Marketing automation can be as simple or complex as you need for it to be in order to successfully reduce the workload of your team, and GreenRope provides a large variety of tools in an all-in-one package to help you accomplish this.

This blog is going to be for all the beginners out there. And in it, I would like to identify a few ways that you can start incorporating marketing automation into your business.

What do you want to automate?

First, you should identify what you want to automate. Do you want to automate follow-up emails once someone has signed up with their email address on your site? Do you want to use automation to nurture leads or push campaigns? How about automating your new employee onboarding process?

With most things, it's best to start small. Once you have a list of what you would like to automate, select one to begin working on. It's important to think of these first steps as setting the foundation for automation in your account.

I would suggest starting with signup forms. This is simple marketing automation that you can set up and implement with relative ease, and it takes next to no time! Signup forms will allow you to provide automated responses, trigger workflows to perform additional Automations, and will add everyone who fills out your signup form to your GreenRope system!

Setting up your automation

After you decide what you'd like to automate first, it's important to ask yourself the following questions: What are you trying to accomplish? What value does it provide the consumer?

Let’s use creating a signup form as an example.

What is the purpose of the signup form? The purpose of your signup form is to generate leads and grow your database. You need to think about the data you would like to collect and include that in your signup form. Remember, you will be using this data to send personalized messaging to contacts who sign up on your website.

Once you decide on the data you want to collect, it is time to create your form. With GreenRope's native sign-up form builder, contacts are automatically added to your list once they have confirmed their email.

Once you have created your signup form, it is time to think about the content they receive once they have opted-in. This email is going to be the first thing they see after providing you with their contact information, so it's important to be mindful of that and strive to make a great first impression!

Remember, always use a double opt-in process, so you maintain the integrity of your contact list.

Thinking about your follow up emails.

The purpose of your signup form follow-up emails is to attract the attention of your lead and get them to engage with your brand, and hopefully, nurture and lead them down your sales funnel.

If your company offers a number of different services or products, you will want to send relevant information/content to them based on what they are interested in. For example, if you offer website design, social media, and PPC management, and the lead requested more information about PPC, you do not want to send them information about web design or social media.

Using the example above, create different emails with specific content geared toward each of your services. You can also use Dynamic Data Merge rules, so that you can use one template, but provide different content based on rules you setup within your dynamic placeholder rules you've created within GreenRope.

Tip: Some platforms, like GreenRope, come with built-in logic, so that you can easily segment your contacts based on the data you collect in your signup form. This is a great way to organize your contacts and create automated campaigns based on this data!

Workflows associated with campaigns.

Once you have built your signup form, it's time to think about what comes next. Do your sales people follow up with a phone call? If they open all of your emails and click on your links, are they started on a journey with more information? These are all aspects of lead nurturing and automation that you must start thinking about.

Creating a customer journey map and highlighting the different stages each lead goes through from the time they signup on your website, all the way down to how they progress as they receive your emails and either click or don’t click on your content.

A visual guide will help you organize the way you set up your automation strategy. For example, when a person signs up, do they immediately get an email and a phone call from a sales person? What if they do not open your email, do you resend it? All of these may seem small, but play a big and important role in your lead nurturing.

Back to workflows. If a lead signs up and starts receiving your emails, is a salesperson notified to follow up with the lead? This is where workflows come into play and are quite helpful in streamlining your overall process.

To learn more about workflows, click here.

Workflows consist of a series of actions that happen as a result of a specific behavior, such as signing up on a signup form, perusing your website, clicking on a link in your email, etc.

If you would like a salesperson to follow up with your leads once they signup, you should develop a workflow that prompts your salesperson with CRM activities, so they can follow up in a timely manner.

Put your plan into action and test!

Marketing automation takes strategy, persistence and testing. Once you set up your first go at marketing automation, see how it performs for the first couple of weeks. Track your read rates, conversions, click throughs, and more to see how well your content is resonating with your contacts.

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Marketing Automation for Beginners

What do you want to automate?

Setting up your automation

Thinking about your follow up emails.

Workflows associated with campaigns.

Put your plan into action and test!