Thanks to lead scoring, you can see in real time which are your most valuable leads. This gives your sales department the opportunity to focus on the contacts that have the highest probability of closing a deal. Or you can make special offers to your VIP contacts – fully automated.

Introduction

What is lead scoring? Simply put, you give your contacts points when they interact with your offering, and subtract points when they stop interacting for an extended period of time. The latter is also important and often neglected.

You’ll find a lot of articles online about the importance of developing a custom lead scoring model tailored to your marketing strategy.

You are advised to define

• what factors turn your visitors into potential customers
• what process your specific leads will take in their customer journey
• how many points you want to give them for each action along the way
• at which score threshold your lead should be considered a qualified sales-ready lead
• and in turn, for what behaviors you want to deduct points.

This advice is really good and you should definitely keep it in mind.

The problem is that with this general advice, it’s really hard to get started with actual lead scoring.

So we’re going to present you with a simple model that you can use to get started right away. It is based on the helpful suggestions of a market companion and gives you all the numbers you need to get started. From here, you can gradually adapt the model to the needs of your company.

Step 1: Set a threshold for sales-ready leads

Your leads will accumulate points until they reach a certain point value. At a certain threshold, they’re considered sales-ready leads: they have interacted with your brand enough that they’re likely to make a purchase soon. These are the leads your sales team should focus on.

For the simple lead scoring model that we are recommending for you to start with, we will set a threshold of 100 points.

Step 2: Award points for specific actions

Now you can assign points for specific interactions. There are actions that can give points to each contact only once, and actions that can give points to the contact any number of times. For example, a one-time action can be a newsletter subscription, a repeatable action can be a visit to the website.

Of course, it’s up to you to decide which actions give your contacts one-time points and which ones are repeatable, and also how much the different activities of your contacts are worth to you.

This simple model can help you rank the point value of your custom actions. Think about how many points you want to assign to each action so that 100 points reliably reflects a sales-ready lead.

Based on this simple model, you can probably think of other actions that are important for your specific business and that you want to award points to your leads for.

Step 3: Deduct points for inactivity and negative actions

For certain actions you can also deduct points from your contacts, in other words, give them negative points. For example, you should deduct points from your leads if they unsubscribe from your newsletter, if they haven’t interacted for a long time, or perhaps if they have looked at your jobs page (implying that they are interested in your company as an employee, not as a customer).

The period of inactivity from which you start deducting points should reflect the length of your sales cycle. If your sales cycle usually lasts 6 months, you should start deducting points only after 6 months.

Step 4: Put your lead scoring model into practice

Of course, the implementation of the scoring depends on the software you use for marketing automation.

In Friendly Automate, you have two ways to assign points to your contacts.

On the one hand, you can assign general points, that is, whenever a contact does a certain action. To set up these point actions, click on “Points” on the left side in Friendly Automate, then “Manage actions”, and then click on “New” in the upper right corner. Now you can create a point action:

On the other hand, you can award points within campaigns, for example for clicks on specific emails. You will find some examples in upcoming our campaign tutorial.

Step 5: Evaluate your lead scoring model

In the contacts overview in Friendly Automate (and in the corresponding function in other software) you can see how the scores of your contacts develop.

Regularly monitor whether your lead scoring model is delivering reliable results and adjust it if necessary.

This way, you always have an overview of which leads are particularly loyal to your offer and your brand, and can use this valuable information for your sales and marketing.

Der Beitrag Lead Scoring for Beginners erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

The global Covid crisis has accelerated this development. More and more companies are investing in digital technologies, and the results speak for themselves: 80% of companies have been able to increase both their leads and conversions with marketing automation. And 91% of users agree that marketing automation is essential to the overall success of their online marketing activities.

It’s no surprise then that marketing automation is one of the fastest growing digital marketing industries, expected to reach $8.42 billion dollars by 2027.

In this post, we present the five marketing automation trends that we think will define 2022, and that you should know if you want to take full advantage of marketing automation opportunities.

Right from the start: AI and the end of the cookie are only mentioned in passing. You’ll find out why at the end of the article.

So let’s take a look at how the industry is evolving and what exciting features you might want to take advantage of right now and in the near future.

1. Personalization vs. privacy

Digital marketing experts estimate that consumers are exposed to at least 400 ads a day. And that’s the most conservative estimate: calculations range up to 10,000 ads a day.

72% of customers state accordingly that they only respond to personalized marketing communications. At the same time, an increasing number of consumers are concerned about the protection of their data:

So while customers want to see information that is relevant to them, it makes them uncomfortable when they realize they are being “stalked.” Consumers get this feeling especially when sales tactics seem sneaky to them. And the tactics seem sneaky when:

• consumers were unaware that their data was being tracked
• their data is used more widely than was communicated to them proactively
• there is no obvious way to opt out of the use of data
• they get the feeling of being reduced to an advertising target
• and when they notice that companies make incorrect assumptions about their interests

The costs of these tactics are high: 63% of consumers say they stop buying when they are annoyed by perceived data misuse.

