Sales and marketing is a lot of work. From generating leads and nurturing those leads to meetings, onboarding, and more, there are so many aspects of taking a lead from awareness to conversion. Plus, managing your leads through the funnel requires a team effort, everyone is involved and a part of the customer journey.

Manual tasks, such as follow-ups, sending marketing emails, and reporting are all time-consuming, especially when your business starts to expand rapidly. When productivity diminishes, so do results.

Incorporating an automation tool like GreenRope CRM and marketing automation can be a game changer. Once implemented, a fully integrated solution helps you take back control of your business and opens the door for opportunities previously unrealized.

Finding the balance between automation and human touchpoints

It's important to note that not every point of contact should be automated. Finding a balance between automation and manual touch points is critical for delivering the best possible customer experience. Designing customizable journeys allows you to automate, while also bringing in key person-to-person touchpoints that make all the difference in the relationship. Because automation and CRM take out a lot of the guesswork of determining qualified leads, you are able to focus on high-value leads and clients, while also nurturing those relationships that may not be quite ready to convert.

Workflow automation improves your sales and marketing efforts

Workflow automation brings efficiency and improves your business process to drive results and increase sales. For example, automating your lead nurturing campaigns can help you quickly reach more people with relevant and timely information. Automating internal processes, like transitions between sales and marketing can help streamline the customer experience, improving the likelihood of conversion.

72% of adults in the U.S prefer engaging with companies through emails. Automating your lead nurturing campaigns - both relevant to sales and marketing - can significantly improve your productivity as well as your chance of conversion.

While email is one of the most commonly automated efforts, there are a lot of processes you can automate to improve workflow within your organization.

Automated workflows can:

Keep track of your company's progress by measuring performance and meeting revenue targets.
Eliminate redundant tasks and allow staff to focus on more productive and urgent activities.
Create or update contact data records.
Segment your contacts into customized groups.
Send invoices, documents, contracts, and more.
Assign tasks to team members.
Trigger email sequences and lead nurturing campaigns.

So, what are some ways that you can employ automation in your own business to improve both productivity and sales conversions?

1. Automated Tasks

Automated workflows send you reminders about upcoming activities and tasks. For example, it can remind you about a phone call you need to make to a customer or an upcoming meeting.

Sales and marketing staff become busy fast, and having such timely reminders will ensure you don't miss an important appointment. Workflows can trigger emails, SMS messages or other automated follow-ups to your clients.

Automation is a way of improving your follow-up efforts. Send automated emails, SMS follow-ups, surveys, etc. to engage leads and clients Automated tasks allow you to touch base with the lead without the manual heavy lifting. That being said, automation can also automatically assign a sales call or follow up email to a team member for a more personal touchpoint. Automated tasks ensure that no chance for engagement slips through the cracks. Studies have shown that customers need at least 5 follow-ups to increase their chance of conversion. Automation can help streamline this process.

2. Automated Lead Nurturing

Automated nurturing makes building stronger relationships with potential customers easier. Building trust and loyalty happen when you provide information and resources like case studies, review, and comparisons to potential customers. It helps to push your leads down the sales funnel during their buying journey without constant manual touchpoints..

Using marketing automation and segmentation, you can send targeted sequences based on webpages visited or links clicked in an email. An automated lead nurturing system can also remind customers about an abandoned cart. Such reminders help to nurture leads and improve your revenue.

Lead nurturing best practices:

Create targeted content. Leverage content that is targeted to specific audiences. This helps get the attention of your leads and customers, offering the right information at the right time.
Be timely with your follow-ups. First and foremost, follow up on all inquiries in a timely manner. The sooner you are able to engage the lead, the better. Then, make sure your email sequences are spaced out enough not to bombard them with information, but not far enough apart they forget about your product and/or service in the meantime.
Use a multi-channel approach. Make use of alternative channels such as social media, webinars, blog posts, and retargeting ads.
Use lead scoring. Set up a lead scoring strategy to identify your most qualified leads. For example, leads that open or click on an email are more engaged and likely to convert than those that don’t engage, or worse, unsubscribe.
Always personalize your communication. Personalization is pretty standard these days, and customers expect it. Personalize your outreach efforts using the valuable data collected and stored in your CRM.

3. Automated Calendar Bookings

Automated bookings make work easier for your staff and customers. For example, set up a booking calendar so leads and clients can schedule appointments with you automatically.

By enabling a booking calendar, more customers will schedule appointments with you, rather than having to wait for a back and forth on date and time. Automated bookings help to save time that staff would have used to collect and input bookings in the system. It also helps to reduce scheduling errors that can negatively impact customer experience.

Today's business world requires you to adapt to systems that will keep you in business and ahead of competitors. A CRM is an intelligent system that helps automate your work and increase profit. It enables you to reach more customers faster through automated email marketing campaigns, follow-ups, and lead nurturing processes. It ensures teams can eliminate redundant work and focus on other critical business operations that boost sales.

With GreenRope, you can automate your sales and marketing processes and attract new customers. The platform helps you personalize communication and target the right audience. Get your free demo.

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Finding the balance between automation and human touchpoints

Workflow automation improves your sales and marketing efforts

1. Automated Tasks

2. Automated Lead Nurturing

3. Automated Calendar Bookings