Improved customer experience (45,9 %), improved quality of leads (37,7 %) and an increased number of leads (34,9 %) are deemed important benefits of marketing automation. – Liana Technologies “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation” (2017) - EmailMonday

Marketing automation is nothing new. Enterprise level companies have been using it for years. Over the past couple of years, marketing automation has become more popular for small businesses as they realize the benefits of a well implemented martech strategy.

You may still be asking yourself whether automated marketing is beneficial for a small business in the first place.

Do the associated benefits outweigh the technology’s monetary cost?
Is it too hard to implement for a small business?
Will the entire team use it or will it be a wasted expense?

The truth is that implementing marketing automation doesn’t have to be difficult if you choose the right system for your business. And when implemented correctly, it can have significant effects on your business growth and overall productivity.

This article walks you through a few different ways you can use marketing automation to streamline your sales and marketing efforts. Use these relatively basic automations to maximize your resources and generate better results.

Automate regular follow-ups

Automated marketing can help extend the reach of a resource-limited sales or marketing team by sending timely and relevant marketing and lead nurturing messages based on contact data and behavior.

Routine follow ups can be personalized to individual recipients with the inclusion of placeholders, which pull specific data from the contact records associated with those recipients.

Example: You run a business which designs and manufactures custom made surfboards. A customer submits an inquiry via your website for a quote on a custom board. That’s when automation kicks in and, based on your the data collected via the signup form, they are automatically added to the correct lead group (let’s call this group ‘Ian’s Clients’). Upon completing the form, the inquiring customer is immediately sent a personalized email addressing them by name, reiterating their custom specifications, and providing an estimated timeline for the quote.

This may seem trivial, but by streamlining arduous and routine procedures, a company can keep its employees from wasting valuable resources completing monotonous tasks. When a customer receives an automatic response to their inquiry, they’re reassured that they’ve been heard.

Gauge the Quality of New Leads with Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is an easy way to assess and reassess the quality and level of engagement of prospective customers as you lead them through your sales funnel. You can assign numerical values to various activities including clicks, likes, shares, and purchases. You can also assign negative values to interactions which cause consumers to distance themselves from your brand, like bounces and unsubscribes. You can also associate numerical values with static, demographic data. For example, if one of your clients belongs to upper management, you can score them higher than an entry level coordinator. The same can be done for purchasing power, yearly income, locality, or any other static data field. Detailed, up to the minute assessments of customer engagement & data enables your team to better understand where the contact is in the customer lifecycle.

Improve the Flow of Information

Marketing automation ensures that the right message is reaching the right people at the right time. Information gathered from your marketing campaigns will be stored in your account, leading to better insights for future campaigns. The ways in which your customers interact with your brand can trigger preconfigured workflows, journeys, and drip campaigns, allowing you to anticipate their needs and respond accordingly without lifting a finger.

Another advantage of having a fully integrated CRM is the ability to easily share information between the different branches of your company; i.e. sales, marketing, customer service. An integrated CRM will automatically pull data from all the platforms features and consolidate it into usable information. Having a single access point for all your company’s most valuable information, streamlines and enhances the process of gathering and disseminating data.

Always make content a top priority

The content you produce plays a huge part in how consumers perceive your brand. Your sales and marketing messages should reinforce the values and beliefs associated with your brand. Just as important as messaging is determining the channels through which your message is conveyed.

All of your automated messages need to be created before activating your journeys. Without the content, you won’t have any messages to send. Create all of your emails, guides, blog posts, ebooks, etc. to include in your automated sequence. These will help deliver valuable content to your contacts through the buyer’s journey.

Aim for a single, integrated database

It’s important that your company avoids operational silos by choosing an integrated CRM platform. The ramifications of an incoherent marketing plan can be dire. You don’t want to end up trying to manage a patchwork of tech solutions that cause you more headache than they’re worth.

GreenRope is an all in one digital business solution. Our platform is contact centric, with functionalities designed to keep you meaningfully connected to your customers. We’re more than just another automated marketing solution. GreenRope can help your small business increase brand awareness, improve customer satisfaction, consolidate valuable information, provide insightful analytics, generate beautiful webpages, and streamline your information sharing processes.

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What small businesses gain from automated marketing

Automate regular follow-ups

Gauge the Quality of New Leads with Lead Scoring

Improve the Flow of Information

Always make content a top priority

Aim for a single, integrated database