5 Tips for Effectively Using Marketing Automation Tools

Did you know that marketers who use automation tools can generate twice as many leads in comparison with those who don’t?

That’s because a good marketing automation strategy implemented effectively can increase your productivity and save valuable time which can be spent on other aspects of your business.

But how does automation work? And what is a good way to leverage marketing automation tools?

Keep reading to find out the answers to these and other similar questions marketers often have.

Tips Leveraging Marketing Automation Tools

When marketers receive a plethora of emails in their inbox, it can be quite difficult and time-consuming to respond to all of them. And since interaction with other marketers and clients is vital, an automation strategy can save the day by performing various tasks instantly.

Here are a few tips to implement a good automation plan.

1. Consider Automating a Tutorial In Exchange For An Email

This is a great option for attracting more leads for your business. It’s basically a lead-generating automation plan.

People are more likely to become interested in your services and products when you provide them with something for free. A great option for free content is a tutorial or walk through of a common problem or challenge your customers face. You can break the tutorial up into multiple parts and deliver it via an automated email campaign.

To do this, you need to create a special landing page with an automation tool for your tutorial. When visitors are interested or need your tutorial, you prompt them to enter their information. This form gathers information such as name, email address and phone number. After they have submitted the form, then you can use an automated email service to deliver part one of the tutorial.

2. Use Automated Email Marketing

Speaking of automated email. This is another great way to attract more clients and save time with your marketing strategy.

Let’s say that you have obtained someone’s email address using the method mentioned above. Now it’s a good time to send them a welcome email and open up the line of communication.

There are special email applications such as MailChimp which let you send automatic emails to a certain list. You can set when to send these emails (for example, 2 minutes after they have subscribed to your website) and to whom.

You can also send follow-up emails promoting some products or services. These people already gave you their email address, so chances are that they are interested in your business. They are very likely to buy from you if you send automated emails periodically.

The best way to have success with email marketing is to personalize emails and have clear CTAs (call to action). For example, instruct your audience to read an article on your website, to visit a link or download a free ebook. You’re basically directing your readers through a marketing pipeline to convert them from leads to paying customers.

3. Use Automated Social Sharing

Interacting with your virtual friends on social media platforms is vital for your business.

However, this doesn’t mean that you should spend hours every day sharing content and links on multiple networking websites. You can automate that process using a tool such as IFTTT. IFTTT stands for “if this then that” and it helps you create special actions to be carried out whenever you want.

For example, let’s say that you just finished a new blog post on Wordpress and you want to share it on all your social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Instead of manually sharing the article, you use the aforementioned tool to create an automation process.

Whenever you post something on Wordpress, the tool will automatically share it on your preferred social platforms. You need to provide the app with your login credentials and customize the shared message such as “Check out this new post on digital marketing”, etc.

This doesn’t only save you a lot of time, but it also helps you stay connected with your readers. You also have the assurance that you never forget to share a post, so your exposure is maximized.

4. Take Advantage of Automated Research

It’s not enough to post content on a regular basis, you also need to know what topics are trending and which ones gather the most attention.

To do that, you need to do extensive research on a regular basis and see what ideas are generating a lot of buzz. This sounds like a lot of time, but luckily, you can automate everything with the same tool mentioned above or one similar to it.

For example, you can use a tool or service that aggregates online trends to pull data from various websites, social media networks or online communities. If people talk about rubber ducks, UFOs or who is going to be the next president, these automated tools extract that information and organize it for marketers.

The next step would be to simply dig through the data and see what new topics are relevant. Based on that, you can create valuable content which is trendy, shareable and interesting.

5. Set Up Reminders to Order Items From Shopping Carts

If you have an online business and you sell certain goods, you are probably aware that certain people abandon their shopping carts before ordering.

This is normal as customers can get distracted with other products or activities in their daily lives. However, this doesn’t mean that you have to lose these customers forever. To prevent that, you can create automated emails to remind your customers to revisit their shopping carts.

For example, there are tools which allow you to send customized emails a few minutes or hours after a shopping cart has been abandoned. This strategy is one way to bring shoppers back and turn them into customers!

Create Your Marketing Automation Plan Today!

A marketing automation strategy works perfectly if you’re willing to put the time to develop it correctly. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Often the simplest strategies executed well and consistently drive the biggest results for marketers. These tips are the basics in marketing automation – for more details check out our recent article on marketing strategies designed to deliver!