Ask any business owner what the main resource they’re lacking is and a big number of them will tell you it’s time. Savvy people are always trying to find a way to save time without sacrificing results. Marketing automation is a powerful option that will continue to boom as businesses start to make full use of its ability to save time and improve results.
Trend setting companies have been using the power of automation for years to streamline their communication and sales processes, and we’re now seeing the rest of the business world catch up. Software like Mailchimp, Zapier and advanced Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools have made effective automation possible for all businesses.
The possibilities for automation are almost endless, but one powerful use is for the nurture process of prospective customers. Nurturing involves cultivating relationships with potential customers at every stage of the sales process, and the most efficient way to do this is through regular email contact.
Often a customer is not ready to buy at the exact moment they encounter your business. As long as you collect their contact details, you can keep in touch with them until they are ready to buy. This can be time consuming, but an automated email nurture track can make it easier.
By analysing the behaviour of your contact list through tracking clicks and opens, you can build up a picture of not only what interests them (and send them more relevant information), but you can learn who is most likely to buy at any point in time. This can help focus your sales team and ensure that they are spending their time on the warmest contacts.
Get personal with your emails
Email is the main method of communication for businesses worldwide. Whether it be internally, or to clients and prospects, its use won’t be decreasing anytime soon. This means that email marketing will remain an important part of the marketing scene.
Effective email marketing is more than just merging a customer’s first name into an email template. Email software of 2019 allows you to send different emails to various subscribers based on their interests. The distinctions in your email list can come from the types of content your subscribers engage with, the products they browse online, or fields of interest you have tagged for them in your CRM.
These emails are fully trackable, meaning that you can see exactly who has clicked or opened your email, as well as exactly what parts engaged them the most. Automation lets you follow up appropriately before a human even gets involved.
The data you collect from your tracked emails can then be transformed into leads for a business, as well as give an indication of what consumers are most interested in, so you can further customise future communication. This results in the creation of better and more relevant material, ensuring more clicks and a higher overall engagement.
Consumers will ignore or delete an email that doesn’t seem relevant to them, often without even opening it! If you are lucky enough to have a potential customer open your email, you have one chance to make it count. You want it to grab their interest enough to read further, and hopefully click through to your website or get in contact with you. Don’t waste time sending generic emails, instead focus on providing relevant and interesting content your readers will appreciate.
Content marketing remains the backbone of any solid marketing strategy
Before you can automate your emails and nurture your leads, you need to have a solid foundation of information to share with them. Content marketing has been around for a long time; it involves creating valuable material designed to educate consumers on problems and solutions.
This strategy allows businesses to make the best impression possible, as it helps people discover them and what they can do. In an age where customers are often conducting their own research, it’s content that will give them insight into who the company is and their values, as well as what makes them different from their competitors.
Great content housed on a company website should be repurposed to be included in regular email newsletters, so it’s important to have a constant flow of fresh and relevant material. Over time, customers will develop an understanding of what the business can do for them, and eventually they will become top of mind when evaluating purchase alternatives.
It also allows depth to be created on a website, which in turn improves SEO and attracts web traffic from the intended audience. However, it’s important that you don’t transform this into collateral or sales material, as this is what differentiates this trend from traditional advertising. Customers want to read interesting features that educate them, not be bombarded by sales messages!
The forces of content marketing, automation and personalised emails will join together to make life easier for businesses. Companies who fail to update their practices will be left behind.
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