Are you wondering if marketing automation is for you? With so many other responsibilities to keep you busy in the day to day running of your business, why not automate something that is vital for your survival and that can take up a majority of your time?
Marketing automation refers to a type of software that helps large, medium, and small businesses streamline their marketing efforts. It accomplishes this by combining a number of separate functions under one roof using a sophisticated software platform. Some of these tools may include website builders, mass mailers, landing pages, webinars, and CRMs. This software platform can then do all the heavy lifting by analyzing, tagging, grouping, and crunching all those numbers while working behind the scenes.
With email marketing considered to one of the major players in your business marketing strategies will it make or break your business in the next 3 years?
1. Are you using a one-dimensional email marketing provider?
Are you still stuck in the stone age with MailChimp, Aweber, Constant Contact, or the like? It’s time to get ready for the big leagues. There’s still a lot you can pull off with these simpler tools, but they’re just not as robust enough for you to scale your business.
2. Your customers are smarter so you need to be too
Look, you need better data for one simple reason – your customers expect better marketing and they expect it to be more personalized too. And if that’s not what you’re delivering, you can count on losing their interest very fast.
3. You need a tool that can multiply your efforts
As a small business, you have to wear a lot of hats. This is why you need to be able to automate your business practices and marketing operations. If these are still a manual process, then expansion is highly unlikely without employing more staff and incurring more costs. Time is money. Save time now.
4. You need to be able to accurately track your lead sources
You need to know where your leads are coming from. At the end of every month, quarter and every year, you should be able to look back and quickly calculate the new leads, new customers, and new revenue that came from specific Lead Sources. It is hard to make accurate budgeting and spending decisions of you don’t know where your revenue is coming from. This is vital information.
5. You absolutely must know your Lifetime Customer Value
Can you calculate your Lifetime Customer Value? During your annual analysis periods, you should be determining what a customer is worth to you. All your budgeting and expenditure should be based around this one calculation.
6. You need email marketing campaigns that are personalized – not autoresponders!
Old school email marketing tools are mostly based around simple autoresponders that send out scheduled emails at planned intervals. But those emails get delivered to EVERYBODY on your list. Even when they have purchased or subscribe they still receive emails requesting them to do so. This is not targeted marketing. It’s old school, and it’s quickly fading away. This is one of the fastest ways to get your subscribers to unsubscribe.
7. You need marketing that targets customer behaviors
If a customer logs into your website, that’s something you should act on. If your customer hasn’t logged into your website, this also needs to be acted on. Same thing for email opens, email clicks, and purchasing behavior. But first, you need to know this information. The future is in behavioral-based marketing. And the future is already here.
8. You need an email provider you can trust who is following email marketing changes
Most people don’t think about this one, but it’s very important. With all the changes being implemented in 2017 by most ISP and email providers you need to know that the emails you send can be trusted by ISPs and email providers. Spamming practices need to be strictly followed to keep email deliverability rates healthy.
9. You need a company that actually cares about small business
It is not always about the big guys in business. Small businesses are just as important and difficult to run. In fact, chances are as a small business you are doing most of the work yourself. This is one of the most important reasons to automate your marketing efforts.
10. You need an easy way to capture lots of data about each customer
This is key. Your customers are your greatest asset. You need a tool that can quickly and easily capture data about every single customer you have, so you can then use that data intelligently to grow your business. Once you have this data the opportunities are endless.
11. You need to deliver relevant up to date content
If you want to keep your customers engaged and to trust your brand you need to develop content that is relevant to your niche market. This will keep them engaged and allow you to be seen as an authority in your market. Once you are an authority the selling process is made a whole lot easier.
12. You need an all-in-one solution
Unless you can afford an entire tech team of programmers and developers, you really need a system that can do it all for you. From processing credit cards to generating CRM sales reports and personalized email campaigns.
13. You need up-selling, cross-selling, down-selling, and side-selling
With marketing automation all of this is possible, and more.
14. You need a system you can count on every day
Phone support, email support, live chat, and a team of people all devoted to helping you grow your business.