Marketing Automation Archives – Page 7 of 27

Tag Archive for: Marketing Automation

Deploying Long-Tail Lead Nurturing and Marketing Automation to Build Relationships

December 29, 2015/0 Comments/in Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

The more touch-points you have with website visitors, the more opportunities you have to convert those visitors by collecting their contact information. Long-tail lead nurturing, combined with marketing automation, provide the additional touch points you need to build trusting relationships with prospects and customers. Determining when and where to deploy those touch points can often times be a challenge for many marketers. In addition, contact prospects at the wrong time and you run the risk of scaring them away. Wait too long to contact a lead and you likewise run the risk of losing that lead forever. Timing is absolutely vital to successful marketing, regardless of industry.

Long-tail lead nurturing gives your brand the chance to build solid relationships while becoming a trustworthy, helpful source of information. By helping your visitors with their problems or questions and staying in contact with them, you are able to set the stage to convert that lead into a sale later on.

What Is Long-Tail Lead Nurturing?

By deploying long-tail lead nurturing, you gain the chance to use an array of intelligent actions that are designed to engage your visitors even further with the use of multi-touch, multi-channel communication. For instance, after a visitor enters information to receive free information (like a crash course on training) via an engagement window, you can then leverage the opportunity to follow up with that visitor via text messages, emails, direct mail, and more. You can even take advantage of the chance to assign leads to specific salespeople and have touch points delivered automatically, thus taking advantage of one-on-one communication.

Unlike traditional ‘drip’ campaigns, automated long-tail lead nurturing is designed in an intelligent manner to reflect the interests and actions of your lead. As a result, you can rest assured that your leads are provided with exactly the right information at precisely the right time.

Why Is Long-Tail Lead Nurturing So Important?

It’s no secret that many of your site’s leads never actually convert into sales. What you might not realize is the extent to which that happens. According to research from MarketingSherpa, 79 percent of leads never actually convert into sales. Furthermore, the primary cause of such poor performance is a lack of lead nurturing. Lead nurturing is so important that brands that perform well at lead nurturing tend to generate up to 50 percent more sales-ready leads.

As important as the sales funnel may be to the conversion process, there are always holes present within that funnel. Long-tail lead nurturing helps to seal those holes so that you are able to convert more leads into sales while losing fewer targeted leads.

Although a triggered long tail lead nurturing campaign might seem to be a bit impersonal, the exact opposite is actually true. When you are able to deliver content that your visitor want and when they want it, they’ll likely not care how or why the information arrived, provided it is relevant. Ultimately, when lead nurturing is performed well, the process will feel quite personalized and not at all impersonal.

Get a Demo of Long-Tail Lead Nurturing

Why Marketing Automation Isn’t Going Away and Will Continue Expanding Well Into the Future

October 8, 2015/0 Comments/in Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

According to recent reports, marketing automation is not going away anytime soon. In fact, it is poised to continue growing bigger well into the future. The key to expanding usage; however, appears to be marketers becoming more comfortable with the concept of marketing automation. A study conducted by Ascend2 found that less than 25 percent of marketing professionals around the world used marketing automation on an extensive basis last year. Interestingly, 35 percent of respondents who were not using marketing automation stated they plan to use it in the future. That’s why we confident saying marketing automation isn’t going away. Here’s some more insight into the marketing automation industry that we’ve been talking about for years.

Among those using marketing automation or who have plans to use it in the future, objectives tend to range. The most common objectives for implementing a marketing automation strategy typically include lead nurturing, customer engagement, and marketing productivity. Personalization is currently a popular objective, but only about 25 percent of those surveyed rank it is an important objective.

Changes Looming on the Horizon for Marketing Automation Industry

As we move forward, we are likely to see a number of changes in the evolution of marketing automation, including the platforms becoming more scalable, faster, and more responsive. In addition, we will likely see marketing automation platforms become optimized for tracking vast amounts of data regarding customers and leads.

