Marketing automation

Provide all your leads with the right information at the right time. Increase campaign effectiveness and marketing team productivity.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is an online marketing technique that largely automates repetitive marketing tasks so that you can easily scale up.

In particular, these tasks have to do with providing information to leads. In this scenario, marketing automation ensures that leads are presented with personalized information at the right time that actively helps them through the buying process. The goal is to best help leads through each stage of their buyer journey so that a meaningful relationship is created and they ultimately award you the order.

The term marketing automation refers to automating repetitive marketing activities using software, such as sending personalized emails to the right people. Marketing automation initially consisted exclusively of email automation, but later new technologies were added, such as lead scoring and chatbots.

Benefits of marketing automation

Marketing automation helps marketing and sales during the lead generation process so they can better serve leads. It offers the following benefits:

• Leads are shown personalized content based on information they have given, or actions they have taken on the website or via email.
• The timing of emails is tailored to the lead's behavior and status. Thus, a lead receives information at the time he or she needs it.
• Information is offered in a sequence that makes sense and makes sense for the lead's buying process.
• The behavior of the lead determines the amount of information sent. This makes it possible to stop email workflows early in the absence of interest.
• Thanks to intelligence in workflows , leads never receive information twice.
• Marketing automation increases marketing productivity because it automates repetitive tasks.
• Thanks to chatbots, leads are more self-reliant and get answers to all their questions even after business hours.

Lead nurturing with email automation

Email automation is still by far the most widely used form of marketing automation, and you can use it to scale lead nurturing.

With lead nurturing, the goal is to provide leads with the right information at the right time. This means you want to tailor information to the lead's situation. Thus, you will:

• Tailor emails to the stage in the buying process.
• Tailor emails to the customer's world, such as his or her industry.
• Tailor emails to the function or role of the buyer persona.
• Personalizing emails as much as possible.

Manually managing and executing lead nurturing with the above ambition is not (anymore) workable the moment your lead file starts to grow. This is where marketing automation offers the solution.

Based on criteria and triggers in workflows, tasks (such as sending emails to the right people) are performed automatically. The criteria and triggers are entirely up to you as a marketer. Good marketing automation software offers various possibilities to fully set up workflows based on the goals and processes of your organization.

Below is an example of a lead nurturing workflow in HubSpot:

Lead scoring

Lead scoring is also included in marketing automation. In lead scoring, you qualify leads, allowing you to better prioritize them for follow-up. You can also hard validate leads with lead scoring by setting a threshold where the lead only becomes Sales Qualified upon reaching the value.

Marketing automation software scores leads based on certain criteria. Once these criteria are determined then leads are scored automatically. For this reason, lead scoring is counted as marketing automation.

There are generally two categories on which leads are scored:

• Fit: how well does the lead fit with your organization?
• Engagement: to what extent does the lead give signals of interest?

When a lead fits the organization and shows enough interest then this lead is ready for follow up sales.

To professionalize the process of lead generation, we distinguish between different phases a lead can be in. The most important ones are:

Marketing Qualified Leads

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) are leads that are qualified on agreed criteria and therefore enter the lead nurturing process. The lead has potential, but is not yet ready to follow up with sales.

Sales qualified leads

Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) are ready for follow up sales. The lead has gone through the lead nurturing process and has given enough signals of interest during this process. Often sales qualified leads need to meet a certain lead score. Marketing and sales make joint agreements about this.

Lead scoring in marketing automation software

So what does a lead scoring model look like in marketing automation software? Below is an example of part of a lead scoring model in HubSpot.

You can see one positive scoring attribute that gives the lead 5 points if he/she meets the criterion. This requires the lead to have between 1 and 5 page views.

Additionally, in the screenshot you also see one negative scoring attribute that gives a lead -20 points when he/she meets the criterion, namely when the lead has an explicit opt-out on receiving email from the organization.

In practice, a lead scoring model has tig positive and negative attributes that combine to determine a contact's lead score. The marketing automation software continuously updates the lead score based on the specified criteria.

Chatbots

The quality and usability of chatbots is taking off in the last year. Thanks in part to improved Artificial Intelligence (AI), bots are getting smarter and smarter, making them better and better at helping leads and customers move forward in their buying process.

We count chatbots as marketing automation because, like email automation, we deploy workflows to determine how chatbots respond to lead and customer inquiries.

Chatbots help leads and customers in the following ways:

• Answering questions directly.
• Refer to an FAQ page, or article.
• Provide different options for a lead or customer to choose from.
• Handing the chat over to an employee when the bot is unable to help.
• Create tickets for the help desk.
• Include a lead or customer in an inbound campaign and/or workflow.
• Add a lead or customer to an email list.