So if companies want to continue to be successful in digital marketing, they need to show that they take data privacy seriously, e.g., by providing easy-to-understand privacy statements with details of where and how the data is stored and processed. They need to work with the trust of their customers and treat them as partners, not targets.

An ideal way to obtain data in a trustworthy manner is to collect so-called zero-party data. This is data that customers offer voluntarily and knowingly, for example, to participate in a webinar, contest, or survey. Customers are also willing to share data to get a discount, get a problem solved, or receive a notification about a sold-out product. In all these cases, too, it should be made transparent how and to what extent the data will be used after the specific interaction has been completed.

All of this may seem limiting. But forward-thinking companies already recognize the inherent opportunities. By building their marketing strategies on trust and transparency, they can create real connections with their audiences and remove the obstacles that can stand in the way of a long-term relationship.

Thus, good personalized communication is needed that gives customers the feeling that their needs are understood and taken seriously. However, 66% of marketers say they lack the resources to implement personalized advertising campaigns. This is where affordable and privacy-oriented marketing automation solutions like Friendly Automate come in.

Good marketing automation software lets you automate campaigns with little effort, offering customers highly personalized content that matches their preferences and product interests, their interaction history, and their consumer status. Marketing automation can thus promote customer communication that is personalized, contextualized, and fosters trust and sympathy in the brand.

2. Own Your Audience

If you’re advertising on social media, your audience belongs to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or another social media network. Even if advertising on social media has worked well for you so far, and even if social media advertising continues to be included in numerous marketing trend lists, we think you should be concerned. Why?

First, because the organic reach of free social media posts is steadily declining, as this graphic shows based on the examples of Facebook and Instagram:

So you’ll increasingly need to spend financial resources to reach your audience on social media with paid advertising.

Secondly, even with paid ads on these platforms, you are still dependent on numerous algorithms. You put the advertising in someone else’s hands and can’t control whether your ad actually reaches your target audience and whether your target audience even hears you in the marketing noise.

Thirdly, advertising is unpopular among social media users, and the sympathy of your future customers is a potential you should not squander.

That’s why in 2022, you should own your audience again.

Surprisingly, email remains the most popular channel among customers, far ahead of advertising on social media and other channels such as mailings, text messages and promotional calls.

Besides your own company website, email is thus the second central channel that you have in your own hands and which is not controlled by another company.

The inbox of your target audience is an area where customers deliberately let you in. They are actively interested in your products and want to receive relevant, personalized recommendations to which they will respond with purchases: A study by Cheetah Digital and E-consultancy showed that email marketing increased sales by 180% compared to display ads. 78% of marketers also say that email contributes significantly to their business success.

This makes email marketing one of the top trends for marketing automation in 2022.

3. Content Is No Longer the King, Simplicity Is

In the early days of the Internet, Bill Gates coined the phrase: “Content is King.” He predicted that the Internet as a “marketplace for content” would prove extremely lucrative for companies. That was in 1996, and today people are drowning in the tons of content on the Internet.

The flood of mediocre content is becoming more and more annoying and consumers are less and less willing to tolerate it.

What is needed today is simplicity. Or to put it another way: “Content is no longer the king, simplicity is.“

What customers want is selected, high-quality information that is easy to understand and, above all, relevant to them. They want a unique twist, a good idea.

That means you don’t have to post something every day. It’s better to provide high-quality, relevant and engaging content less frequently. Don’t go for the masses, but reduce to the essentials.

This is also true on the flip side: many marketers have limited resources and don’t venture into marketing automation. It seems too big, too complex and too expensive.

But in the long run, marketing automation is the only way to deliver more relevant content with less effort.

Once again, the key is to choose a cost-effective marketing automation solution and start with a single simple workflow. From there, you can build out your automations incrementally. Then, automation gradually frees your team from manual processes so they can focus on other tasks. This way, you create a sustainable foundation for the scalability of your marketing activities.

4. Customer Retention Is Better Than Customer Acquisition

Advertising successfully doesn’t just mean winning new customers. It also means reactivating existing relationships. Why is this so important to keep in mind?

Retaining existing customers and motivating them to buy again is 5x cheaper than attracting new customers. Existing customers already have trust in the brand and the paths are shorter.

But while this is true, many companies don’t have this big lever on their radar. While 44% of businesses focus on new customer acquisition, only 18% consciously focus on customer retention. Yet a 5% increase in customer retention can positively impact a company’s profitability by more than 75%, according to a Bain & Company report. And the likelihood of selling something to an existing customer is 60-70% compared to only 5-20% for new customers.

The key factor in retaining existing customers is their user experience. Satisfied customers will act as brand ambassadors among their friends. Consumers today trust the reviews and recommendations of their acquaintances much more than advertising. Therefore, it is essential to keep customers happy and provide them with continuous positive experiences with the brand. According to Forbes, this pays off in higher conversion and retention rates.

