B2B Marketing Automation: Run In the Right Direction and Win
The implementation of B2B marketing automation is often seen as daunting in the face of perceived complexity and unpreparedness. Implementing market automation is simple and cost-effective. It assures more qualified leads and revenue growth without making you put in an overwhelming amount of effort. The following are a few must-follow tips to follow to get your marketing automation plan going in the right direction.
Build your Marketing Automation Campaign on a Strong Foundation
Think of what type of skill sets you have and what type of volume you expect your marketing automation tools to handle. Tally your resources and thoroughly audit the expected performance criteria against the system you employ. Consider targeted customers, their motivations and expectations and make sure your marketing automation system can support them. Add contacts based on these selections then refresh and recreate your campaign content regularly. Plan the minimum details you need from customers upfront.
Improved Targeting and Sophisticated Deliverability
Your marketing automation system must be sophisticated enough to create a sense of trust in the mind of targeted customers. Test your email, the most important marketing automation contact tool, to ensure that its display, presentation, and readability suit customers and their mobile or laptop devices. Ensure that your email does not land up in the spam filter of recipients, blunting its appeal and value. Also, confirm email addresses and make sure you have prospects, customers and partners permission to nurture them.
Integrated and Multi-Touch Campaigns
Align marketing automation with your CRM and multi-touch campaigns. Two-way integration of CRM and automation empowers business processes and campaigns and helps achieve better sales potential compared to stand-alone solutions. It helps keep superior relationship with vendors and customers while expanding the sales funnel without committing extra resources. Multi-touch strategy with provision of five to 10 touches over a period of time is a must to cultivate prospects from interest to sure sales conversion. Enable more touches customized as per client preference in every buying-cycle step.
Consider Timing
Make sure you send appropriate automated messages to the right person at the right time. Source the client or partner data and analyze the same to establish their preferred timing. Messages received during out of office hours or nights may be considered intrusive, leading to negative reaction. However, messages sent on birthdays, special holidays, and leisure times are received with a positive feeling and are more likely to elicit response.
Improve Lead Management
An improved lead management process is a vital part of a successful marketing automation. Use both implicit and explicit data to generate and nurture leads. Implicit information includes clicks, page visits, and email subscriptions while explicit information includes data specific to industry, geography, classification based on requirements, jobs, behavior, etc. Create different lead-stage campaigns to prevent any leak in the sales funnel. Both short-term and long-term communication measures focusing on competitive pricing, education, demos will help attract prospects.
Once your marketing automation is up and running, try to fine tune it regularly to continually achieve higher ROI. Analyze results based on market intelligence and feed the automation system accordingly.