If you’re new to marketing automation, you might want to think about how you and your team will want to adopt those automated processes in the right way. Considering how the marketing automation industry is growing with increased adoption rates, it’s important to ensure automation is done efficiently. For starters, let’s consider a few statistics:
a. About 49% of businesses use some form of email automation. (Email monday, 2018)
b. In the next two years, an additional 21% of marketing leaders plan to use a marketing automation platform. (Salesforce, 2017)
c. Spending for marketing automation tools is expected to reach $25.1 billion annually by 2023. (Martech Today, 2018)
d. 79% of top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for three or more years. (Venture Harbour, 2017)
e. 80% of marketers using automation software generate more leads. (LinkedIn, 2016)
Source: HubSpot Marketing Statistics
Clearly, many industries are adopting marketing automation software and technology tools;these are few really important things that you need to keep in mind while making your choices:
1. Don’t automate bad processes and beware of outsourced lists
Map your marketing processes that drive traffic and leads thoroughly. Flow of leads through the funnel, including allocation and their sources are key. Hence, map those properties accurately. Make sure that the members of your team who run these processes are on-board with any changes that such automation will bring to their day-to-day work. Appointing a change manager (champion) who is a marketing process specialist will save you time and money. Identify and eliminate poor processes – fix the process before you can automate it.
2. Beware of outsourced lists and automate lead qualification to stay compliant
Avoid buying email lists and sending them automated email campaigns. These will fail and become costly to resolve. Especially now, with GDPR, this can get your business into a whole lot of trouble. Automation tools can be a life-saver with their inbuilt measures to ensure that some of your processes are compliant with the new laws. That said, the software is an only enabler and you must do the work to stay compliant. To further help the process, focus on creating exciting content that will motivate people to sign up for your content offerings (say, eBooks and animated GIFs) and build + grow your own opt-in database that can deliver better lead conversion.
Email databases will expire as the years roll by so it’s important to keep generating new leads at a higher rate than the expiry rate; which is about 25% per year. To generate new leads, you need to consistently create better content, design interesting calls-to-actions &landing pages, write engaging blogs and optimise your website for the search engines. Automation is great for nurturing leads, but you need to generate those leads first for the next step to happen.
3. Don’t let fancy features fool you
When deploying a marketing automation for your needs, don’t let fancy features fool you. Each software will have different learning curve, and maybe using a software with an easier UI might speed up processes. But, if it doesn’t solve your marketing process related (specific) problems, then it might not be the software for you.