Started integrating marketing automation? Great, but successful automated marketing comes down to five key steps, all of which are equally important. Take time to carefully consider each step, and you’ll be more likely to reap the benefits.
Automation tools from places like SharpSpring can help you generate leads, increase your sales and boost your profits – if you do it right! So take the time to do it right from the start with these 5 essential steps to marketing automation success.
Step 1. Create Marketing Personas
Personas are exactly what they sound like—characters that represent your ideal customer. Automated marketing gives you many ways to target these personas. Create them in advance so that when you’re ready to start marketing, you can take full advantage of everything automation has to offer. Your personas should be detailed enough that other members of your team can use them as well.
Step 2. Define KPIs
One of your most important tasks as a marketer is defining key performance indicators (KPI’s). Before you even begin automating your marketing, make sure you know what success looks like and how you’ll measure it. KPIs may include email open-rates, time on site, or social sharing of your content. For help determining which KPIs are right for your business, check out our post on eCommerce metrics that really matter.
Step 3. Create Your Buyer Funnel
As soon as someone signs up for your list, you should immediately ask them to opt in again. This is a double-check method in case they accidentally clicked away from their submission. Once they’ve agreed again, you should email them a link back to a thank you page on your website with a full explanation of how automated marketing works and what benefits they will get from it. This ensures that you fully inform them before they take any action on your emails.
Step 4. Create An Email Sequence
An email sequence is a series of automated emails that get sent over a period of time, designed to attract potential customers and convert them into paying customers. Step 4 focuses on how you can use email sequences in your marketing strategy to increase sales, build relationships with customers, and communicate with your audience.
Step 5. Monitor Performance & Test
This is an important stage in building an effective email campaign. How are subscribers responding? What subject lines, call-to-action (CTA) buttons, and offers are most effective? Is your content resonating with them? Where can you improve? These questions need to be asked and answered during testing periods, which is why it’s important not to put all your eggs in one basket. Test different emails, subject lines, and CTA buttons across various segments of subscribers.
This wraps up our five-step guide to marketing automation. Starting your business is great but it’s important to remember that you need to keep moving forward, no matter how much time or effort it takes. The key to successful automation is to follow through with your vision and be persistent.
