How to Make the Most of Your Marketing Automation Platform

How to Make the Most of Your Marketing Automation Platform

by | Feb 6, 2020 | Business & Marketing Strategy, Insights

How to Make the Most of Your Marketing Automation Platform

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Marketing automation has generated a lot of buzz in recent years, and for good reason. According to research:

49% of companies are currently using marketing automation, with more than half of B2B companies (55%) adopting the technology

Marketing automation drives a 15% increase in sales productivity

Marketers using automation software generate 2X the number of leads than those using blast email software, and are perceived by their peers to be 2X as effective at communicating

67% of B2B marketers say they see at least a 10% increase in sales opportunities through lead nurturing, with 15% seeing opportunities increase by 30% or more

In a previous post, we reviewed the basics of marketing automation – what it is, why it’s important, the type of tools and platforms that exist, and how to get started. In this article, we’re going to go a step further by breaking down our best practices for marketing automation. Whether you’re already set up with a marketing automation platform and want to improve your use of the tool, or you’re brand new to the concept and want to learn how it can benefit your growing business, read on to go deeper into marketing automation.

Our Top 6 Marketing Automation Best Practices

1. Follow-up emails

Put time back into your day by sending automatic follow-up emails to prospects or customers. You can do this by setting up automated workflows that are triggered depending on how a user engages with your content, website, email, etc. Here are some examples:

  • Content Download: When someone clicks the “download” button in one of your emails or on your website, you can set up a rule that allows you to immediately send them an email with the downloaded piece of content.
  • Contact Us Form: If someone fills out a contact form on your website, you can automatically send them a “thank you” email.
  • Product Review: In e-commerce, you can send an automated follow-up asking the customer who made a purchase to review your product.
  • Sales Pipeline: If a sales contact has been “ghosting” on a contract, you can send them an automated follow-up.

2. Segmentation lists

Organize your contacts into groups based on demographics or behaviors. Make sure the lists are distinct and create personas for each that outline who they are and what their motivations or interests might be. You can also create lists based on industry, geography, company size, or revenue. From here, you can create tailored messaging for each list with content that will resonate.

Let’s take things a step further. When it comes to segmenting your lists, a marketing automation platform serves two main purposes.

  • The system organizes leads dynamically through lists. It continuously checks for certain fields (or tags) within the contact data, and adds contacts based on the respective information (or tags) in the system. Further, when a visitor fills out a form, the information they entered is scanned, enabling them to be sort immediately when they come in. It’s like a digital sorting hat via Harry Potter.
  • Marketing automation also plays a role when creating emails. You can create dynamic email content that changes depending on the segment. Think geographics, for example. When sending an email to specific cities, you can program the word “, Happy New Year”, so that when the email goes out, the system automatically fills in location with the contact’s state.

3. Cart abandonment

 

Nearly 70 percent of online shoppers leave items in their cart without making a purchase. The bad news is that this is lost revenue for your business, but the good news is that typically when a customer enters your checkout flow, they are prompted to provide their email address before purchasing. This means there is an opportunity to combat cart abandonment through marketing automation emails. We recommend setting up three automated emails:

  • A reminder email within 30 minutes after the cart is abandoned
  • A second email 24 hours after your first follow-up that conveys a sense of urgency. Tell your customer that their cart will soon expire. You could also consider adding some sort of incentive (perhaps a discount code, if your business can accommodate this) to help encourage your customer to make the purchase.

4. B2B reactivation campaign (also called “Wake The Dead” Campaign)

 

Marketing automation is a great way to reactivate lost leads. Take a look at your data over the past 3-6 months and create a separate contact list of all closed-lost opportunities. Add these prospects to a drip campaign (a series of longer-lead emails to prospects) to re-nurture them and pique their interest by sending them content based on what they click in each email.

To get more specific, consider this example. Your prospects have already been through your sales process, so you’ve collected data on them (which is why it’s called a “reactivation” campaign). Take that data and build a drip campaign based on why you think they haven’t been converting. For example, perhaps the prospect was unable to justify the cost. Consider sending—or creating— content around how you can help save money or time, such as an incentive offer or a couple of case studies that demonstrate how similar companies have engaged with their brand. The goal is to get them to bite and remember who you are so the conversation will pick up again. It’s easier to convert a customer who has been at the bottom of your funnel once than to get a whole new prospect to convert from scratch.

