What is marketing automation

 

It is the act of planning and configuring in advance all the steps involved in the process of converting a potential customer (lead) into a customer.

The potential of marketing automation is that once this “machinery” is set up, no human intervention is required during the conversion process, as all emails, notifications and actions are automatically executed with automation software. In this way we can also focus our efforts on attracting new customers who will feed the “machinery”.

In summary, marketing automation starts from the moment we attract traffic until we generate the desired conversions with the new leads that we capture through the Internet and other media and channels.

 

Why we should bet on marketing automation

Marketing automation saves us a lot of time, but above all it allows us to do a more personalized and therefore more effective marketing. Other advantages are:

  • Increase online sales
  • Increase the number of new leads
  • Segment our database to better understand our audience
  • Save costs in the recruitment and sales process
  • Unify business and digital efforts on a single platform
  • We help all our clients of the consulting firm Convert + in the process of automating their business and especially in the process of capturing qualified leads. Once the “machinery” is active, we must focus all our efforts on attracting new potential customers, and more so in this time when recruitment is cheap through social networks.

What we need to implement marketing automation in our business

  • Valuable content and exclusive offers that we can offer to attract new potential clients (leads)
  • Funnels (the steps a client takes to generate the conversion we want)
  • Tags (to activate actions and segment our database)
  • Triggers (triggers) and automation elements. Example: opening emails, clicks on links, unsubscriptions, completed forms, visited web page, etc.)
  • Landing pages optimized for conversions to get more leads and sell more
  • A human team specialized in strategy, analytics and automation that can keep our automation campaigns optimized.
  • Different automation, recruitment and online sales tools.

Automating our businesses is about testing and testing new formulas to increase conversions. Good marketing automation is constantly updated, so you will see that more and more companies and professionals are dedicated to creating funnels.

 

Marketing automation tools

As I mentioned earlier, marketing automation is about using different tools, not just automating actions and emails.

With our clients and in our projects we use at least:

WordPress to attract organic traffic with a good content strategy

Facebook Ads to capture qualified leads

 

How to create a marketing automation campaign

To create a marketing automation campaign you will need to create a funnel with the steps that your potential client must take to become a client.

 

What you need to create a funnel?

Define what you are going to sell and how you want to sell it

If you sell a digital product you have two options:

Add value and first sell a tripwire (a digital product for $ 30 or less) and then another product for $ 100 to $ 500.

Directly sell a product for $ 100 to $ 500 after adding valuable content.

 

If you sell a service you also have two options:

Add value and offer a free pre-filter session to sell the service on that same call.

 Example

Samantha sells a consulting service for $ 1,000 and has created a funnel through which she first shares 3 valuable videos to potential clients of hers and then offers a free session to those who want advice. In the session, Samantha will help the client and at the end she will make her sales pitch. Each potential client costs Samantha $ 10, however, of every 100 potential clients who watch her videos, 25 ask for a free session and 5 become consulting clients. As you will see, Samantha invests $ 1,000 and gets a return of $ 5,000. She does all of this she does it through a funnel.

 

Provide value and first offer a low-cost service and then sell a higher value one.

Example

Samantha has created a funnel to add value and then sell a 2-hour consulting session for $ 150. After holding the $ 150 session, Maria offers these same clients the option to upgrade to her $ 1,000 consulting service for just $ 850 more.

As you can see, Samantha has the same goal in both funnels, which is to sell her consulting service for $ 1,000. However, she uses different funnels and methods to reach her target.

Who are you going to sell it to?

After being clear about what you will sell and how you will sell it, you will have to define the profile of the potential customers you want to attract. For this exercise, I recommend you think about the following:

  • What problems your audience has and how your product or service can solve them
  • What obstacles does your audience have in their day to day
  • What do you like and what you don’t like (interests)
  • What you read and who your audience admires
  • Who is your competition

With these questions you will be able to land a buyer persona of your potential client and this will help you create valuable content and above all to better segment your lead capture campaigns.

Knowing the problems of your audience will also help you in your sales pitch.

 

Example of a funnel for marketing automation

Next I share one of the most effective funnels for the sale of digital products and services.

Marketing Automation

To help you understand this funnel, I will review with you each of the steps exposed in the previous graph.

  1. Paid traffic. Paid traffic consists of attracting visits to a web page through advertising campaigns. With advertising campaigns in search engines and social networks we can bring traffic. BEWARE, you don’t always have to invest in paid traffic, I have dozens of funnels that work daily with organic traffic.
  2. Recruitment is generated when users who arrive through advertising campaigns leave us their data to access valuable content or the offer that we promised. Basically it is a barter.
  3. The first sale with an offer in this funnel is made immediately. In a usual funnel, the user leaves their data on a landing page for recruitment and is then redirected to a thank you page with the instructions to access the promised content. However, in this funnel we change the thank you page for a sales page with an irresistible offer.

 

 Example

Following Samantha’s case, imagine that she offers a video to her potential clients on a recruitment landing page. Automatically, when potential clients leave her data, she redirects them to an offer landing page where she offers a session with her with a 50% discount. Instead of selling it for $ 150, she will sell it for only $ 75. In her pitch she makes it clear to the client that with the free video he will be able to implement it alone, but with her session he will be able to do it with her hand in hand. Samantha will pressure the client with a counter and with a text or video through which she explains that if the client closes the page she will never again be able to access the offer of the session. These types of actions will seem aggressive but they are very effective if we have attracted good potential clients.

