Do you need marketing automation?

I bet every marketing team is overworked. This is understandable: we are all looking for ways to maximize the profitability of our business. We can say for sure: for the vast majority of organizations, the use of marketing automation tools can give a qualitative leap and remove some of the burden from the team.



Of course, the introduction of something new requires investments and funds, and knowledge, so it is worth considering whether these investments are justified for a particular organization. Do not think that raising marketing costs is something bad. It may turn out to be a better investment if it increases the number of customers and revenues.



Not every marketing team is ready for automation. Of course, your marketers have an important job for which all means are directed. There is nothing good in spending money on automation and not using it to the maximum.

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Let us tell in plain language what marketing automation is after all and give a checklist with which you can check if your organization is ready for automation or there are bottlenecks that you should first expand.

What marketing automation really is

The most important thing to know: you can not just press a couple of buttons, run and forget. This is a big myth. Automation does not do marketing for you. It enhances existing processes. Therefore, it is great if these are running processes. If they are not so good, our checklist will be an excellent starting point for creating a marketing strategy.



Create a well-established system of inbound marketing or set up other channels to attract traffic to the site. So you will generate a constant influx of leads, with which you can work, turning them into customers.



When you consistently receive new leads, and your team will be overloaded with their processing, then the time will come for the next step.







Enable campaigns for warming up and re-engaging. Start testing one conversation after another. Edit, clean, improve.



Automation is considered successful if no lead is left unattended. Even better, if you personalize letters for different segments ... This is the place where automation can give a qualitative leap.



Marketing Automation will simplify and accelerate the actions that you do daily for communication with users, their return and repeat sales (well, or not yet done). But you still need to be at the center of this process in order to tune and control it.

So your business is ready?

Answer these questions to assess whether your company will benefit from the introduction of automation tools.

1. Do you generate a steady stream of new, ready-to-buy leads?

To understand the benefits of marketing automation, your customer base must be a decent size and constantly growing. Moreover, new leads must be ready to be converted into paying users.

2. Is your team unable to cope with the number of users?

If so, you can benefit from automation by making sure all leads get their share of attention.



If your site has a large and constant stream of users, then no team of marketers will be able to work with each new user. In order not to lose new users, you just need automation.

3. Which letters do you send manually right now? Do you have a series of letters that can be run automatically?

We repeat the main point of what marketing automation can do and what not.



She cannot, with the help of a tasteless series of letters, bring inactive users to the purchase. What she can do is take your best warming letters and put them on autopilot for each segment. The user receives a letter with relevant information at the most appropriate moment.



If you want to improve efficiency and streamline user experience, automation is exactly what you need. If you plan to send single letters on a case by case basis and without a specific goal, then you need no automation.

4. Do you interact with leads and users through various channels?

The more information about users in your database can be collected by the marketing automation tool, the more it can be done for you.



The more you have interacted with users through various channels, the more powerful the automation will be (the automation services just collect all kinds of information about each of your users). We often think of automation as an email-only tool. But you can automate workflows that are based on both information gathering and content distribution.

5. Do you have manual triggers that you use to send content to leads?

I went to a certain page a few times, downloaded the latest report, watched a new video about the work of the organization - all this can be triggers. A trigger is a starting whistle for further interaction with the user (for example, sending a letter).



Do you know when your leads make target actions? If so, do you have a plan that you follow after these actions?



This is exactly what marketing automation relies on. You can tell the system which triggers to fix and what to do when one of them is executed. But first, you yourself must understand at what point and how best to work with the user.

6. Do you have a tool that helps personalize and measure your activity?

Collect information about users and their actions to send the right materials to the right people at the right time. Therefore, you need suitable content that appeals to different segments that are at different stages of purchase.



Most likely, you do not want to send an invitation to become a VIP user when someone first downloaded your content. In this case, it may be better to suggest to subscribe to the distribution of useful materials.



Your team should be productive and write texts that accompany the user all the way, helping to move further along the funnel, and send them based on the knowledge of the user.

First put things in order

Content marketing is an ongoing growth process. When you first start using inbound marketing, you explore how your audience responds to certain messages and formats at different stages. Delving into the subtleties, you better build processes that further help to combine content and campaigns more effectively.



The time spent on the transition to automation, it matters when you have a steady stream of leads and you know how to bring them to the purchase.



At Carrot quest, we help our users cope with all marketing automation tasks and combine 6 important tools:

• Collection of information about each visitor on the site;
• Sending automatic messages (based on the information collected);
• Emails, about the benefits of which we have already talked;
• Online chat, which will help collect more information about users and their problems, as well as respond to them more quickly;
• Pop-up windows will help you adapt to each user directly on the site, showing interesting offers for him;
• Analytics and funnels are the favorite tools of any marketer.

We have repeatedly proved that automation and competent segmentation increases conversion (you can see examples here , here and here and subscribe to our newsletter to keep abreast of the latest cases).



If you are not ready yet, do not worry. Start working on the questions in this checklist. And gradually move from step to step towards marketing automation.



With love, the team of Carrot Quest , a service that automatically collects information about each visitor to your site and helps to lead him to the purchase, both manually and automatically.



Based on blog.hubspot.com