How to choose, launch and measure a marketing automation workflow

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Introduction to Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation tools do not replace your marketing team.

Have you been to a virtual conference or sat in any virtual boardroom lately? Then chances are you will have heard the phrase “Marketing Automation”. In case you haven’t, here is the basic outline.

More often than not, marketing will hand you far more repeat work than it needs to. There is often a lot of data to prepare for reports, or for splitting your audience into segments. Then there are dull jobs like swapping out parts of an email template. Even building and publishing campaigns can be dull and repetitive. Often you will feel that you cannot do anything meaningful, because you are stuck in this cycle.

Here is where Marketing Automation helps. It gets your daily repeat tasks done by software instead of by hand. That frees up your time, so you can do stuff that actually means something.

Now go one step beyond your own boundary. Think about how much more a large marketing department can get done by using it. More of the team can then do more meaningful work. That could have more of an impact on the business as a whole.

Disclaimer: Marketing Automation tools do not replace your marketing team. They are tools that help your team. Smart marketers can add them to their existing arsenal of marketing weaponry, so they can be more efficient.

Who Marketing Automation is for

Anyone who is short of time, or wants to get more out of their marketing work, can use Marketing Automation. That could be a person, a team or a whole business.

Marketers with almost any level of experience can use it. That makes it a useful tool for everyone from the most junior to the most senior. This is not because it might do parts of their job better than they could. It is because it can do more parts of their job, more efficiently and in less time.

It also isn’t only for large firms or wealthy corporates. It applies to anyone from the newest day one startup to some of the most established big firms. Many businesses can benefit from it if the way they set it up fits their specific needs. I stress “specific needs” because it is not a one size fits all solution.

Firms need to think hard about the problems they want automation to solve. Each needs to think about its industry and the wider setting it does business in. It also needs to think about where in the company automation would fit best to solve those problems. It is not something you buy off the shelf, flip the switch, et voila.

Example:

A large corporate firm with a longer sales cycle would not need the same setup as a fast-paced eCommerce website. The climate in each is completely different.

Note: If you have dipped your toes into the marketing automation pool before without any success, ask whether the setup was right for your use case. Chances are the solution was not the best fit for what you needed.

How Marketing Automation is working for businesses

Marketing teams keep trying new things, so automation is now used in many ways. Some setups take over data processing or daily tasks for these teams.

Some setups build segmented customer lists automatically. Some write the content of a marketing email by code. Others swap ad content on the fly to match how users behave, or even place bids in ad auctions for you. There are plenty of setups out there to explore and test.

One favoured use is Facebook Dynamic Ads for eCommerce. With it, marketing teams can target users at any stage of the purchase funnel. The funnel is the set of steps people may take on the way to buying. Each user is then shown relevant content automatically.

This Facebook Ads setup can support eCommerce sales. But its effect on revenue needs to be measured by each business that uses it.

How does this help your business?

The example above helps cut the time spent on segmenting audiences, and on making ads and keeping them up to date. Marketers no longer need to spend as much time fine-tuning. They can turn their focus to more valuable work.

It also means marketers no longer need to spend as much time and brainpower on small, detailed campaign tweaks. Tasks can run on their own, but someone still needs to set them up and watch them. Unsupervised learning finds patterns in data without labelled examples. Those are training examples that come with a known answer or category. It does not remove the need for human goals, limits and checks. Fewer limits do not by themselves make learning better.

Overall, the business gets more done for the same effort, and more of that work is meaningful. Whether that improves revenue depends on the costs, the setup and the results.

What to expect from Marketing Automation

As I said earlier, Marketing Automation does not replace a good marketing team. It is a tool that can help your marketing run more efficiently and earn a better return on what you invest.

Marketing Automation does not replace a good marketing team.

With the right setup, you could expect to save time on daily tasks and money on wasted ad spend. Better leads and higher revenue are possible outcomes to test, not promises.

Your marketing can gain from it when it fits the problem and its costs are worth it. Your team will be even more useful. They will be able to do a lot more of the fancy innovative stuff they could not get to before. You will move your business into the ’20s. You could put yourself into a leading place in your industry, or make an existing lead stronger.

You can target ads using clearer signals. Keep in mind, though, that those signals are incomplete. You will have a good idea of who you are targeting, what they are interested in, and what content is likely to tempt them to engage. It could help make your messages more relevant. Even so, relevance, privacy and how often people see them still need care.

Simply put, better results are the aim, and measuring tells you whether you reached them.

The final word on Data and Marketing Automation

It is not a new topic or discussion, but it is one that is coming back and growing fast. There are lots of chances for automation to make life simpler for marketers. It can free up their time for more of the fun stuff.

Firms can also gain a lot as their marketing team gets more done in less time. Most importantly, that should add to their bottom line.

I look forward to seeing new players in the market and what they roll out. It is always great to learn from the competition. In fact, it would be hard to improve this kind of work without different points of view.

You’re welcome to get in touch with me on LinkedIn or by Email if you need help with your digital marketing.

Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts on Marketing Automation and Data. I’d like to hear your thoughts too. Have you tried to set it up yourself? Which uses have worked best for you, and how did you set them up?

TL;DR (Much Time + Many Efficiency = Very ROI)

The heading is a playful shorthand. Financial ROI still has to be worked out: take the full costs away from the return, then divide by those costs. The costs of tools, setup, staff and upkeep can outweigh the time you save.

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