One of the most important changes that is likely to take place in the marketing automation industry is a shift toward predictive first. Future platforms are likely to be thinner as well as more intelligent, capable of accommodating more specialized applications. As a result, these platforms will be able to utilize far more data for delivering more relevant recommendations. Predictive intelligence will make such platforms easier to use as well as capable of adapting with your business as it grows and evolves. Consequently, you never have to worry about tweaking the system to accommodate growth. Such predictive systems not only have the ability to learn, but can also adapt and even make improvements on their own with each of your customer’s actions.

Comprehensive recommendations will provide the ability to leverage full visibility across the marketing and sales funnels to determine and recommend the best content to share or actions to take. By spanning both marketing and sales, such customer predictions are able to actually learn from historical sales data in order to develop models of good sales leads. That intelligence can then be applied to the top of your sales funnel, touching every aspect of your marketing programs and filter down through the funnel to complete the sales cycle.

While marketing automation has come a long way, it is quite likely that we are only now just beginning to see how this technology can transform marketing, particularly in the B2B sector. Over the course of the next year, it is quite likely that we could see a revolution in the B2B sector fueled by marketing automation. Discover more about the future of marketing automation and what it can do for your business.

What You Need to Know Before Implementing Marketing Automation

October 1, 2015/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

So, you’re thinking of giving marketing automation a try. There are certainly many excellent reasons to do so. Marketing automation can help to make your workload much more efficient while also delivering a positive return on investment. On the flip side, marketing automation can also increase your workload and be a drain on your budget, if it is not handled properly. The difference lies in how well you plan the implementation of marketing automation.

Develop a Plan for Implementation

The most important step you can take before adding marketing automation to your current projects is to ensure you have a plan for implementing it. While this might sound simple enough, this is a step that is too frequently ignored. Far too often, business owners get carried away with all of the many benefits that marketing automation can provide. That may be true, but in order to take advantage of those many benefits you must make sure you have a high-level plan in place.

Begin by ensuring expectations are established. In the past, marketing and sales were often completely different functions. Today, the line between marketing and sales has become blurred thanks to marketing automation. More and more, tasks that were previously handled by sales is now being moved to marketing. This also means that marketing and sales divisions must understand and agree on how their responsibilities will be handled. Try using a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to align sales and marketing.

Start Off Small

Additionally, it is important to make sure you start small. There can be a lot of excitement surrounding the implementation of marketing automation. It can be tempting to want to go big and take advantage of everything marketing automation provides at once. Even so, trying to implement all of the features provided by marketing automation as soon as you get started will usually only result in failure. It is much better to start slow and small by choosing one specific audience and working to build your first marketing project around that audience. Testing is a common practice in the world of marketing and it maintains its importance in marketing automation. The information you glean from your first trial run with marketing automation can prove to be invaluable to the success of later campaigns.

Remember that organization is the key to succeeding with marketing automation. If your operation is already inefficient, marketing automation is not going to change that.

Know What You’re Going to Do with Leads

It is also imperative to ensure you have a system in place for handling the leads that will inevitable result from your marketing automation efforts. This is the ideal time for Marketing and Sales to work together to determine priorities and goals. If your company already has an effective sales team in place, they probably already know how to handle new leads. If not, this may be an area you need to address.

While the prospect of implementing marketing automation might be overwhelming, the right help can make all the difference. Find out more about how you can effectively implement marketing automation today.

Tips for Succeeding with Marketing Automation

September 24, 2015/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

The benefits provided by marketing automation can be truly phenomenal. Allowing you to create successful marketing campaigns and then automate the process, marketing automation provides virtually unlimited capabilities. Among the most important factors involved in determining exactly how successful marketing automation can be for your business is the set-up process. These tips for succeeding with marketing automation will help you ensure the best possible outcome when implementing marketing automation.

Pay Attention to Your Customer Relationship Management

Your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is of vital importance for the success of your marketing automation campaign. When your marketing automation software synchs with your CRM, it is imperative that your list be as clean as possible, otherwise you are likely to end up with duplicate lists that you will need to untangle. Take the time to delete any duplicate records and ensure all account names are correct. This may mean merging, deleting, and purging, but it will be time well spent in terms of ensuring optimal success for your marketing automation program.