Again, personalized email marketing is the key channel, as this graphic on the most effective digital marketing tactics for customer engagement shows:

5. Better Integration With Sales

While Marketing and Sales form different departments of a company, it is obvious that they work towards the same goal, namely to grow and advance the company.

In reality, however, these departments don’t always work together efficiently, for example, by not automatically synchronizing customer data and not defining goals together.

Only 23% of salespeople say marketers hand them sales-ready leads. Aligning marketing and sales can lead to 36% higher customer retention rates and 38% higher sales profit rates. There is great potential here.

Marketing automation can greatly streamline these processes. Good marketing automation software can not only automate various workflows, but it also provides a wealth of information that can be used to make better decisions in all areas of the business.

Marketing automation gives you a complete picture that allows both the marketing team and the sales team to understand where your leads are coming from, how they are behaving, and how they are progressing toward a purchase. This can help both teams align their goals based on verifiable factors, provide the sales team with the best possible results, and continually adjust marketing efforts based on success rates.

In addition to good personal communication, good collaboration requires integrations at the software level: an integration of the marketing automation software with the sales CRM, and sales reporting and mutual updating of lead status to accurately reflect the success of specific marketing campaigns.

What about AI?

The use of machine learning and artificial intelligence in marketing has been hyped for years among marketing trends for the following year.

Reality, however, has been showing for years: Only corporate giants like Amazon, Netflix and Starbucks can afford practical solutions, and this is likely to remain the case in the coming years.

While 48% of companies are already using marketing automation (2019 figures, and rising), only 8% of companies are using artificial intelligence. So for the large number of small and medium-sized companies, this is (still) pie in the sky.

And what about the “End of the Cookie”?

Are cookies dying? Yes and no. Cookies are fundamentally important to the functioning of the Internet. At the same time, they are a threat to privacy. How does this fit together?

Cookies are a technology that allows a website to uniquely identify a visitor:in. It is important to distinguish between so-called first-party cookies and third-party cookies.

A first-party cookie comes from the website that a visitor is currently visiting. Such a cookie is set, for example, when a visitor logs in. Without this technology, a visitor would have to log in again for each visit.

A third-party cookie, on the other hand, comes from another website, meaning a third party. These are usually advertising networks such as those of Google and Facebook or tracking tools such as Google Analytics.

The announced “end of the cookie” is only about third-party cookies. The browsers Firefox and Safari already block these or delete them after a short time, Chrome is expected to follow suit after all not until 2023.

For marketers, this means that web tracking across multiple websites will become less accurate or even impossible.

That’s why it’s worth it to already invest in obtaining zero-party data today (see above, trend 1) and to establish direct access to leads and customers without detours via the advertising networks (trend 2).

By the way, our own software is not affected by the end of third-party cookies. Starting from the Pro version, our customers can operate Friendly Automate under their own (sub-)domain and thus employ first-party cookies.

Conclusion

Marketing automation is more relevant than ever. Choose an affordable and privacy-compliant marketing automation solution, focus on the right communication channels, start with simple workflows, take care of existing customers, and integrate sales and marketing – and you’ll be well on your way for 2022.

Der Beitrag The Top 5 Marketing Automation Trends for 2022 erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

Even though companies are engaging thousands or even millions of people once, they can now create a personal connection with each one, offering them relevant and timely solutions that can have the biggest impact at that moment. 

As marketers, we can thank the advancements in marketing automation for the possibilities we can enjoy today. 

Marketing automation has grown to be a $4 billion industry because it allows businesses of all sizes to automate large parts of their marketing processes while simultaneously improving end-user experiences. 

There are countless benefits of marketing automation tools, but for you, the more pressing question might be this: 

Which solution should you choose? 

One of the first things most companies look at is the functionality, but the increasing concerns about data security and user privacy might be just as much, if not more, important.

Let’s explore some of the leading tools today and whether you should use them. But first, let’s quickly go through some of the reasons why you should use automation tools in the first place.

Why Use Marketing Automation Tools? 

Marketing automation can be a vague term. And that’s because it encompasses so many possibilities. 

So, to understand why it makes sense to use marketing automation, let’s look at some of the things that it can do for a business.

For one thing, marketing automation enables companies to send timely messages to the right person. Instead of bombarding your entire list with the same messages, you can set up automations that will be triggered based on actions, sending the right message at a time when the subscriber is the most likely to respond. 

For instance, if someone subscribes to your list from a specific landing page, you already have a pretty good idea about what they’re interested in. But what if you could also trigger messages based on behaviors on your site?

That’s just one of the things that marketing automation can offer.

Marketing automation software can also help you lose fewer customers that you do attract. By collecting and using more data, you can reduce churn and increase the lifetime value of the leads that you attract.  

