Marketing Automation Workflows: Run Your Marketing Campaigns on Autopilot

Automation is known to make tasks simpler, faster, and cost-effective. For example, marketing automation helps automate repetitive tasks, such as email marketing, social media posting, and optimizing ad campaigns.

63% of businesses that use marketing automation outperformed competitors, while 77% saw a 14.5% increase in sales productivity.

But the question is, what exactly is marketing automation? What aspects of marketing can be automated? And how marketing automation workflows can impact the business’s bottom line?

We will answer all these questions today. Read on!

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is the process of using software to automate repetitive marketing activities. For instance, you can trigger emails automatically when someone performs a task on your website (such as add products to the cart, browse a product, etc.). Similarly, with CRM marketing automation, you can send lead information to your CRM automatically.

In other words, marketing automation frees marketers’ time doing repetitive tasks, improves operational efficiency, and grows revenue faster.

Source: Medium.com

Importance of Marketing Automation Workflows

For starters, marketing automation workflows help build better relationships with customers, increase conversions and retention rates.

In other words, it makes it easier for you to move your customers down the sales funnel by outlining a series of actions that they should follow.

Here are some benefits of marketing automation workflows for businesses:

• Time-saving: You can schedule campaigns ahead of time to stay relevant and competitive. This also means that you can channel your working hours into other projects.
• Higher scalability: With marketing automation, you can run more campaigns simultaneously. You can even optimize them automatically. For instance, Google’s smart bidding helps you optimize your ad spends for your goals automatically.
• Personalization: Advanced automation tools allow you to create a tailored and unique experience for each customer (e.g., trigger-based email automation), thereby increasing engagement and sales.
• Increased lead generation: With behavioral targeting and trigger-based marketing messages, you can attract leads when they are more likely to engage.
• Nurture leads: Nurturing leads is a time-consuming process. Following each lead manually could be tiresome and tricky. However, with marketing automation workflows, you can easily nurture them.

Critical Components of Marketing Automation Workflows

Using marketing automation is one thing and succeeding in it is another. To succeed and get a significant return on investment, you need to create a goal-focused marketing automation workflow using ERP software.

Here are the four critical components of marketing automation (and how you can use them.

1- Triggers

As the name suggests, triggers get activated when a customer performs a specific task or meets some criteria on your website or app. For example:

• Occurrence of event: Let’s say someone viewed products in your store but left without taking action or added items to the cart but didn’t complete the purchase. Your workflows will trigger during such events.
• Enter or exit a segment: Your workflows will trigger when a user meets specific criteria (based on what you set). For example, say you have a segment of customers who signed up for your free trial. You can initiate a “free trial to paid user conversion” campaigns three days before their trial ends.

2- Actions

Once your workflows are triggered, what action do you want your customers to take? You need to be clear with the actions to make it easier for customers and move them down the sales funnel.

Here are some ways to highlight the actions:

• Email
• Web and push notifications
• In-app messages
• SMS
• Web overlays
• Facebook and Google re-marketing
• What’s app messages

3- Conditions

When you send action-specific messages, these can happen:

• User responds
• The user does not respond
• The user is not reachable
• The user completes the action

You need to create different messages and strategies for each possibility. For example:

The user responds 

How does the user respond? Positively or negatively? Tailor your messages accordingly.

The user does not respond

• Send follow-up messages.
• Allow customers to opt out of messages.

The user is not reachable

• Try after some days
• Mark the lead as bad

The user completes the action

• Send thank you emails.
• Guide them through your product and help them use your product better.

4- Flow control

It defines the delay in your marketing automation workflows to ensure your customers get enough time to evaluate the options. It also prevents them from getting frustrated with back-to-back messages.

Depending on the campaign’s urgency and the criticality of action, the flow control can be optimized. For instance, if you have a sale in the next week, you may want to remind users 24-48 hours before it.

Marketing Automation Workflows Examples

When you buy marketing automation software, you can set different workflows using the components mentioned above. Here are some examples to help you get started!

Srouce: moosend.com

1- Reduce Cart Abandonment

Cart abandonment is one of the major issues in the eCommerce industry. However, with the right eCommerce software, you can reduce it.

Here’s a condition and marketing automation workflow example to reduce cart abandonment:

• Adds products to their cart
• Leaves the website without buying. (workflow triggered). 
• Wait for two-three hours.
• If the customer doesn’t come back, send a push notification on the mobile app.
• Wait for six hours. If the customer doesn’t respond, send an email reminding items left in the cart with additional recommendations.

2- Nurture Leads

Nurturing leads require hyper-personalized strategies and continuous efforts. For example, if a user has downloaded an eBook from your website or attended a webinar, you can follow up with more content tailored to their interests. You can even invite them to other webinars related to the same topic.

3- Engaging Inactive Users

When a customer is inactive for too long, it’s time to trigger reactivation campaigns. Here’s one way to do so:

• The user is inactive for a long time (say three months).
• Are they reachable on the web or app? Send push notifications
• If not, send an email saying “miss you,” or “come back,” or lucrative offers.
• Wait for another two days, and then send another follow-up email.

4- Re-targeting Campaigns

Let’s say someone visited your website but didn’t do any action. Since they haven’t signed up, you don’t have their email address. But, with cookies, you can track their activity.

Then, create Facebook or Google retargeting campaigns to reach them on other websites and remind them to take action on your site.

Conclusion

Marketing automation workflows help you run your campaigns on autopilot. All you need to do is set the criteria and forget. Then, analyze the results and optimize your strategies accordingly.

Are you ready to leverage marketing automation to boost your ROI? Still, concerned? Let us know your concerns, and we will address them asap!

Rohit Rajpal

Rohit Rajpal is an accomplished writer and data enthusiast passionate about unraveling the intricacies of information and data. With a deep understanding of the subject matter, Rohit strives to simplify complex concepts and make them accessible to readers. Rohit’s expertise in the field and his knack for clear and concise communication make his blog an invaluable resource for those seeking clarity in the data-driven world.