Keeping it Simple
With more and more companies adopting Marketing
Automation solutions to replace repetitive and time consuming manual processes
with a specially designed software solution, its often the case that end users
get caught up in the complexity of what the systems can deliver and forget the
big picture. Ultimately the purpose of this kind of solution is to help
streamline the marketing department’s tasks, making it more scaleable and to
help marry these activities with the objectives of the sales department – not to
make things more difficult.
So here are Profunnel’s top tips to keep your
marketing automation simple.
Understand the power of Exclusions:
For those new to marketing automation, an Exclusion
List or exclusions are instructions that ensure that a specific segment or
group of existing or prospective clients do not receive specific campaigns or
responses based on their behaviour. For example, I’m unlikely to want to send
the same offers to existing paying clients as my prospective customers. No
brainer right?
But beyond this obvious exclusion, its worth
considering a couple more noteworthy examples - sending webinar sign-ups more
information on your upcoming webinar, or an e-brochure for those who have
already downloaded said brochure is an exercise in futility. Once these obvious exclusions
have been addressed, the temptation is to start getting super complicated and
start excluding according to all sorts of complex metrics – trying to ensure
prospects don’t get the same email twice, or excluding whole lists according to
behaviour on specific triggers...the list is endless and our recommendation
would be to leave this to the pro’s (e.g. your account manager )
Just remember, over-thinking or in this case
over-excluding can create both unnecessary work and can impact long-term marketing
strategies. Simple strategies are most effective unless you have dedicated
resource to run your marketing automation platform full-time.
Don’t overdo your audience segmentation!
Segmenting prospects and customers is a hugely
valuable strategy allowing you to deliver specific offerings to a targeted
audience who need it the most. Some companies are happy to distinguish between
clients and prospects and others create veritable libraries of different
segments. For the majority, once again, the simpler the better.
What most marketers overlook when brainstorming a
new and innovative way to segment their audience is that for every segment you may
need to create landing pages, e-shots, call-to-actions and offers as well as
tying all these into separate campaigns. These then all need refining and
tweaking and you end up painting the golden gate bridge all over again.
Creating compelling content for larger segments will not overburden your
resource and will allow you to push on and actually ensure your campaigns are
as effective as possible.
Big Picture
It’s crucial to remember that marketing automation
platforms are there to help leverage existing sales and marketing capabilities,
not as a tool to overburden and burn out all resources. Of course, there is a
benefit in having dedicated resource from your platform in order to supply ad-hoc support or even take on a project on your behalf. However, for the majority keeping it simple is a surefire method of reaping the rewards of a marketing automation platform...don’t lose sight of the
wood for the trees.
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