Finally, marketing automation can also be beneficial for your sales team. Instead of having to plow through hundreds of unqualified leads, your team can know exactly when a lead is ready to talk and focus on the warmest leads in your funnel. 

This also means that your sales team will have detailed information about every lead, making it much easier to address each individual’s specific problems and needs. 

Top 10 Marketing Automation Tools

There are dozens of marketing automation software solutions to choose from. And often, the most popular choice might not be the right fit in your situation. 

With that in mind, let’s look at some of the leading tools in the marketing automation world and discuss what each of them has to offer.

1. Friendly Automate

When looking for marketing automation tools, the first thing most entrepreneurs look at is the features. And that makes sense. 

You’re looking for ways to make your marketing more efficient while simultaneously improving performance, so you want the solution you choose to have a robust list of features and possibilities you can rely on.

But although the features are essential, that’s not the only thing you should look at.

And Friendly Automate is the perfect example of marketing automation software that’s has a built-in advantage most of its competitors can’t match: 

Compliance with EU’s Data Privacy laws. 

A recent ruling in the EU determined that the United States does not provide adequate protection for data from Switzerland and the European Union. 

And that has created a big problem for companies operating in the EU that are using solutions with servers in the United States.

All the data that gets collected by companies like Hubspot then goes to the United States. And the EU regulations for what Hubspot can do with that data no longer apply, making the companies liable for privacy complaints. 

And that’s where Friendly Automate comes in. 

It’s a relatively new marketing automation tool, built on the robust Mautic platform, often referred to as the WordPress of marketing automation. 

You can enjoy features such as a built-in CRM, comprehensive email marketing, a wide variety of automations, landing pages, lead scoring, segmentation, reporting…the list goes on.

The service will offer you everything you’d get from Hubspot (or other options) at a fraction of the cost and with some powerful integration possibilities.

But that’s not even the main advantage.                                     

As mentioned before, Hubspot (and many others) transfer their data to servers in the US. Meanwhile, Friendly Automate hosts all your data on dedicated servers in the EU or Switzerland.

And since Friendly Automate is based on an open-source solution, you will always be in control of your data and can start hosting the software yourself or move to another compatible provider. 

What all of that means is that while Hubspot or Marketo might be better known in the marketing automation world, solutions like Friendly Automate can be the smarter choice, especially for companies that want to ensure the safety of their customer data.

2. HubSpot

There’s a reason why HubSpot has 95,000 users across the globe. Since 2006, it has set the tone for not only what inbound marketing should look like but how businesses of all sizes should market themselves online.

If you’re looking for a full marketing automation solution, it’s hard to beat what HubSpot can offer. Or at least that used to be the case.

Today, with the competition in the marketing automation world much steeper than a decade or even five years ago, HubSpot is no longer the clear-cut choice.

Their pricing strategy has received a lot of criticism, as it’s one of the most expensive options on the market, with not much to show for the difference in cost compared to Friendly Automate and a few others.

Not to mention how frustrating it can be when you’re trying to customize a simple landing page.

Add in the privacy issues discussed in the previous section, and it becomes pretty clear why more people are looking for an alternative.

3. SharpSpring

SharpSpring is a marketing automation tool suitable for small and medium businesses, but it has proven to be especially popular among agencies.

The reason for that is that SharpSpring offers marketing automation services that marketing agencies offer their clients. And it even makes rebranding very simple, allowing agencies to change the interface and customize the experience that their customers have. 

Just like most solutions on this list, it comes with advanced email automation tools, a robust CRM, and the ability to integrate with hundreds of third-party tools through Zapier.

If you talked with a few marketers about what they’ve heard, one of the first things they’d probably say is that SharpSpring comes with a good bang for your buck. At least when compared with HubSpot or Marketo.

However, there are ways that it falls short as well. 

For one thing, it’s not the most convenient automation software in terms of usability. More experienced users should navigate it fairly easily. But businesses with less experience might need some time until they figure out how to make the most out of the available features.

At the same time, it still lacks some of the advanced features you’d find in more robust solutions, which means it’s not really suitable for beginners and the more advanced users.

Finally, just as with HubSpot, the landing page and email builders can be a bit clunky, which again ties into the lack of an intuitive dashboard. 

4. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is the darling of the marketing automation software world, seeing rapid growth and an incredible onslaught of praise in the last few years. It’s now often talked about as the marketing automation software that HubSpot or Marketo should be, and there are many reasons to love what it has to offer. 

The intuitive pipeline builder feature allows breaking down the sales cycle into an intuitive and easy-to-understand sequence. 

With ActiveCampaign, users also report how easy it is to assign tasks to leads, ensuring that none are abandoned or neglected.

But is the hype warranted? 

We could discuss countless features, but for the most part, they are comparable to the solutions listed previously. 

And just as with other marketing automation tools that have taken off, the pricing structure has become less and less appealing. Many users are being priced out of the software and are looking for fairer and more affordable solutions.