  1. Delivery of what was promised. As you saw, in this funnel the user receives a purchase proposal immediately, although at the same time he must have received what was promised in her email. In this way we would be fulfilling the promise and taking advantage of a window to generate income. The delivery of what is promised is usually done through emails, I recommend that the user first verify their desire to receive the promise and other content in the future (Double opt-in).
  2. Second sale with offer. The last part of the funnel consists of sending an email only to users who did NOT buy the session with the first offer (with labels it is very easy to activate these emails). Obviously, we have to try to sell her the session again with a new offer (remember that Maria announced that she would never be available for the 75 dollar offer again).

It is important that we are honest and consistent with our messages and automations. Remember that marketing automation is not based on selling a single product or service, it is about selling several products and services to the same customer in a personalized and automated way.

This aggressive-effective funnel may or may not work for you. In our case, we only activate this funnel at specific times and sometimes we even add more emails with valuable content (articles, PDFs and videos) between step 4 and 5.

The importance of labels in marketing automation

As I mentioned in the fifth step of the previous funnel, with tags it is easy to send segmented and personalized emails. Automation is based on tags.

We can use tags to:

  • Segment our list of leads
  • Where they come from (organic, paid or direct traffic)
  • What state are they in (cold lead, hot lead, interested lead, customer course X, customer course Y, etc.)
  • To provoke a reaction
  • To measure conversions (KPIs)
  • To start or stop campaigns and funnels

In automation we use labels to provoke reactions and generate immediate conversions in the medium-long term. It’s best to have everything labeled if you want to do more personalized marketing.

Difference between lists and labels

Many professionals confuse traditional Email Marketing lists with labels, which is why I have created a simple image that quickly sums up the difference.

As you will see in the graph, we can use the lists to summarize types of customers, but with the labels we can segment our leads in an ideal way.

With labels we can send more personalized emails and only to interested users, and this is the magic of using marketing automation.

Marketing Automation

Example: How to tag the behavior of your leads

As you will see in the image below, in a single email I am using three tags:

Tag “SEO” and “email interest mkt” for users who click on articles. With these tags I can send emails to these people in the future. Imagine that I take an Email Marketing course, I don’t have to send it to all my contacts, I only send it to those who have shown interest.

Tag “Social Media interest” to identify the users who tried to buy the course. In this way I can send emails only to those users who did show interest. Many people leave the payment process halfway and with this tag I can win back customers.

Example: A funnel to sell following a tag

To show you the potential of a tag I have created a graph with a funnel generated as a result of the tag “Social Media interest”. I will go over each step with you.

Users who click on the purchase link will go to the sale page

After 3 days, users will receive a reminder email because they showed interest in buying the product. But BEWARE, we are going to exclude the leads with the buyer label so that only the ones we are interested in (non-buyers) are reached.

Some of these users will go to the sale page and buy and we can assign the tag “buyer course Social Media ads”. I

Many would end the funnel when leads become customers but from experience I recommend maintaining communication. You can send them more valuable and free content to build loyalty. I even like to give them surprise gifts.

A few days later he sends an upsell email to sell something related to the users who opened the previous emails.

 

Marketing Automation

The triggers in marketing automation

As you may have seen in the previous funnel, I have used triggers (if they open emails) and automation elements (counters) to set up my funnel. Depending on the automation tool you will have more or less triggers (triggers). The most interesting thing is that we can combine triggers to make more personalized automations.

The triggers and elements that we use the most

I will share with you some triggers and elements that I use in automations with clients and in my projects. But first I want you to understand the difference between triggers and elements.

  •  Triggers
  • Click on link
  • Opening or not opening an email
  • Subscription in form or list
  •  Elements
  • Wait up to X time (minutes, hours, days)
  • Notify by email and send lead information
  • Keep in mind that automation is logical, which is why many programmers are so good at automation.

We automate using IF / THEN logic (in English; YES / THEN in Spanish). I give you examples:

  • If a user registers in a form then we put a label or send an email
  • If it has the label “X” and the label “Y” then we will send a reminder email
  • If the “buyer” tag is removed then we will remove access to the online course
  • We wait 5 minutes and if the “buyer” tag is removed then we will send you an email to update your payment method
  • Summing up marketing automation

I think this is one of the longest articles I have written and the one I have enjoyed the most. After more than 100 funnels created for my projects and clients, I wanted to share with you the wonderful and fantastic world of automation. I recommend you to follow the next articles because I will be sharing more cases, real examples and above all more related techniques and resources.

To summarize everything I have shared with you, I leave you some phrases:

  • Automation is not about selling more, it is about attracting more potential customers and doing more personalized marketing.
  • To implement good marketing automation strategies we will need several tools.
  • Tags are the star functionality of automation and through them we can activate funnels and improve our conversions.
  • We do not need to mount a mega funnel, we can start with small funnels.
  • If we do not have enough organic traffic we will have to invest to enhance our capture of leads.
  • The triggers and automation elements help us to optimize our funnels.
  • If you have doubts, leave me a comment and I will gladly help you. If you want to bet on automation with my team and me by the hand, write me at the consultancy.

 

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