According to a definition by
Sales Force, “marketing automation is technology that manages marketing processes and multifunctional campaigns, across multiple channels, automatically”. Marketing automation helps businesses send automated messages as emails, web messages, SMS and across their social media platforms via workflows. These workflows are already established templates that are repeatedly used to shoot out messages to potential and existing customers.
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The relevance of
marketing automation cannot be overemphasized, as it helps businesses run online marketing campaigns and engage in effective lead generation. This takes the burden off employees in the sales and marketing departments who would have manually carried out the process. Hence, errors and labour are drastically minimized.
In this article, we will be exploring the necessary steps to set up a marketing automation platform to help your business automate existing marketing strategies while developing others.
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Determine Your Marketing Strategy
The first thing you will want to do in order to set up your marketing automation process is to figure out the
marketing strategy or strategies you want to employ. Marketing in business is not something you just wake up to and expect to work out. You have to draw a workable plan for your marketing process. What platforms do you want to use? Will it be digital or traditional? Will third parties be involved? These are pertinent questions you must ask yourself before you even begin.
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Identify The Tools Needed
After you must have determined your marketing strategy, you need to find out the specific ones to automate and then identify the tools that are needed. Create a content calendar for your social media platforms and get social media automation tools that can help. For instance, if you decide to automate your email marketing campaigns, you will need to identify email marketing tools that can automate the entire process. An example is
Mailchimp. You can discover several other options.
Workflows are templates you create initially to begin your automation process. Once they are set up, there will be no need to go over them again. Create a basic workflow for message automation. Whether you require your audience to sign up for your newsletter, visit your website, download your application or buy your book, you will have to make provisions for that. This way, every message or
email you send, for instance, will have such provisions. One helpful tool you can use to create workflows, amongst others, is
SimpleCast.
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Set Up A Message Connection
It is called workflow because it is a process that needs to be followed sequentially. You wouldn’t want your prospective customer to get a ‘thanks for your patronage’ message when they only signed up for your newsletter. This means you need to create a connection for the messages and set up criteria to regulate the process. Arrange the messages based on the prospect’s activities on your website or connection with your product.
Before launching anything at all, run a test campaign. Your marketing automation process should not be an exception. After you have completed the design and set up the connections, you will need to run a test campaign to identify bugs and loopholes where necessary, depending on the platform. This will prevent your marketing campaign from being a flop.
This process involves examining your current contact list, refreshing it and adding relevant ones. This will contain your prospects to whom you will be shooting the campaigns. Obviously, as new people sign up for your newsletter or make contact with your product/service, you will also add them up. This is why the list also needs to be categorized according to the prospect’s actions.
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Create Contents And Launch
This will be the final lap of your automation process. Depending on the platform you are making use of, you need to create relevant contents (text, graphic and video) that will communicate what you desire. Once this is established, you are free to launch your marketing automation platform. Also, make sure to delegate the process to the individuals who will be competent enough to monitor it.
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