Are All Email Addresses Correct?

Imagine uploading contacts only to discover you have a high bounce rate due to wrong email addresses. This could be a very real possibility, if you do not run your email addresses through an email verification service. AccuWebHosting.com provides a good article here on email validation services, comparing multiple providers. Here’s another good resource from the Marketing Tech Blog on email validation. There is no need to run the risk of experiencing deliverability issues and potentially having your IP blacklisted, which could happen if you fail to clean up your database and verify emails prior to importing. Take the time to ensure your email addresses are correct before you get started.

Work with Your Sales Team So They Know What to Expect

Marketing automation may provide many benefits, but it also dramatically changes the processes you already have in place. This includes processes utilized by your sales team, so it is important to work with your team to let them know what to expect and answer any questions they may have about marketing automation. For instance, marketing automation could change the way in which leads are assigned to your team. You also need to work with your team to ensure there is a process in place for handling leads as they arrive. Make sure you conduct ample research and work one-on-one with your sales team prior to rolling out your marketing automation campaign. Here’s a good reference for achieving sales and marketing alignment.

Be Committed to Ongoing Education

Do not make the mistake of underestimating how much time it may take to learn everything you need to make the most of marketing automation. This may mean making a commitment to continually educating yourself about marketing automation integration, best practices, usage, etc. Although this does mean committing to additional time on top of a schedule that is likely already packed, it is well worth it.

Marketing automation can be incredibly powerful for your business, but you must learn how to make the most of it. Following the tips above can help you get off to a great start. Find out more about how you can operate a successful marketing automationcampaign.

Mistakes to Avoid with Marketing Automation

September 17, 2015/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

When handled properly, marketing automation can turn around even the most ineffective marketing programs. Unfortunately, as is the case with anything else related to marketing, it can be easy to make mistakes with marketing automation. The power of marketing automation cannot be denied, but it is only as good as the effort you put into it. If you have noticed that you are not getting everything from marketing automation that you would like, you may be making one of the following mistakes. Here are some helpful tips on mistakes to avoid with marketing automation.

No Strategy in Place

One of the most common mistakes made by many companies when implementing marketing automation is not having a documented strategy in place. This is rather akin to trying to hit a target in the dark. The goal of your strategy should be to link the goals of your company with the activities and techniques you will be using. With a solid strategy in place, you will be able to ensure you are headed in the right direction. Start by creating a Service Level Agreement (SLA) between sales and marketing.

Not Using the Full Potential of Marketing Automation

Failing to harness the full power of marketing automation tools is another common mistake. Marketing automation has an incredible amount to offer, including the potential for lead scoring, search engine optimization, landing pages, reporting, and more. Unfortunately, many brands make the mistake of using their marketing automation tools solely for email marketing. While marketing automation tools can help you make the most of your email database, it is important to recognize that you can do much more with them.

Not Generating Enough Quality Content

Content always has been a vital part of all online marketing efforts. That does not change with marketing automation. Despite the many benefits offered by marketing automation, if you are not producing enough high-quality, targeted content, your marketing efforts are likely to suffer.

Tracking the Wrong Metrics

Are you sure you are tracking the right metrics? Today, we have the opportunity to take advantage of a dizzying array of data, particularly from marketing automation tools. The problem is that it can be easy to become overwhelmed by all of that data. Eventually, you may fall into the trap of tracking the wrong metrics and even overemphasizing certain metrics, such as social shares and traffic when you should be focusing on customer conversion rates. In order to ensure you are leveraging the full power of your marketing automation tool, it is important to identify the metrics that matter the most for meeting your company’s goals.

Thinking You Can Put It on Autopilot

Marketing automation can provide your company with a great number of benefits while also making your marketing campaigns easier to manage. With that said, you cannot put marketing automation on autopilot and simply forget about it while hoping for the best. You must continue to make the most of everything that marketing automation gives you.