5. Lead scoring

 

Lead scoring uses marketing automation to attribute points to a prospect based on how they interact with your content or product. For example, you can attribute points based on content downloads, form fill-outs on your website, product purchases, product page visits, and viewing store locations, among others. When a user reaches a certain threshold of points, notify your sales rep to contact the user via phone or email. An email notification from your automation platform will help drive action for your sales rep, increasing engagement and gathering information on important decision makers. For leads with a low score, you can set up an awareness campaign through email, social media, or Google paid search to drive lead scores over the threshold you’ve established.

6. Referral program

 

In a referral program, you offer incentives/rewards to current customers and, in exchange, they recommend your business to prospects in their network. According to research, 60 percent of companies with a referral process experience faster close rates, 59 percent report higher customer lifetime value, and 71 percent report higher conversion from contact to customer. At &Marketing, we are partnered with Warm-Up, a company that automates the referral process. They send emails to current clients, create personalized landing pages, and help determine a specific incentive’s impact on your ROI.

We’re also partnered with SharpSpring, a platform that has made marketing automation easier than ever. If you’re interested in learning more about the platform, what it offers, and how it would benefit your business, click the link below.

Learn More About Sharpspring automation
About the Author

About the Author: Marketing Manager Dexter Burgess takes the lead on implementing new tactics and promoting change through data-driven strategies. Dex works hard at client relations through consistent communication and positive feedback, never settling until the customer is understood and happy.

 

About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.

&Marketing Team Members Gave Back on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

&Marketing Team Members Gave Back on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

by | Jan 30, 2020 | Insights, Storytelling & Branding

&Marketing Team Members Gave Back on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

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As one of our most famous civil rights activists, Martin Luther King Jr. continues to inspire all of us to work toward bettering humanity and the state of the world as a place we all can coexist in equally, together. In an effort to honor MLK day and all it stands for, &Marketing encouraged our team members to exchange the hours they would normally spend working to better the growth of our clients’ businesses and use that time to better the growth of their own communities. Here’s how some of them chose to spend their day celebrating local organizations, local people, and remembering Martin Luther King Jr.

Team Member: Matt Vincent
Service Activity: Art Testing for OneHope for Italian Teen Magazine

 

“I created a series of magazine spreads for the Christian ministry OneHope to test in the Italian teen market in order to better create content that engages that demographic on future projects. Here is a photo of one of the spreads I did.”

Team Member: Rajat Kapur
Service activity: Sock Roll Challenge at Gwynedd Mercy Academy Elementary

 

“My family and I participated in a “sock roll challenge” at my kids’ school on MLK Day 2020. Socks are the #1 requested items for homeless shelters, especially in the cold winter months.

Giving Tree Families, a local nonprofit organization, systematizes this sock roll challenge to prepare a small package (a pair of socks, granola or snack bars, and a kind note) that is handed out to individuals who are homeless. Gwynedd Mercy Academy Elementary participated in the sock roll challenge and made over 1300 of these sock rolls for the people in the Philadelphia area.“

Team Members: Andrew Davis, Jeremy Woelfer, Carter Baretz

Service activity: Hamilton County Humane Society Relocation

“The Humane Society for Hamilton County, IN is preparing to open a new location in the first quarter of 2021. The location will be 40,000 square feet and state of the art.”

Team Member: Tina DePrisco
Service activity: Basketball Clinic & Collection for SafeHarbor of West Chester

 

“For the past 5 years, West Chester Henderson Girls Basketball holds a Clinic and collects donations and creates goodie bags for Safe Harbor of West Chester, PA. The participants of the clinic bring a donation for the Shelter (supplies or gift cards) and create a Valentine’s Day goodie bag for the residents with an encouraging note. I am proud to have started this great tradition and run this clinic and project every year for the team.”

Team Member: Tracey Colla
Service activity: Sock Roll Challenge

“My family and I had varied schedules on MLK Day, but we knew we wanted to do something together. We learned that we could participate in a “sock roll challenge” at home, on our own time, which was perfect. Giving Tree Families, a nonprofit based in a suburb just outside of Philadelphia, helped us do this. My son and I purchased socks, granola bars, and crackers at Target that morning. In the evening, the three of us worked at the dining room table together to compile the sock rolls. We affixed a note to each, and Giving Tree Families will help us get these to those who need them.”