ActiveCampaign is also located in the United States, which means that companies in the European Union and Switzerland will be at risk for not adhering to their local privacy laws.

5. Marketo

Marketo is another powerhouse in the marketing automation industry, with a loyal following that swears by the platform’s effectiveness.

One of the biggest advantages Marketo can offer is its ease-of-use. Since users can customize what features they need, the dashboard is never overcrowded, and it’s very easy to quickly learn how to take advantage of the features.

But even though it’s easy to use, that doesn’t take away from the wide range of available features, should you want to use them. It covers everything a company today might need from marketing automation, offering many integrations that allow taking advantage of third-party tools as well.

Still, there are some drawbacks you should consider.

The fact that a CRM solution isn’t built-in means you’ll need a third-party option. And that’s not convenient. 

The pricing structure leaves a lot to be desired, and Marketo has been steadily increasing its prices over the last few years.

The way Marketo approaches landing page building, analytics, and reporting is also a bit outdated, which is a common theme among companies that have been around for longer and might have become stagnant compared to the up-and-comers.

6. SalesManago

Artificial Intelligence has been making its way to all aspects of business, so it’s no surprise that marketing automation tools are also starting to include the capabilities of AI into their services.

And SalesManago is a prime example of a company that has made AI a central part of its positioning, using machine learning to aggregate your customer data and offer unique insights into their behaviors.

The amount of customer data you can collect and work with is one of the main reasons why SalesManago has become so popular among eCommerce stores.

A lot of its features, including the drip sequence planning options and live chat, are geared towards eCommerce stores, although they serve other types of clients as well.

According to some of the reviews, the pricing is quite affordable as well compared to some of the industry leaders, but you have to request pricing, which is an outdated approach that lacks transparency. 

Another issue with SalesManago is that using it can get quite technical. There are so many features to go over, and the guides and tutorials aren’t always clear, which means that you’ll need to invest quite a bit of time in figuring out how to use it fully.

7. GetResponse

For a long time, GetResponse was an email marketing platform focused on delivering the best of what email marketing had to offer to its customers. 

But more recently, the company has decided to broaden its horizons and started offering the full range of marketing automation services, including landing page design, webinar creation, and even a full-service eCommerce marketing solution. 

Today, you can choose how many features you want to use. You can still get a lightweight but powerful email marketing solution, or you can opt for more robust plans that include marketing automations.

Since email is what GetResponse is known for, it’s no surprise that this is where it really stands out. You can build out complex email sequences, using automations and triggers that provide you complete control over each email you send out. 

But the biggest strength of GetResponse is also the reason for its shortcomings. 

While it is expanding its list of features, it’s still primarily an email marketing platform with some addons. And while the hosted webinar solution or conversion funnels are a nice addition, when you compare it with other marketing automation platforms, GetResponse isn’t yet on the same level.

8. Sendinblue

Sendinblue has built a reputation as the cost-effective marketing automation tool for companies with a tight budget. Initially, it focused on email marketing but has since expanded its list of features to include CRM, marketing automation, SMS marketing, and even Facebook Ads tools. 

And despite the low price, many users are happy with what it can offer, especially as an email marketing tool. The workflow-based email automation allows quickly setting up various triggers, assigning scores to subscribers, and sending transactional messaging. 

They also have an intuitive landing page creator that allows users to use templates and quickly customize them according to their needs.

However, there’s a reason why the pricing is so low compared to some of the others like HubSpot.

For one thing, many users find the onboarding process challenging, as it takes a while to learn to navigate the different features. The provided templates are also not on par with most of the solutions on this list, which means you’d need to perform a lot of customizations yourself.

Finally, for this price, you shouldn’t expect exceptional support. If something goes wrong, you might just have to figure it out for yourself or wait for a while to receive a response.

9. Pardot

Pardot is one of the most prominent players in the marketing automation world, which is understandable since it’s part of the Salesforce services package. 

And as you might expect, it comes with a ton of powerful features in marketing automation and email. People also praise it’s ease-of-use, the ton of automations and the dedicated customer success consultants who will guide you every step of the way.

Pardot makes a lot of sense for those already using Salesforce services, as different Salesforce products integrate with each other seamlessly, making it easier to take full advantage of the possibilities and create a compounding effect in terms of impact.

However, the main problem with Pardot is that it’s very expensive. Frankly, despite the benefits it can offer, it’s hard to justify those prices for small and medium businesses, especially when there are more affordable solutions like Friendly Automate that can provide a comparable set of features.

Comparing automation tools with such start pricing differences isn’t always straightforward, which is why it’s essential to look at your company’s needs when choosing a solution. But when it comes to Pardot, many companies won’t be able to justify the considerable cost because they could get simpler (but comparably effective) solutions for a fraction of the cost.

10. Evalanche

Evalanche is a German marketing automation service by SC Networks with a growing presence in Europe. Besides marketing automation, it also offers lead management and email marketing solutions, covering some of the most important features that a company might need. 

