5 Amazing Workflows to Better Manage Your Marketing Automation

Being the smart and practical marketer that you are, you already know how valuable a conversion can be.

A conversion does not only mean that you have turned a prospect into a customer, but probably more importantly, it means that you now have a satisfied and engaged customer who will come back for more. Therefore, a savvy marketer does all that they can to gain good quality conversions.

Obviously, mapping out a clear digital marketing strategy is critical for the success of this plan. Without a clear plan, what needs to be done will often feel and seem more complicated, more involving and more monotonous than it should be.

The secret ingredient in the sauce, that can make it not only much easier to manage, but more efficient and effective to reach, interact, convert and engage people who you are targeting, is to use marketing automation.

That being said, there are many marketing automation tactics out there that you can use. Which ones should you use and which ones will be the most effective one’s for you to use?

Whichever, marketing automation tools or platforms that you choose to use, the following key marketing automation workflows should be features that are integral to the system.



General marketing automation workflow

1. Identifying, attracting, reaching and nurturing new subscribers or prospects

Step 1: Marketing stimuli and assets
This step involves deciding which assets you will use as your marketing stimuli. Relevant assets for this workflow include; Content offers, Landing pages, Online forms and CTAs.

Step 2: Trigger
Through understanding essential things about the targets digital body language you can appropriately take the right action based on an appropriate trigger.

With this workflow, marketing stimuli will often trigger a subscription to your emails or newsletter to necessitate the appropriate action.

Step 3: Automated Personalized action and Timing
Timing of appropriate action is also quite critical. For example, immediately after subscription, an email to thank subscribers for opting in should be sent.

After a day or two, more engaging content based on list segmentation to nurture the new subscriber is sent. The automated personalized action in the form of content or relevant communication will be based on the targets digital body language e.g. emails that have engaged targets or pages they have viewed.

At this point sales and marketing teams can also be deployed for more personal nurturing and engagement.

2. Targeting hot leads

Step 1: Marketing stimuli and assets
Relevant assets for this workflow include; Conversion pages, Recent conversion, Online forms, CTAs and Content offers, Landing pages.

Step 2: Trigger
The most useful trigger for this workflow is the lead score. The lead score will allow you to decide those who need to be engaged immediately because they are ready and willing to continue along the sales funnel.

In this workflow it is critical to determine the right criteria for who a hot lead is and isn’t. It should be based on your specific business and other factors like the level of engagement e.g. number of downloads, opened emails etc. 

 
Step 3: Automated Personalized action and Timing
For this workflow, urgency of action is paramount. The automated action should be to trigger an even more compelling offer in order to make the final decision irresistible or to direct a sales team member to close the deal or make the most out of the deal.

3. Re-engaging unsure or uncommitted leads

Step 1: Marketing stimuli and assets
Relevant assets for this workflow include; Emails, Landing pages, Conversion pages, Online forms, CTAs, Other content offers etc.

Step 2: Trigger
The best trigger to keep an eye for in this workflow is sudden level of activity. This is because your marketing stimuli and assets should create some impetus to act based on monitoring appropriate digital body language like social media clicks, web pages visited or even lead source.

Step 3: Automated Personalized action and Timing
Once you register some activity immediate action should then be taken to maximize on renewed activity. Automated personalized actions like sales offers, a free gift, samples, free trial access and so on should guide the lead along the sales funnel.

Additionally, deploying the sales and marketing team to answer questions in person may be the best way to give the unsure or uncommitted lead more confidence to continue along the sales funnel.

4. Re-targeting dead-end leads

Step 1: Marketing stimuli and assets
Relevant assets and marketing stimuli include; Conversion pages, feedback forms, subscriptions and other CTAs.

Step 2: Trigger
When you get any notification or trigger from your sales people or from your marketing automation system that a lead has been lost, this should trigger your activity to try and woo them back instead of letting them slip through your fingers without any effort on your part.

Step 3: Automated Personalized action and Timing
The trigger can motivate different actions depending on the reasons for their lack of interest which you should find a way of collecting.

For example, if they have budgetary limitations, give them a discount or a different affordable offer. If they think that a competitor’s product is better, a sample or further education, including influencer marketing, should be done.

5. Customer retention

Step 1: Marketing stimuli and assets
Relevant assets and marketing stimuli include; emails, relevant content offers, social media engagement, website visits etc.

Step 2: Trigger
The best trigger here is to assign roles to your different customers in order to send them content that will keep them engaged and enhance their experience.

For example, if a buyer’s role is being a ‘key decision maker’ in a family, then the content directed to them should be slightly different than if their role was that of an ‘influencer’ among their friends.

Step 3: Automated Personalized action and Timing
Depending on the buyer role that you assign, you can decide on the best timing and level of engagement to offer. E.g. for an ‘influencer’, send different valuable samples for review on social media, while for the ‘key decision maker’ offer immediate discounts for new purchases can enhance their experience.

Conclusion

When developing or creating a marketing automation workflow, choosing the right platform that will serve your needs is critical to your success. Of course this will be dependent on how you implement your digital marketing strategy based on your specific needs and circumstances.

A fourth crucial step that should be added for all the workflows above is monitoring KPIs and the assets used in the workflow. Monitoring things like level of content engagement, email responsiveness, pages viewed, prospect to customer turnaround etc. will allow you to adjust and make necessary changes and to optimize the workflow for more effectiveness and efficiency.

Mohammad Farooq works as an Analyst. When not working, he goes backpacking around India. He regularly blogs about Travel, Movies, Socio-Political Issues and a lot of other things on his blog, ReveringThoughts.