, focus on building solicited/inbound leads for your business and nurture them through your marketing funnel.

Sending unsolicited emails through Encharge is prohibited and doing so you risk your account being blocked.

2. Email marketing only

Marketing automation allows you to create holistic lifecycle flows that connect multiple touchpoints and channels, including but not limited to:

SMS
Push notification
Paid channels – Facebook ads and Google Ads
Social media – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.
Direct physical mail.

3. Cold and impersonal

One of the main goals of marketing automation is to allow you to speak to an audience of one at a scale.

74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement. – eConsultancy

With Encharge you can segment your customer base granularly in order to deliver custom-tailored messages and offers.

4. Something that benefits marketing only

Marketing automation can benefit all of your departments.

Sales teams will get more Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and close more deals.

Customer Success teams will be able to provide better value through the Onboarding and Upselling phases and retain more customers.

Support teams will be able to provide contextual education at the right time to the right customers => reduce support overhead.

5. Something that you set up once and forget

Metrics tell you how effective your marketing automation is: Whether a user signs up, converts, ignores the message, flags it as spam, unsubscribes from your list or churns completely, that tells you something about how the recipient felt about your message.

With Encharge you can easily change and improve your marketing automation campaigns without worrying about messing up your live flows.

Resources on marketing automation

Additional resources to help you get a grasp of marketing automation.

Marketing Automation Strategy Workshop

Learn how to get from 0 to running a live marketing automation system that turns your leads into customers and your customers into forever-customers. Blueprint and “fill-in-the-blank” templates included.