However, the web presence for Evalanche is severely lacking, with very little user feedback and even limited information on the website. 

It’s used by around 3,000 companies, mostly located in Europe, and is mainly known as an email marketing services provider with a few marketing automation features.

But with established companies like Marketo and ActiveCampaign, as well as more user-friendly and transparent startups like Friendly Automate, it’s unclear whether Evalanche can significantly increase its market share. 

Bottom Line: What Should You Choose? 

In this list, we went through ten of the most popular and relevant marketing automation software solutions available today. 

So, which one should you go with?

Well, your company needs should come first. So look for the combination of price and features that works best in your situation. But at the same time, you need to consider compliance with privacy laws, especially if you’re operating in the EU or Switzerland. 

When you choose Friendly Automate, you not only get a comprehensive package of features at a price that’s significantly lower than some of the more popular solutions. You also get complete transparency and security for your data, which will always be stored in servers located in Switzerland or the EU.

Marketing automation involves collecting a lot of sensitive data about your audience. To use it ethically, you must not only establish good practices in your company but also ensure that the data itself is protected and stored in compliance with local and international regulations.

Der Beitrag Top 10 Marketing Automation Tools in 2021 erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

For me the best way is an interested one-to-one conversation with your potential customer. You enjoy a freshly brewed coffee together and just talk about how you can work together.

Unimaginable in times of the Internet given the huge number of potential customers. Unless you can bend time. Or you can automate.

Mass vs. Individual

If you can’t talk to all your leads personally, you can still establish individual communication with them.

There is a chance that your online marketing campaign will look like this if you focus on mass communication. You send out a nice newsletter twice a month and show all your visitors the same campaign banner on your homepage:

However, most of your leads may have different characteristics. They are in a different phase of the buying cycle, they have a different relationship with your brand and they may have a different interest at the beginning. So is it really a good idea to address everyone with the same message?

So Many Missed Opportunities

If you don’t send the right message at the right time through the right channel and with the right frequency, you’re missing valuable opportunities for more revenue:

Studies show that 70% of potential customers are not immediately ready to buy. The average customer journey has 12+ individual contact points.

Deliver the right message at the right time to the right person

Marketing Automation collects data on your leads and automates the delivery of the right message at the right time to the right person on the right channel:

This does not mean that you have to create 5-10 different newsletters to use marketing automation.

It means that you can trigger the right automation sequence when your potential customer needs a little push.

I would like to present a few examples of this:

From Unknown Visitor To Loyal Customer

By using the right triggers at the right time, you can advance your contacts in your sales funnel.

Unknown visitors without a known email address are hard to communicate with. But these unknown visitors can be turned into interested leads by using lead magnets and freebies.

As soon as you have possibilities to communicate with your leads, you can start an automation. You could do this by sending leads regular e-mails with information that might be of interest to them.

You can handle objections about price, quality or anything that might prevent them from completing their first order.

You can turn them into first-time buyers by giving them individual offers without jeopardizing your overall sales with general discounts.

As soon as someone opens their wallet, a special relationship starts. You have the chance to offer a great service, prove yourself and amaze your customer with your product or service.

Marketing automation will help you maintain the relationship. It gives you the tools to turn a first-time customer into a loyal customer by continuing to provide relevant offers and maybe special discounts based on their order history.

Reduce Churn and Raise Profitability

Winning new customers is one way to grow. A usually much cheaper option is to lose fewer existing customers.

Become aware of how much money you spend on advertising and customer acquisition. There is no easier way to get a better ROI than not losing a customer.

Marketing Automation collects data from website visits, email openings and clicks, giving you a complete picture of your individual customers’ current engagement levels. When engagement levels drop, automated retention campaigns allow you to reactivate customers and generate revenue that would otherwise be clearly lost.

Treat Your Contacts as Individuals

Most companies use some kind of web analytics to understand customer interest based on the data collected on the website.

If you send newsletters, you can also draw conclusions based on the emails that are opened and clicked. Not all page visits are equal. A recurring visit to your pricing page, repeated clicks on your terms of delivery, long time spent on certain products show clear interest.

Marketing automation takes the hard work out of the process by summarizing the contact’s activity into actionable information. With lead scoring or persona building, you can communicate differently with your contacts and ensure that your message is relevant. It’s easy to segment and create automations for specific groups of contacts based on their behavior.

Make Better Use of Your Sales Team

Automation can have an enormous effect not only on your income but also on your expenses.

A great advertising campaign could make champagne bottles pop in your marketing department.

At the same time, it can lead to your sales team having to work with numerous unqualified leads generated by irrelevant traffic.

Marketing Automation allows you to pre-filter certain contacts and have them pushed into your sales CRM only when they are qualified and ready to talk to a person.

This can work in both directions. Closed deals in your sales CRM can trigger automations that provide real value to the customer after the sale.

The Untold Secret Side Effect of Marketing Automation

Because email traffic is increasing every year, email service providers try to cut the noise.