Find out more about how you can make the most of marketing automation and avoid some of the most common mistakes.

How Marketing Automation Levels the Playing Field for Startups – Marketing Automation for Startups

September 10, 2015/1 Comment/in Best Practices, Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

All companies can be vulnerable, but startups can be particularly vulnerable as they experience the pains of the growth stage. In the past, there were relatively few ways to level the playing field, giving startups the ability to compete with the big boys in business. Technology; however, has changed all of that and is now making it possible to minimize growth pains while providing even startups with the ability to compete with much larger companies. Introducing marketing automation for startups.

Marketing automation, in particular, is proving to be incredibly beneficial for startups. By giving startups the ability to operate much in the same manner as established businesses, marketing automation provides the opportunity to target audiences with accurate messaging with only a minimal amount of effort. When handled correctly, marketing automation provides entrepreneurs with the chance to make the sales process far more consistent and ultimately more successful.

Avoiding Potential Downfalls in Marketing Automation

If there is a potential downside to marketing automation it is that too many entrepreneurs look at it as a get rich quick strategy that doesn’t require any work at all. While marketing automation can help to level the playing field, it is important to separate fact from fiction.

First, it is important to understand that marketing automation is not some type of magic ATM that will deliver qualified sales leads without any effort. Marketing automation can be effective, but it will only automate what you tell it to do. If you have not already taken the time to target your audience or completed your content mapping strategies, there is not much that marketing automation can do for your business.

Another common misconception when it comes to marketing automation is that it will generate results overnight. Marketing automation works by compiling information based on lead scores, buyer behavior, and sales feedback. This is not a process that takes place overnight. Meaning, you cannot expect rapid results. Marketing automation should be viewed as a long-term investment.

It is also important to understand that while marketing automation is effective in terms of process management and lead nurturing, it does not actually generate leads on its own. Basically, it warms up the leads you give it.

Marketing Automation Strategy Tips

In order to make the most of everything offered by marketing automation, including the ability to compete with larger companies with more resources, you must make certain you have a plan in place. Furthermore, this plan should be scalable and capable of growing with your business as it matures. When planning your strategy for marketing automation, keep these tips in mind:

Always think ahead and ensure everything is scalable.
Ensure you have enough resources to avoid becoming bogged down.
Commit to a documented process strategy.
Create a long-term strategy calendar.

Strongly consider marketing automation for startups if your buisness is in this category. Developing a plan for how your startup can benefit from it can help you leverage the power of marketing automation regardless of the size of your business. Find out more about how your startup can benefit from marketing automation.

Bridging the Gap Between Content and ROI with Marketing Automation

September 3, 2015/0 Comments/in Marketing Automation, Revenue Generation Blog, ROI/by Lead Liaison

It’s well known in the world of marketing that content provides the fuel necessary for successful marketing. That is no less true with marketing automation. Ultimately, you cannot expect a positive ROI, if you do not have a solid content strategy. Even the best marketing automation program in the world cannot resolve a lack of quality content. Determine ROI with marketing automation.

Despite the importance of content, many businesses continue to struggle with implementing quality content for their marketing automation needs, with their ROIs suffering as a result. Below, we go through several critical steps you can take to bridge the gap between your content and your return on investment.

1. Analyze your Content Plans

Quality content does not develop on its own and it does not happen by accident. In order to feed your marketing automation program quality content, you must first stop and analyze your content plans as well as what it is that your target audience actually wants to see. Of particular importance in terms of marketing automation, is mapping the customer journey and ensuring that your content plan aligns with that journey.

2. Think More in the Long Term than the Short Term

Far too often, many marketers focus more on the short term than the long term when it comes to their content development goals. In order to ensure you are making the most of content within the context of marketing automation, you need to pay attention to any gaps that might exist in the various stages of the buyer journey and ensure you create highly targeted content to address those gaps. This means you must stop thinking in the short term and think in the long term.

