Six practical tips to make the leap from broadcasting to narrowcasting from Alana Griffiths, marketing strategy director at Mason Zimbler
Imagine a world without ‘target audiences’. Where every decision maker’s unique interests, objectives and financial situations are reflected in the brand communications they receive. Where marketing stops broadcasting intrusive sales messages and starts narrowcasting welcome information. This is the world marketing automation is building.
By learning your prospects’ preferences and only serving them relevant messages, automation enables all your company’s marketing assets to work more effectively. And this isn’t a case of promising much and delivering little. Having matured greatly in recent years, automation shows a clear and consistent trend towards improved campaign metrics.
Many people are predicting that 2013 will see a tipping point for marketing automation. The teething problems experienced by early adopters are being put to right and a second wave of adopters are getting ready to take the plunge.
However, as with all technical solutions, the technology itself is only half the story. It takes skilful implementation to fulfil its potential. These six tips will help ensure your marketing automation delivers on its promises:
Get your data in order
It sounds obvious, but one of the major causes of failed marketing automation campaigns is poor data quality. So create a ‘data action plan’ to ensure all your records are complete, de-duplicated and up-to-date before uploading them to your automation platform. Then review and update your data on an ongoing basis.
Better relevance equals better resonance. Intelligently segmenting your data will enable you to deliver more relevant messages based on contacts’ position in the buyer journey. You can also map your content to contacts’ industry, job role and propensity models – which can make all the difference between a hot lead and a ‘please unsubscribe me’ message.
Engage the whole business and join up your thinking
Automation will invariably impact other parts of your business, not just marketing. To make sure the effect is 100% positive, plan to integrate your marketing automation platform with your CRM system, ensure your sales team understand the sort of leads your campaigns will generate, and help them plan the next steps to nurture these leads through the sales cycle.
It’s likely that different divisions within your company will be contacting the same prospects independently. So to avoid bombarding them with too many messages, try to find ways of avoiding overlaps between your campaigns, such as checking the contact’s last inbound action before initiating another communication.
Develop a robust campaign programme
The raison d’être of automation is to increase the number of relevant and timely opportunities you have to engage your contacts. Your campaign programme should be set up to deliver just that. Ensure time-sensitive communications are prepared and poised for release well in advance. And pay special attention to any mechanisms for receiving direct responses and following-up on qualified leads.
Make it personal
You can achieve much higher open and click-through rates just by personalising your emails. So always try to address recipients by their name and include the name of an appropriate colleague in the ‘from’ field, rather than just putting your company name. It’s these little personal touches that make your prospects feel truly valued.
Sweat the details
Automation amplifies the impact of every aspect of your marketing – including the mistakes. For example, a common error is to not include your business’ contact details as the ‘return to’ address in your email settings, so recipients can’t reply directly. Before your campaign goes live, always take the time to fine-tune the details and give everything a last-minute sanity check.
Marketing automation platforms are smart beasts, capable of intelligently adding code when you least expect it. There are good reasons for this, such as complying with email and web standards. But this makes it crucial to test your communications on a variety of devices and displays after uploading them to your platform. What looks right on your PC or laptop might surprise you on your smartphone or tablet.
Test your theories and keep learning
Even automated marketing isn’t an exact science. To optimise the performance of your communications, you should continually analyse and reassess the effectiveness of elements such as your calls to action; their wording, design and positioning. Aim to A-B test at least two variables like this in each campaign to fine-tune what resonates with your contacts.
Like a good wine, marketing automation should get better with time.
A robust campaign programme with an adaptive testing framework is the surest route to success. So make sure the analysis reports you use give full details on all your contacts’ activities (not just visitor reports). And take time to scrutinise the findings. If leads aren’t converting well enough, or there simply aren’t enough of them, review your scoring programs and incorporate your learnings into the next cycle of activity. Aim to achieve a ‘virtuous circle’ where marketing communications become increasingly relevant, personal and useful to recipients. In turn, you should see increasing numbers of good quality leads progressing smoothly through the funnel.
And if you need any help…
As with many disciplines, automation has layers of complexity which can take years to master. If you find your efforts aren’t having the expected impact on your marketing performance, or you’re struggling to make your technology sing, remember the golden rule of marketing automation: never be afraid to ask for help.