Team Member: Jeremiah Layer
Service activity: Tails and Trails Animal Rescue

 

“I helped local Indianapolis dog rescue organization Tails and Trails by cleaning a room where the store donated items. I also installed shelving units to store some of the donated items they don’t need to use immediately, such as blankets.”

“We feel grateful to work for a company that values giving back to the community on Martin Luther King Jr. day. The remote nature of our team allowed us the ability to use this time off &Marketing gave us and invest it back into the place and people where we each live.”

— RAJAT, TRACEY, JEREMY, CARTER, ANDREW, TINA, JEREMIAH, AND MATT

About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.

Your 2020 Marketing Planning And Execution Guide

Your 2020 Marketing Planning And Execution Guide

by | Dec 12, 2019 | Insights, Marketing Planning & Execution

Your 2020 Marketing Planning And Execution Guide

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Most growing businesses are asking themselves the same question: Are we ready for 2020? The answer to the question depends on what your unique organization is hoping to accomplish next year. How will you plan your goals and set up a strategy to execute them?

Marketing planning and execution can be a challenge for companies of any size, but it can often be particularly daunting for growing businesses. Chances are, you might be struggling to strategize and map out what the coming year or even the next quarter should look like. If you do have an awesome plan in place, maybe you’re not quite sure what the execution part looks like. Why is this? More often than not, it all comes down to resources. Modern marketing departments often need up to 10 distinct roles, so having the bodies to staff a full marketing team is not always feasible. But, do not be discouraged. By taking it one step a time, and having the right tool, you’ll be on your way to setting yourself up for success in 2020. Let’s start by going back to the basics.

What Does Success Look Like For You?

 

When it comes to marketing no one size fits all approach should be taken because there’s something about every growing business that’s truly unique. However, the first step you should always consider is developing your marketing framework. Start by zeroing in on what your long-term success vision is. A success vision will help you narrow your focus. In his Inc.com article “Creating a Company Vision,” Ari Weinzweig, founder of Zimmerman’s, explains it well:

“It’s not as mystical or out there as it sounds. A vision, quite simply, is a picture of what success will be at a particular time in the future. It encompasses answers to an array of questions: What does our organization look like? How big is it? What are we famous for? Why does anyone care about what we do? How do people who work here feel about their jobs? How do I, as the founder, feel about the business? What’s my role in it? Complete the visioning process, and you’ll have a clearly articulated end for your organization— something that won’t change every time the market or your mood shifts.”

So carve out some time to spend on your vision, because that is what you’re going to plan your entire tactical calendar around for the next year.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to dig deeper. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Who are my target prospects?

  • What are my prospects’ biggest challenges? (What problems are they looking to solve?)

  • What makes me unique as the solution to these challenges? (Go ahead and brag a little bit!)

  • What marketing tactics can I use to attract my consumer’s attention? (Sometimes it helps to think about what other companies have done that you’ve noticed and responded to)

Don’t Boil the Ocean

Once you decide what tactics you want to use to attract your prospects’ attention, take a look at who on your team can take ownership of marketing management. Try mapping out all the things you aspire to execute in a given period of time, but be realistic. Make your goals reasonable, measurable, and choose a finite number of tactics on which to focus monthly for the next six months.

When it comes to planning and executing those tactics for the next six months, the importance of having a marketing calendar can’t be emphasized enough. The calendar should have the dates, themes, tactics, success metrics, links to relevant documents, and arguably, the most important piece: one single owner. Since you may have multiple employees, management, outside contractors or agencies working with your company, having “everything in one place” increases focus and allows you to quickly spot errors, bottlenecks, and opportunities.

Let this calendar be your guide. Here are a few suggestions for creating this calendar.

Execution Tips

  1. Assign one person to ‘own’ the execution calendar – it needs to be an accessible, working document where everyone goes to make updates at least once every two weeks (if not multiple times per week!).

  2. Make sure that the cross-functional team uses this document as a single source of planning so that everything stays in one place.

