With the technological world becoming more complex and bewildering by the day, the profession of marketing is changing quickly. However, when the details are boiled away, the challenges remain the same for marketers as they have been for years! Much of what dictates success or failure in the world of marketing is efficiency. Marketers need to leverage their assets as effectively as possible in order to reach their target audience and turn a profit. The goal hasn’t changed, but our tool kit for accomplishing this goal has been revolutionized.

The Case For Marketing Automation

Marketers used to waste away their days carrying out repetitive tasks to follow through on their plans and strategies, but the advent of marketing automation has allowed them to start putting this time to better use. Here’s how it works…

When marketers talk about automation, they are referring to software. This software allows them to automate mundane, time-consuming tasks like emails, social media, and various web site actions. Email automation is particularly popular amongst today’s marketers. There are entire companies, such as Emma and MailChimp who serve this function alone. Email marketing, so far, has stood the test of time as being one of the most effective ways to engage with consumers.

The ideal results of effective marketing automation is that every single lead you get is nurtured with highly customized inbound content until it blossoms into a satisfied customer. Of course, you will need to step it up with your inbound marketing in order to be generating these leads in the first place, but once you have them on the hook, you need to be able to close the deal.

That’s the goal. The tools are available, but achieving this goal is easier said than done.

In order for marketing automation to be effective, it is necessary to take a holistic approach to your strategy. Too often marketers take their automation software as being an easy quick-fix for all of their problems and challenges. In fact, marketing automation is a very specific tool that needs to be fine-tuned to execute on a broader strategy.

We understand that using marketing automation software effectively can be challenging, but don’t worry, we have a suggestion for you.

Try Out Hubspot’s Workflows Function

Hubspot’s workflows are a way to make sense of the often-chaotic back-end of marketing automation software. Hubspot is a company that does an excellent job of empowering marketers with the tools they need to succeed, and workflows are an excellent example of this.

What Is A Workflow?

Workflows enable you to take action based on a specified set of conditions. You can use them to execute multiple actions simultaneously according to customizable intervals. Workflows also allow you to interact with your customers in a personal way by using branching logic to perform different actions depending on how a contact has been interacting with your content or your site.

Put these mechanisms into place and you have a workflow!

Using this feature effectively can require a lot of thought up-front, but once you’ve set things up, you can leave Hubspot on auto-pilot. This will give you the time to get back to running your business and, most importantly, plotting your next step.

How Can Workflows Be Used?

Let’s look at a few examples of how workflows can be used to nurture leads and raise profits. We’ll examine three unique scenarios…

Scenario #1:

Suppose a contact fills out your form for a content offer. You can create a workflow to send them an automatic follow up email. If they don’t engage with this email, you can program a week-long delay on the next time you reach out to them. If they still do not engage with your communications, the delay can be increased to 2 weeks. And if they still don’t interact with you on your third attempt, you can cease communications and move onto warmer leads.

Scenario #2:

Maybe you have an event coming up. You can program a workflow to send out reminder emails before the event. Then, after the event is over, you could engage your attendees with follow-up emails, which could function similarly to Scenario #1.

Scenario #3:

Let’s say you have different sales representatives that are responsible for different areas. You’ll need your incoming leads to be segmented by location. You can design a workflow to not only organize your leads by location, but also automatically notify the appropriate sales representatives so that they can follow up on that lead.

Interested?

Here at Horton Group, we are a Hubspot Silver partner, which means that workflows like this are our bread and butter. If you’ve recognized potential for you business, get in touch with us today to find out how workflows and automation can help improve your efficiency.