They sort your email into different tabs like Primary, Promotions and Updates.

The filters are developed further every day. At first they were based on the content, that is, what was written in your email. Then it was the reputation – that means how well you have behaved as an email sender so far.

Today it is the relationship that matters most. It is determined by whether a person opens your emails and clicks. And that depends on how much data you collect, how well organized that data is and how you use it. In other words – how accurate your communication is. Better communication means better deliverability, more successful campaigns and higher ROI.

So marketing automation allows you to build better relationships with your contacts – automated and scalable.

Marketing Automation is closest to an honest, one-to-one conversation with your potential customer, while you enjoy a freshly brewed coffee together.

If you would like to learn more about how marketing automation can improve your business, please arrange a free initial consultation.

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The Effect

The pop-up is displayed in the lower left half of the browser window when visiting the website. The interested party has five minutes to enter its email address to receive a 5% discount code. With the time limit we increase the pressure on the prospective customer to participate in this promotion.

It looks like this:

The Implementation

To implement the countdown pop-up and the subsequent nurture workflow, we used the marketing automation software Friendly Automate, which is based on Mautic. With another software the implementation should look similar.

We use the following features for this:

1. Pop-up
2. Form
3. Email
4. Automation
5. Segment

1. Generate Attention With a Pop-Up

We create the pop-up as a so-called “Focus Item”. In our example we have chosen a view at the bottom left:

We also define the visual appearance of the pop-up window:

Here is the corresponding HTML code for the Focus-Item

<script src="https://example.com/countdown.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://example.com/form/generate.js?id=5"></script>

In the first line we load a Javascript file, which activates the actual countdown. You can download it here: countdown.js

In the second line we include a form, in this case it has the ID 5. You would replace this number with the ID of the form you create in the following step.

2. Create a Form To Capture the Email Address and Display the Countdown

The form consists of the following fields:

The first field is an “HTML area”, which contains CSS to adapt the pop-up to the layout of the customer’s website.

Field two is also an “HTML area” and displays the headline.

In the third field we count down the actual countdown. This is also an “HTML area”, with this content:

<span id="scpdt"><table style="border:0;width:250px;margin:0 auto;"><tbody><tr><td class="time" style="font-size:50px;line-height:30px;border:none;text-align: center;">04</td><td class="time" style="font-size:50px;line-height:30px;border:none;text-align: center;">59</td></tr><tr></tr></tbody></table></span>

Field 4 contains a value proposition (“Whiter teeth in 15 minutes!”) as additional text and is also an “HTML area”.

Last but not least we ask for the email address in field 5.

3. Prepare the Voucher Email

Afterwards we will send an email containing the 5% discount code. We create the mail as type “template” to use it in an automation afterwards:

4. Send the Voucher Automatically by Email

The campaign for the countdown pop-up can be easily implemented. It consists of only three elements:

The first element is the contact source. All persons who have filled out the form “PopUp CountDown” become part of this automation:

In element two, we add a tag to these people so that we can later understand that these people have received a voucher:

And in the third and last element we trigger the sending of the email template we created in the previous step. It contains the actual discount code:

5. Create a Segment To Evaluate the Sendings

Finally, we create a segment (a filter) that contains all persons who participated in the countdown campaign and thus became part of this funnel.

For this purpose, we define a filter for all contacts that contain the tag “5% Newsletter” and can therefore track the results of the action more easily.

Conclusion

With the integration of this simple countdown funnel, our customer generated more than 160 new leads in the first 15 days, which is more than 10 per day – a great success.

You can implement this and many more funnels yourself with Friendly Automate – or contact my agency Sichtbar Online Marketing, a specialist for marketing automation and Friendly partner, for professional support.

About the author: René Petry is managing director of the agency Sichtbar AG. The computer scientist is a lecturer at SAWI and Digicomp as well as an exam instructor for the federal exam in SEO.

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But in a world where everyone does email marketing, you need to stand out to make sure this claim stays correct.

Sending a static monthly/weekly/daily newsletter will not help you to build relationship with your customers. In fact if not done right, you might see a constant decline in the open rates leading to lower conversions. This can greatly hurt your ROI.

You can only build relationships with sending customised emails to your clients based on their actions, interest and stage of your relationship. You want to talk differently to a person that just checked out your website and a person who is already your customer.

I often hear – “But I’m already converting”.

Yes, you are grabbing all the low hanging fruits, but you are leaving money on the table. Most customers need more work, but you don’t have to work more – you can automate that.

This is where marketing automation comes in.

Marketing automation should mirror your manual sales process, it should be customised to your company. But there are 5 automation campaigns, that fit almost any business. And I would like to share them here:

1. Welcome To Our Great Business

If a potential customer walks into your brick and mortar store, you greet them, show them around and introduce your business in couple of sentences.