  3. Decide what success is and how it will be measured.

  4. Pick tactics that meet the success vision, and select success metrics before execution.

  5. After each phase of execution, document the results and determine if they met expectations.

  6. Adjust your strategy as you go! If it’s working, keep it up. If it’s not, make some adjustments.

  7. Check-in often, track your progress and celebrate the wins.

If you follow these steps. 2020 has the potential to be the best year yet for your business. Ready to get a jumpstart on your 2020 marketing planning and execution? Need some examples and a guide?

Download our FREE Marketing Planning Workbook for a guide to planning your marketing like a pro!

 

DOWNLOAD WORKBOOK
About the Authors

As the founder and Managing Director of &Marketing, Rajat “Raj” Kapur strives to provide growing businesses of all sizes unparalleled marketing strategy and execution services. Raj brings nearly two decades of professional experience in marketing, sales, and strategy development experience spanning B2B and B2C Fortune 50, mid-sized, and startups.

Marketing Director Tracey Colla focuses on ensuring each client’s needs are being met in a timely, productive, and creative way. She is a well-rounded marketer, with a talent for identifying uncovered opportunities, and go-to-market strategies and launches. Marketing planning is one of her favorite things to work on!

About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.

Gratefulness: Reflecting On 2019 And Looking Ahead To 2020

Gratefulness: Reflecting On 2019 And Looking Ahead To 2020

by | Nov 26, 2019 | Insights, Storytelling & Branding

Gratefulness: Reflecting On 2019 And Looking Ahead To 2020

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To clients, partners, team members, advisors, and other friends of &Marketing

 

As the close of 2019 is upon us, we want to use this opportunity to reflect on the story that our company has written this year, and since the beginning of &Marketing just a couple of years ago. Our story is filled with several different chapters — from ones about learning, challenges, and growth, to perseverance, partnerships, and successes! However, the one common thread in every chapter is how we deeply care about our work, our people, and our clients’ successes.

We at &Marketing are truly grateful for the trust you have placed in us this year, and we thank you for being part of our story. Working with you has allowed us to challenge ourselves to ensure we are supporting your business in a way that makes us better, both at our jobs and as people.

Thanksgiving is an excellent time to reflect  – ups and downs, adventures and surprises, challenges, and successes. This past year has taught us so much and we are full of gratitude.    

During 2019 &Marketing had the privilege of partnering with a nonprofit organization, The Kind Like Joey Foundation. Joey’s legacy was one of kindness – which we embrace as a business practice and as a personal mantra. While the foundation offers many ways of advocating acts of kindness, one activity is promoting ‘Kindness day’ on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to encourage people to perform a random act of kindness in their community in Joey’s honor. We love participating in this day and hope you will consider incorporating it into your annual Thanksgiving tradition too. You can learn more on their Facebook page or website. 

We also got our team together for our first in person team meeting in Indianapolis, IN.  We not only enjoyed finally meeting people with whom we have worked for 2 years in many cases, but we also used the session to develop our 2020 plans and collaborate.  Read more about our team meeting here.  

THANK YOU for being a part of our exciting 2019 story.  We hope your story this year has been filled with all things wonderful, and we wish you the best this holiday season.  Find time to relax and reflect. Here’s to an amazing final chapter of this year and a successful 2020!

 

Our company culture is one of the most important aspects of our business. We’ve taken that culture, along with what we’ve learned from one another, to create an eBook that contains a marketing word or phrase that best represents us for each letter of the alphabet.

Download the ABCS of &Marketing

About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.

How Growing Businesses Can Build A Modern Marketing Department In the Digital Age

How Growing Businesses Can Build A Modern Marketing Department In the Digital Age

by | Nov 12, 2019 | Insights, Marketing Planning & Execution

How Growing Businesses Can Build A Modern Marketing Department In the Digital Age

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Are you looking to take your growing business to the next level, but feel unsure of how to build your team and find the right level of marketing support to stimulate growth? If so, you’re definitely not alone. Spear Marketing recently released the results of a “marketing talent crunch” survey that was conducted to determine how difficult it is to hire and retain strong marketing employees, which roles and skill-sets are in most demand, and what B2B companies are doing to address these challenges. The study surveyed more than 10,000 B2B marketers, and the key findings are compelling: 

  • 90+ percent of companies are having difficulty finding marketing talent 

  • More than 80 percent of open marketing roles take 5+ weeks to fill, and almost one-third sit vacant for more than 2 months

  • Nearly 80 percent of those surveyed said their marketing department is understaffed

The survey also found that there are a variety of skill-sets for which managers are facing difficulty in hiring. Among these, marketing technology (analytics and operations) is the most in-demand role:

Whether you’re looking to build a new marketing department that fits the scope of your small or medium-sized business, or want to supplement your existing marketing team with new talent, we’ve got a few recommendations. Here are some suggestions for strategic, smart ways to make that growth happen, using Spear Marketing’s research as a guide. 