3. Develop a Content Development Calendar

Do you create content as it is needed or do you have content on reserve based on your objectives? The problem that many business owners encounter is that they create content only when they need it. In order to succeed with your marketing automation strategy, you need to have a solid plan in place. Creating a 12-month content plan can help you to do that.

4. Evaluate, Evaluate, Evaluate

Marketing automation can help to automate many of the processes related to your marketing campaign, but it cannot do everything for you. The same is also true for your content plan. You must take the time to analyze how you are utilizing your marketing automation system and how well your content is working for you. Make a commitment to evaluating your current systems at least once per quarter.

5. Make Improvements

Analyzing only works if you take the information from your evaluations and put it to work for you. After evaluating the data generated by your marketing automation system, determine what is working, what is not working and make changes to generate necessary improvements to boost your ROI.

Want a copy of our Marketing Content Map (MCM) document? Contact us with a brief note requesting the MCM and we’ll send it to you.

Marketing automation can drive a higher ROI. By implementing the steps listed above, you can bridge the gap between your content and your ROI. Learn more about how you can benefit from marketing automation today.

How to Build a Strong Business Case for Switching to Marketing Automation

August 27, 2015/0 Comments/in Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Marketing automation is one of the most important new practices a business needs to pursue to be competitive in the digital world, as any savvy marketing professional is already aware. However, even if an organization knows there might be a better marketing and sales process out there, it can be difficult to get an entrenched sales or marketing team to change the way they do things. Here are a few ways that you can build a strong business case for switching to marketing automation that you can pitch to your team.

Focus on the Specific Marketing Challenges your Business is Faces

When trying to figure out in what different ways your business will benefit from the implementation of marketing automation tools, first examine your current marketing and sales systems to see what their biggest weaknesses are. Download our sales and marketing alignment template to do an internal assessment of your company’s sales and marketing processes. Examine the current methods of lead generation, lead nurturing and lead scoring and see what is developing the strongest and weakest results. Look at how marketing automation can revitalize weaker processes – for example, by turning a lackluster lead nurturing program into a multi-tiered system that is intensifies as a lead demonstrates more interest in your services – and clearly communicates benefits.

Illustrate the Broader Benefits of Marketing Automation

After taking some time to examine specific areas in which marketing automation provides noticeable improvements, think about ways that marketing automation can bring broader positive benefits to your business as a whole. Marketing automation can help bring immediate improvements to things like internal communications, instantly streamlining the way that sales and marketers share information. A successful marketing automation program can also yield significant improvements to the overall organization of your business, and can help you improve structurally. Finally, marketing automation yields higher lead generation and decreases conversion time, making it simply a profitable sales and marketing tool for almost any business to take advantage of.

Use Specific Tools to Encourage the Adoption of Marketing Automation

There is a large amount of very convincing data available about the effectiveness that is at the tip of your fingers. Case studies are a wonderful way to illustrate how other similar sized companies went about implementing marketing automation, and gives direct examples of the benefits they enjoyed afterward. Have a full picture of statistics on how your current marketing tools are performing, and how they might improve with the implementation of marketing automation. And, finally, do your research. Be prepared for any questions that might come your way. If you are already getting pushback on marketing automation, you should have some idea of why it is being opposed – understand that viewpoint, and be prepared to counter it.

If you stick to these basic strategies, you should be able to develop a strong business case for switching to marketing automation. Learn more about marketing automation and how your business can benefit from it Lead Liaison’s marketing automation resource blog.

Using Marketing Automation to Collect Meaningful Customer Feedback

August 13, 2015/0 Comments/in Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

It isn’t a secret that in order to run successful marketing campaigns and effective websites, you must collect some degree of customer feedback in order to move forward. However, not everyone realizes customer feedback is not equal. Customer feedback that is incomplete or simply not informative enough can give leave your content to stagnate, or worse, misguide your entire marketing strategy. Use these techniques to ensure marketing and sales departments collect meaningful customer feedback so you know what you need to do differently to maximize sales.

Is the Feedback Going to be Useful?

