5 Easy Marketing Automation Workflows to Implement This Year

Published by Spinutech on June 19, 2019

Forget about autonomous cars, let’s talk about self-driving marketing campaigns.

Today’s marketers are having to do more with less. Fortunately, marketing automation offers a way to deliver smart, on-target messages to a business’s audience without having to manually manage campaigns on a daily basis, saving marketers precious time and resources.

Sounds great, right? Let’s dive deeper to understand what marketing automation is and how it can help your business.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation, in its simplest form, is a technology that automatically deploys and manages marketing campaigns and processes across multiple channels. With marketing automation, you can save time, money, and resources by automating certain tasks within the customer or lead life cycle. For example, marketing automation can:

• Deliver welcome emails to new newsletter subscribers.
• Dynamically swap content on your website based on a user’s previous website engagement.
• Send notifications to internal sales reps if a prospect or customer engages with certain content on the website or in an email.
• Trigger emails based on a customer’s engagement with your business.

There are countless strategies and workflows that can be implemented using marketing automation. But first, we need to discuss what you need in order to set up and run successful marketing automation campaigns.

What You Need to Start Using Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is “automated,” but there are still tools, technology, and setup processes required before you can launch your first campaign. So, before you start planning vacations due to all of the newfound free time you'll have thanks to marketing automation, read through some of the basic requirements below.

Marketing Strategy

As with any marketing campaign, you have to start with a strategy. Develop a marketing automation strategy that outlines how your business will use the technology, the messages that you'll send, and the overall goal of automation. 

Marketing Automation Platform

Next, you’ll need to find a marketing automation platform to help execute your marketing automation strategy. There are numerous email marketing and marketing automation platforms available. Choose the one that best fits your business. 

TIP: Most marketing automation partners and agencies will already have a platform that they use for their clients.

Data Management

Data is an integral part of marketing automation. You need to ensure your customer database and lists are accurate and up-to-date so that your messages are delivered to the right audience. Additionally, proper tracking and data capture techniques need to be in place to ensure workflows and campaigns trigger at the right time.

Content

Just like any other type of marketing campaign, content needs to be delivered to the right audience, at the right time, and with the right message. Marketing automation helps deliver messages to your audience at exactly the right time. But the content must be strategically created to ensure the message will resonate with your audience.

Digital Marketing Expertise

Marketing automation can be intimidating if you're new to the technology or strategy. As seen above, there's a lot to consider before launching your first campaign. That's why it’s a good idea to work with a seasoned marketing automation partner to get started on the right foot.

Now that we’ve discussed some of the basic requirements needed to get started with marketing automation, let’s take a look at some easy ways that you can automate marketing for your business.

Simple Workflows You Can Implement Now

There are countless workflows that can be created using some basic marketing automation logic. Here are five easy marketing automation campaigns that you can start now with data you likely already have.

1. Newsletter Welcome Email

Businesses spend a lot of time and money on blog and newsletter content. So when someone subscribes and asks to receive your content on a continual basis, you should thank them for their interest and give them a preview of the additional content they can expect to receive. Subscriber welcome emails are easy to set up and are triggered when a visitor submits the subscriber form on your website.

2. Email Reminders

Automated email reminders are a great way to keep customers informed about upcoming appointments, events, or other important dates. While these emails are often used to reduce the number of “no-show” appointments, they can also be a revenue driver. By sending a promotional reminder email to past customers who haven’t purchased or scheduled a service for an extended period of time, you can bring people back to your site for a sale.

To implement a reminder email workflow, you'll need data fields that track appointments, events, or the dates and times of a previous service or purchase. Emails are then triggered to send a certain number of days before or after an event.

3. New Customer Onboarding Emails

We all know it’s cheaper to retain a customer than acquire a new one. So you need to make sure all of your new customers feel welcomed and valued.

A new customer email cadence is an impactful way to thank someone for their business. You can also provide additional information around next steps, training, or other products and services that your business offers. The series of emails can extend for just a few days, span several weeks, or spread out over months following the initial purchase.

New customer onboarding emails are triggered when a new customer is added to your database. You'll need to include a "First Purchase Date" field in your CRM. The new customer workflow would contain all of the emails in the series and be set to deliver each email after certain time intervals.

4. Birthday Email

An automated birthday email is an easy, yet effective way to send a personalized email to your customers on their special day. Birthday emails, due to their personalization, usually have higher engagement than other emails. So, when sending birthday emails, take advantage of the increased engagement and include a personalized promo code to drive additional revenue for your business.

All you need to send a personalized birthday email is a "Date of Birth" field in your customer database. Birthday emails can then be triggered to send a few days before the customer’s birthday or on the actual day.

5. Content- or Topic-Triggered Emails

Once you fill your marketing automation database with contacts, you have visibility into their interactions with your website, emails, and other marketing campaigns. You can use these insights to trigger additional emails based on the content read or watched. Emails triggered by topic or content type can deliver even more valuable content to the user and present them with the logical next steps in the customer journey. This type of automation helps keep your business top-of-mind and generates even more engagement throughout your marketing.

Various triggers and logic can be set up to ensure you are sending the right message to the right audience, like a pageview, download, or specific action within an email. 

Start Using Marketing Automation Technology Today

Marketing automation continues to transform the marketing landscape. It gives you the ability to send personalized, one-to-one messages to your customers at exactly the right moment. This level of personalization helps you stand out amongst the competition, which translates to higher customer engagement and increased sales.

If marketing automation is not a part of your current digital marketing strategy, think about how you could leverage the technology to streamline processes and deliver improved communication to your customers and prospects.