1. Adopt new hiring models 

Remote Employees

While remote work wasn’t always the norm, the digital revolution has completely transformed the way we communicate and get work done. We are far more efficient with technology, as there are plenty of digital platforms available to make virtual communication just as effective as being in the office. In fact, Mercer’s 2018 Global Talent Trends study found that one in three employees feels more productive when working remotely. Not only that, but 51% of employees wish their company offered more flexible work options. The trends show that remote work is becoming today’s new normal, so don’t fight it! By embracing remote employees, you’re opening yourself up to a wider pool of talent (by the way, &Marketing is a fully virtual company, and we love it!). 

Freelancers

Freelancers typically operate as their own business and are particularly beneficial for short-term assignments when there’s a hard stop on the project. Additionally, if a project is finished ahead of schedule or cut short due to budgetary constraints, a freelancer has the flexibility to move on and find work with another organization. On the flip side, if you hired a full-time employee for this role, you’d be obligated to pay their salary despite having limited work for them to complete. Not exactly the best bang for your buck!

Along with a fresh perspective, freelancers also bring with them their own benefits and devices. If you hire freelancers in a city with a lower cost of living, there’s also an opportunity for you to save money. By hiring them, you’re not only filling a void in your business, you’re doing your bottom line a favor.

Contractors

Some contractors function as freelancers, while others work through a third party or agency. Contractors tend to be different from freelancers, though. Typically, contractors will work for a single company for a long period of time, while freelancers tend to work for multiple companies at once. 

Contractors are useful if there’s an immediate need for a very specialized skill-set, whether it be SEO, graphic design, web development, or copywriting. With a contractor, you wouldn’t need to spend the time training them, as they could hit the ground running right away. While contractors do tend to charge more hourly than your salaried employees would, you’ll save money on healthcare costs and other expenses that full-time employees incur. 

2. Outsource technical marketing roles (even if you feel hesitant to do so)

Although some companies are hesitant to outsource technical help, Spear Marketing found that the challenges of hiring in-house talent are so high that these concerns will be ultimately outweighed by business priorities. Worth noting, too, is that according to the Consumer Technology Association’s Future of Work Survey conducted last year, flexible working is a key retention benefit for 86% of tech hires. By outsourcing support through a contractor, freelancer, or remote worker, chances are high that you’ll retain them, which saves you time, energy, and costs in the long run. 

3. Supplement your existing team with skills you need but don’t have  

In some cases, an organization lacks a marketing team altogether and has a need for just about every marketing skill-set, from content development, social media, and SEO, to graphic design, analytics, web development, and project management. In these instances, hiring an outside organization is much more effective than hiring several independent contractors. By hiring such a team, you get a group already familiar with working together, with its own processes to collaborate and drive results for you. 

In other instances, a company may have one or two marketing employees, but need to supplement their team to broaden their skill-set.

At &Marketing, supplementing is our bread and butter. The “&” in &Marketing signifies a partnership. We cover everything from strategy, to storytelling, to business intelligence and analytics, to planning and execution, and we consider ourselves an extension of your team. It’s us & you! 

Interested in learning about how &Marketing can help you solve this talent crunch and take your business to the next level? Drop us a line here and we’ll get in touch! 

About the Author:

As a Marketing Director at &Marketing, Paul Ferguson uses his 14 years of B2B marketing experience to help clients develop fully integrated marketing solutions that make impressions and drive results. Whether it be design-oriented campaigns or digital market execution, Paul skillfully creates strategies to effectively reach client’s desired audiences. Paul graduated from La Salle University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and a double minor in Marketing and Business Administration. Visit Paul’s LinkedIn.

About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.