Automatic notifications & tasks.

Marketing automation software offers opportunities to send notifications in an automated way and attach tasks to them.

Like emails, notifications are triggered by workflows based on certain criteria. You can use them to alert your colleagues (especially in sales) to remarkable behavior of leads. For example, consider a sudden increase in interest in a lead. This can be seen as a sales opportunity that needs to be acted upon quickly. A sales representative can respond proactively by taking this as the reason for a personal contact with the lead.

Marketing automation software

There are several marketing automation platforms on the market. Some of these platforms go a step beyond marketing automation. For example, in addition to software for marketing automation, HubSpot also features:

• SEO tools
• A content management system (CMS)
• A CRM
• Social media tools
• Call to actions
• Forms
• Closed loop reporting
• An Inbound Sales Hub
• An Inbound Service Hub

HubSpot therefore rightly calls its software an inbound marketing platform. Marketo also does this, but offers much less functionality.

The best-known platforms that may be considered marketing automation are:

• HubSpot
• Marketo
• Act-On
• Eloqua
• Pardot

Marketing automation tips

Finally, we'll give you a few handy tips for marketing automation:

Tip 1: Start simple

There is so much possible with marketing automation workflows that you might lose track, or lose yourself in using all the possibilities.

Our tip: above all, start small and simple. That way you will learn quickly and not get overwhelmed. If you proceed this way, you will be building professional workflows before you know it!

Tip 2: Take online training courses

Marketing automation platforms, such as HubSpot offer free online training courses to learn how to work with marketing automation. For example, take a look at the HubSpot Academy.

Tip 3: Focus on quality rather than quantity

It's all about providing value to your target audience. That is the credo of inbound marketing and thus also of marketing automation. Therefore, go for quality first and only then for quantity. The quality of your content and thus the value it provides for your leads is crucial!

Tip 4: Stay relevant in emails

The best time for email newsletters is behind us. With marketing automation, you are able to be hyper-personal and relevant. A newsletter in the inbox with tig articles does not fit well with this.

Therefore, ensure a 100% focus on one topic per email. Promote one piece of content per email. So an email focuses on one blog article or one white paper, for example.

Tip 5: Don't make workflows too complicated or elaborate

The beauty of marketing automation workflows is that you can go either way with them. Your imagination limits the possibilities, not the tool. However, this is also its greatest danger. A mistake is easily made and not always noticed as quickly.

Therefore, our tip is to keep workflows organized. Don't make them too big or too long.

Tip 6: Split workflows to keep them organized

This tip is an extension of the previous one. Have you created a workflow, but is it not clear? Or did you notice while building it that you have to think too much about what the workflow actually does and when? Then split the workflow into two or three workflows!

For example, split a workflow for an inbound marketing campaign into the inbound funnel phases: awareness (TOF), consideration (MOF) and decision (BOF). All you need to set up at the end of the TOF and MOF workflow is: make sure your leads are moved to the next workflow upon completion.

Tip 7: Think through changes in workflows carefully

The reporting and analytics functionalities in marketing automation give you the tools to measure and improve your inbound campaigns on an ongoing basis.

We advise you to make small changes in the existing workflow, but for major changes build a new workflow and archive the old one. That way you keep your results clean and organized.

Tip 8: For extensions, create a new workflow.

Extensions to existing workflows have the same disadvantages as changes to them. The results become a mishmash of pre-extension and post-extension results. You then have to remember for yourself when the extension took place and what that did to your results.

We prefer to create extensions in a new workflow. In this way you keep things clear and keep your results as clean as possible.

Tip 9: Make binding agreements with Sales

Alignment between marketing and sales is very important. With marketing automation, you are able to feed leads and distinguish between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQL).

Before you set this up in the marketing automation software, there must be 100% agreement between Marketing and Sales on what MQLs and SQLs must meet and what Marketing and Sales promise to deliver. Write these agreements down, or better yet, sign a Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Tip 10: Consider the buyer persona and his or her buyer journey

The needs of the buyer persona throughout the buyer journey are central to inbound marketing.

Marketing automation workflows should be fully set up to meet these needs. Therefore, do not forget to do targeted research on your buyer personas and their buyer journey and incorporate the results in the content as well as in the workflows.

Tip 11: Think about the AVG legislation when sending emails

Since the advent of the AVG legislation, you need explicit permission from leads to send emails.

A statement that leads automatically agree to receive emails upon downloading is no longer enough. You must explicitly ask for consent in the form, and the form field should not default to "yes. This does not apply to customers, by the way. They are allowed by law to email you until they indicate that this is no longer desired.

Extra tip: Make it attractive to leads to do consent to receive emails. Promise them a gift, such as free updates of what they download, or a free e-book.