Marketing automation is great for continually engaging your clients and leads. Since the processes are automatic, using marketing automation platforms allows you to focus on other tasks while your campaigns run in the background.
To get the most out of your automated campaigns, there are several things you should do before, during, and after.
Before
Before you create your automated marketing campaign, you need to know what you are hoping to accomplish. Having a well-structured plan means you will have a well-structured campaign. A planned and well-executed campaign is sure to be more engaging for your contacts than an unplanned campaign which would seem more sporadic.
Consistency is key when planning your marketing automation campaign so keep these questions in mind:
- What is the goal of the campaign?
- Where should the campaign start?
- How often do I want to communicate with each contact?
- Does each contact need to receive each message?
- Can I personalize my content?
- Should a staff member step in at any point?
- What communication channel is best for each message?
Another thing to keep in mind is the devices your leads and clients will be using to view your messages. With over half of all email being opened on mobile devices, it's important that you ensure that all your emails are optimized for mobile.
During
During the campaign, you can almost set it and forget it. However, it is important to monitor the email address you are sending from so that you don't miss any replies from contacts looking to speak with someone directly.
Another thing you can have set up during your marketing automation campaign is A/B split testing. If you have several options you want to try for one message, test all of them automatically and go with the one that performs the best after a set period of time.
Try A/B split testing:
- Subject lines
- CTAs
- Header images
- Email design
- Marketing messages
- Testimonials
- Message layout
- Offers and promotions
- Personalization
A/B split testing is one of the most effective ways to optimize your marketing automation campaigns because it is based on the real reaction and interaction of your contacts. This means that you are able to make your messages more appealing based on the opinion of real people.
After
Once your campaign has come to a close, or if it has at least come to a close for a large sample size of contacts, it's time to review the results of the campaign. Marketing automation platforms have reporting built right in and they also allow you to download complete data sets for further analysis.
When analyzing reports, the most important thing to keep in mind are:
- How many people went through the flow?
- Where did they all come from?
- How many converted?
- Where in the flow did they convert?
- Were some messages more effective than others?
- Which ones?
- Are the results what you expected?
- What can you change to improve them?
If you'd like to try marketing automation for yourself, sign up for a free 14-day trial of SimplyCast 360.