You can do the same thing during the welcome email campaign. Introduce your company, services in couple of sentences, offer solutions to problems, brag about your achievements, ratings. Let your customers know, that you are a great business, that cares about them.

Another good strategy is to have a team spotlight with pictures and maybe bios. A look into behind the scenes, like:

In the next welcome email you can see how Joe uses the chance of undivided attention from the subscriber, and deep dives into the brand story, and fires up ways to segment customers. More about this in the next steps.

2. Nurture Your Leads, Get Friendly

You have the opportunity to continue the conversation in multiple emails, unlike in a store, where the shop assistant can only say 1-2 sentences before over-annoying the clients.

While you discuss your products/services from different angles, you can monitor what wakes interest in your readers. You can build personas based on their interest and continue your lead nurturing accordingly.

Did you see what Joe did in the previous example?

By placing the two links into one sentence so close to each other, you are offering a choice to the customer. They will click on the topic they are interested in, and you can use this information of their interest for building out the persona of the contact.

You can set up a filter in your nurturing campaign, and create personas in an intelligent way.

Your personal building campaign would consists from these type of blocks:

As you can see we are verifying two links in this example with a simple click-check:

If the contact clicked on the blog article, in the next step we add the vegetarian tag to this contact. You can repeat this and add multiple tags of course.

This is how the tag is adjusted:

Building personas helps you to target better, as we will discuss in the next step.

3. First Purchase Campaigns

Once you mapped out what may trigger the sale for the potential customer, you can focus on that in your communication. Is it the price? The payment terms? A certain property of the product? Send the proper sales arguments automatically.

This is the campaign, where you can communicate special offers, while you exclude your current customers. Your goal is to turn your customers into first time buyers. Once you deliver something, you’ll have a special relationship and you can turn them into return customers easier.

Here is a first purchase campaign example by Bliss, where they took a seasonal item, combined it with the best sellers. All items were a bit discounted to push the customer to move something into the cart.

4. Recover Lost Sales

Adding a product or service to the shopping cart is a clear way to express willingness to buy. Visitors doing so most likely can be turned into paying customers. Like it or not, some visitors will not make the decision to buy something right away. The reasons can be different, like:

• review competitor’s pricing
• first want to search for coupons
• want to be sure, that you are trustworthy merchant
• looking for reviews
• need spouse’s approval

You can address all of these points in an abandoned cart campaign. And you should, because according to the Baymard Institiute, this rate can be up to 50%. Even if you can’t turn everything into a sale, but 10% of it would would result in a 5% growth. Not too shabby.

Also don’t forget of the added benefit: by monitoring what triggers the sale after abandonment can contribute to improving your sales process, which results in more conversion in the first place.

This example focuses on shipping costs:

You don’t have to mention the product, it is not always the point. Once the customer liked you. They liked the personality your website reflected. You can try to appeal them the same way:

You can also throw an incentive on the table to address a price point:

The following example focuses on all the possible issues why the sale is abandoned at once:

To make a campaign like this is easier than you think.

If you have a separate page for the step before payment (added to cart) and after successful payment, then you can set up an abandoned cart campaign easily. You can just filter for the specific page hits in Friendly Automate, or any other tool you are using.

Once you place clients in the abandoned cart segment, you can any time communicate with them.

You can address all issues the client might have in a sequence of emails:

Once the purchase is successful, they will automatically disqualify from the segment, and your communication will stop.

Again: you have the opportunity to handle return customers differently, make them feel they are special, and treat the accordingly. Sales automation is not built for a sprint, it is helping you during a marathon.

5. Ask for a Review

Reviews are underestimated sales tools. In the world of anonymity, where it takes literally 5 minutes to spin up a web shop or create a sales page – legit reviews are the way to get ahead of your competition.

These reviews will help you to stockpile ammunition for your welcome series, increase your ranking, get more leads and strengthen the relationship with your customers.

Couple of rules apply:

1. They are doing You a favour. So keep it simple and make the review process fast and painless.
2. Use the communication to build your brand. You can ask for review and land a message at the same time.
3. Give them a small reward. You’ll get better response rate if you do so. You can create rewards which can be used for their next purchase, which generates extra income for you.

See the following example by CourseHorse:

Conclusion

Automation Is About Harvesting the High Hanging Fruits

If you have ever harvested apples, you know, that the top of the tree is the place where all the juicy ripe stuff is. Whoever brings the first ladder to the tree will have the opportunity.

The above mentioned automation examples help you to build a more intelligent business by reaching out better, lower churn rate, raise the number of purchases per visitor, raise basket value and build loyality.

You Are Using Automations Already

I bet you have out of office message set up, canned responses in Gmail or Outlook.

The initial investment into marketing automation used to be high, now there are tools, like Friendly Automate, which lowers the cost of entry dramatically.

And it got super-easy too: it doesn’t have to be more complicated than setting up a canned response or setting up an out of office message.

Want to have more examples?

We can get them to your inbox.

All automated.

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