Starting with marketing automation

Marketing automation is an invaluable tool for businesses looking to increase their reach and grow their customer base. By automating marketing tasks, companies can save time and money while also gaining greater insight into the success of their campaigns.

With the right strategy and technology in place, businesses can use marketing automation to develop more personalized relationships with customers at scale. In this guide, I’ll share what marketing automation is, how it works, and some quick tips on getting the most out of your automated campaigns.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is a marketing strategy that streamlines marketing processes and allows you to deliver personalized messages while scaling your marketing efforts. It automates portions of tedious and time-consuming marketing activities, like email marketing, social media marketing, and more.

Implementing marketing automation can significantly reduce costs, increase efficiency, achieve better customer interactions, and provide much-needed insights and reports.

Popular marketing automation platforms include:

• HubSpot
• Salesforce
• Zoho
• SharpSpring
• Keap (Formerly Infusionsoft)
• Mailchimp

Of course, the capabilities vary. HubSpot is pretty extensive, while Mailchimp is fairly basic regarding automation.

Start by planning

Before you dive head-first into marketing automation, it’s important to have a plan in place that outlines your goals and objectives! Aim high because marketing automation can be an extremely effective tool if used correctly.

Once your goals are established, create a strategy and timeline to lay out the steps needed and decide what technology and platforms are necessary for implementation.

Managing your automation campaigns

After you’ve taken the necessary steps to get started, it’s time to manage your automation campaigns. Analyzing data is key here: Use reports and metrics to help refine your strategies and optimize content and messaging. Pay attention to how users interact with marketing messages and take note of what works best for different audiences.

Tips for getting the most out of marketing automation 

Here are ten quick tips for getting the most out of marketing automation:

1. Define your ideal customer.
2. Use personalization techniques strategically.
3. Set up automated drip campaigns.
4. Have an attitude of helping, not selling.
5. Leverage multiple channels, but focus on the one with the most potential for you.
6. Integrate marketing automation with your website,
7. Track, measure, and modify your approach regularly.
8. Prioritize quality over quantity.
9. Segment messages to target different groups.
10. Hire an expert if you don’t want to become an expert yourself.

Why wait?

Marketing automation is a powerful tool to leverage if you want to reach more customers, save time and money on marketing activities, gain insights into your campaigns, and deliver personalized messages. With the right strategy in place and technology implemented correctly, businesses can use marketing automation to create stronger relationships with their customers at scale.

If this all sounds intimidating or you don’t have the bandwidth for it yourself, my digital marketing agency is a Certified HubSpot Partner who can help make sure that your automated campaigns are set up properly.