Executing Your Marketing Automation Strategy

So, you’ve set up your marketing automation platform and are happy to see leads are responding. But do you know what to do to turn those leads into customers? Read on to learn more.

Bottom of the Funnel (Conversion)

The leads that make it to the bottom of your sales funnel will now be much more qualified than before you enacted a marketing automation strategy. Typically, they’re ready for offers such as a free demo or trial, a discount on a purchase or a meeting. You can even offer a free evaluation of the lead’s current product/system or a competitor analysis. 

If you’ve executed your marketing automation strategy correctly, you can expect to increase the amount of leads you send to sales by about 10 percent. You should also see conversion rates rise by roughly 50 percent.

ROI: Ensuring you have a solid marketing automation strategy in place will help you send more qualified leads to sales, improving the chances of gaining new customers. Additionally, this should also strengthen the relationship between marketing and sales. 

Reporting

Perhaps the best part of marketing automation is that it provides so much data about your customers and how your content performs. You’re able to see exactly which aspects of your campaign each lead interacted with, giving you a more clear view of which of your marketing tactics are most effective.

The key is making sure that you’re measuring the right metrics. It’s possible that these will change from campaign to campaign based on your overall goals, but, for the most part, you want to track the following:

• How many emails you send per campaign, including a breakdown of which emails went out when
• The types of emails you send per campaign, including nurture, newsletter and behavioral triggers based on customer activity (like if someone requests an ebook but then doesn’t click the download link in the delivery email)
• Open, click-through and unsubscribe rates for each email you send
• Website traffic, particularly on your conversion pages
• How many times leads download your marketing automation content, which is part of the lead scoring stage
• The number of marketing-qualified and sales-qualified leads (ideally, these numbers should be the same)
• How much you’re spending to acquire each customer
• How much revenue you’re generating from your campaigns
• Total operating costs versus total revenue

ROI: The reporting process is where you’ll gain the most insight into your campaigns. A strong reporting process will make it easier for other executives to see the results of your hard work, which could also lead to a larger marketing budget. Additionally, reporting will help you produce more relevant content, make A/B testing more effective, contain your data storage, reporting, dashboarding and analytics to one spot and give you a more complete view of your prospects, leads and clients.

Conclusion

If you’re not already using marketing automation software, it’s time to jump on the bandwagon. We use these tools every day at Idea Grove to provide our clients with better leads, and we’re not alone. A quarter of Fortune 500 B2B companies are already using marketing automation, and 79 percent of top performing companies have been using marketing automation for more than two years.

Right now, there’s simply no better way to reach the right leads at the right time than with marketing automation. Contact us to learn more about how your company can start reaping the benefits of marketing automation.