The absolute last thing you want in the process of collecting user feedback is to interrupt a user’s experience. Make sure any and all feedback requests are placed in an appropriate spot with appropriate content. It can be a delicate thing to balance – you want the opportunity to collect feedback, but a feedback “agent” should never distract from an email or website’s core objective. One suggestion is to use surveys, built in to lead nurturing programs, to automate the process of collecting input from prospects and/or customers.

Frame Questions Well to Receive Good Feedback

You have to make sure that you are asking the right questions in order to get the information that will build good data. Asking open-ended questions such as “Did you like this page?” will, more often than not, net you open-ended answers that may not even really give you much to work with at all. Try to ask direct questions that result in direct answers, so everything contained in a customer’s feedback is useful.

Perform A/B Testing to Find the Best Format for Feedback

You may think that feedback itself is testing, and thus doesn’t need to be rigorously A/B tested; however, nothing could be further from the truth. The way in which you ask for customer feedback can have a much bigger impact than you might expect, and the ability to compare how answers vary in response to differently presented or worded questions can be surprising. In addition, the ability to compare those different sets of answers side by side can be invaluable, and help lead you to conclusions that you would not have been able to find with either set on its own. Even if you find a feedback pattern that suits your practices, running A/B testing on smaller, specialized demographics can also help sharpen your overall process.

Obviously, all of these processes take time, so be sure to pursue a feedback strategy that fits the overall resources available for your department. You want all the feedback you collect to be helpful, and not simply data mining that your marketing department will never have time to look at.

Using these strategies, you should be able to use your marketing automation software to collect meaningful customer feedback, and your marketing department can begin modifying their practices accordingly. To learn more about collecting strong customer feedback, visit Lead Liaison’s marketing automation resource blog online.

Build a Stronger Conversion Rate Optimization Structure

August 11, 2015/0 Comments/in Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Consistently improved conversion rate optimization is a process that requires two key components – time and money. And while time is in relatively high supply, sometimes money can be a real problem, especially for small to midsized businesses. However, in a pinch, taking the time to build a stronger conversion rate optimization structure can be all you really need in order to see marked improvements in conversion rate optimization. Read on to learn about some of the basic principles that build a stronger conversion rate optimization structure.

Content is King

Obviously, solid presentation is an extremely important part of web design, marketing materials, and the company’s overall brand. However, when you’re trying to improve overall conversion rate optimization, tweaking the color of a banner is not the change that will yield the best results. Ultimately, the level of lead involvement with marketing materials will be determined by the quality of its content. If someone has made it all the way to your website or decided to open an email that you sent, they are real people trying to find an effective solution to a problem they currently have. Strong content that communicates your company’s ability to provide a solution for that problem is what convinces leads to convert. In the long run, improving content will yield stronger results than a design will overall. Think about different types of content, such as documents or even popup content to help convert visitors. Lead Liaison’s SiteEngage™ solution helps create attractive content to help with conversion.

Test Constantly

It’s a principle that gets repeated with a high degree of frequency, but with good reason. The internet is constantly shifting and changing. To be competitive, your marketing team needs to be able to change along with it. Testing is the only surefire way to know whether your marketing materials get the results you want. Switch out marketing approaches and run A/B tests to see what’s more effective and give riskier strategies a chance, but make sure everything you try is compatible with your overall long-term conversion rate optimization strategy.

Be Prepared for the Long Term

To put it simply, short-term optimization strategies will not be effective over the long amounts of time needed to make a real change in conversion rate optimization. Be prepared to stick it out with customers, and take advantage of marketing automation software to develop tiered lead nurturing programs that ramp up interest effectively. It may be tough to wait for results to improve, but ultimately you’ll end up landing the best, most informed customers who will do the most for your business by spreading their appreciation of your product or services.

By adhering to these overarching principles, you should be able to build a much stronger conversion rate optimization strategy. It may take patience, but eventually you’ll start noticing a pattern of improvement in conversion rates. To learn more about maximizing conversion rates and other marketing automation topics, visit Lead Liaison’s marketing automation resource blog online.