5 Marketing Automation Pro Tips to Drive More Leads and Conversions

Marketing automation provides time and cost savings. However, every company that uses this technology may not be getting as much out of it as they should, especially when it comes to driving more leads and conversions. Here are some ways to make marketing automation work for you.

Create a map for the lead journey

Although marketing automation solutions do most of the work nowadays, you still should provide some direction and assistance to help the software deliver optimized results. It’s important to create a visual of how your leads move through various stages on their journey toward conversion. Doing so will help you identify the steps and also help you understand where leads get stuck along the way so you can address that in the marketing program design.

There are many lead stages throughout a journey that may be relevant to your automated program design planning. For example, there are leads that remain anonymous while others are known and/or engaged. Other leads may have already been qualified through your marketing campaigns or sales team.

Have a plan for each lead stage so you can use your marketing automation to address the behavior at that stage to keep every lead moving toward conversion.

Use an automatic qualification process to speed up lead movement

Having the ability to move leads through the pipeline at a faster rate can drive more leads and conversions. Pushing promising leads along toward conversion opens more room in the pipeline to funnel more new leads.

Your automatic qualification process can involve assigning score values to actions like the lead signing up for a demo or free account. This action may indicate an interest in a specific product or service. Taking the time to assign the right values to how leads interact with your brand will enable you to capture the lead faster and automate the next best action that pushes the lead to sales faster. Faster speed to lead means your prospects are getting the information and interactions they find relevant faster, and allows your team to know when the prospect is ready to engage with sales.

Marketing automation software can be used to assign a lead score that reflects each action taken by the prospect and to determine if and when that lead meets your scoring qualification. From there, automated triggers can be set up for engagement with sales or for placement into another campaign at any particular time.

Activate personalization and segmentation across marketing activities

Bringing all your data into a marketing automation platform enables you to get more insights from the extensive prospect data that you receive across all digital channels. Incorporating artificial intelligence into an automation platform, you can use data from your prospect’s digital footprint to inform segmentation and deliver relevant personalization in both marketing and sales engagement.

This facilitates the ability to bring scaled efficiencies to personalized emails and other engagements with leads. In doing so, it’s easier to show these prospects that you understand who they are as individuals and that you can address their pain points.

Implement multi-channel campaigns

The more channels that you can engage with prospects on, the greater likelihood you have of reaching more of your target audience. Put marketing automation to work in accomplishing this, including scheduling and sending campaigns for email, social media, SMS text messaging, videos, and more.

You can set days and times to space publication of these campaigns to maximize the number of audience members that can see it. And, thanks to artificial intelligence, optimized days and times are often recommended by the marketing automation platform to increase your reach and response rates.

5. Use automation for increasing your social listening and monitoring capabilities

Responsiveness can also be a deciding factor for a lead. Typically, however, it can be difficult to stay on top of all the online comments—positive and negative—that appear let alone respond to them in a timely manner. That’s why you should look for a marketing automation solution that includes social listening and monitoring capabilities.

Receive notification when your brand is mentioned on social media so you can jump on and join the discussion, respond to feedback about a customer experience, or answer questions. It delivers the ability to be more personal and connected with your audience. All those that have viewed that conversation will see your level of care and concern, potentially winning them over.

Marketing automation drives customer growth

Your marketing and sales teams may be stellar in their ability to collect leads and convert them. However, their efforts can be enhanced by marketing automation solutions that help improve personalization, speed qualification, and amplify conversations. These capabilities can open the pipeline to more leads and facilitate a stronger relationship between your customer and your brand.

For more information about marketing automation, please read: