Introduction
In order to supercharge your conversions, you need to free up your time and other resources. As a marketer, you are tasked to create awareness for your company’s products and services but it can be tedious and time-consuming. You might end up wasting your time verifying customer emails or you might be sending newsletters to the spam folders of prospects. The best way to free up your time is to implement marketing automation tactics that will allow you to focus on more revenue-generating activities. Optimally, you can save more time and effort by relying on marketing automation to boost new and recurring sales.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is the process of setting up a marketing process that requires little or no human intervention for it to operate. These tasks can include sending emails or text messages, sharing blog posts on social media, responding to inquiries, and many more.
There are many marketing automation tools available in the market. Companies often employ automation in lead nurturing, email marketing, and software integrations of systems such as mobile, social media, and Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.
Marketing automation guides visitors through your sales process and eventually makes the sale by nurturing them until they convert.
How does automation boost conversions?
Before knowing how marketing automation works, you have to understand the concept of a marketing funnel. It is also called the “customer journey” because you will have a wider scope at first and gradually move the prospects down into considering a purchase. The marketing funnel differs from the sales funnel as its only goal is to generate qualified leads at the end of the funnel rather than making an actual purchase.
Marketing automation refers to the use of any software that automates manual marketing processes. You can configure these tools to automate emails, post on social media, and do other manual tasks so that you don’t have to.
5 Marketing Automation Tactics
Marketing automation helps in nurturing leads by providing them with adequate information and resources, guiding them all the way to the bottom of the funnel. Here are 5 marketing automation tactics you can use to supercharge your conversion funnel:
1. Optimize your website
An optimized website will make a better impression and help boost your conversion rate. Information about the lead and customer data (who they are, where they work, online behavior, etc.) can be used to customize landing pages and other web content seen by each prospect. A user-friendly website must be able to deliver the following:
Fast-loading pages. Don’t let your visitors experience long loading times. Make sure your website is optimized for mobile screens. Monitor your website regularly to check for problems and bugs.
Streamlined design. Do not clutter your website with unnecessary animations, motion graphics, giant text, and oversized images. This adds up to loading time and can have a negative impact on visitors’ browsing experience.
Set up conversion buttons wisely. Make strategic decisions regarding the call-to-action buttons on your website. Use heat maps to identify the areas frequently visited, and place your CTA buttons accordingly.
Provide value for your prospects. Prepare an “About” page that clearly states what you can do for those who will avail of your products and/or services. Include details on how to contact your business.
Add testimonials or reviews. If your business received a lot of great reviews in the past, you can present them in a carousel slider on your website. Add testimonials from your previous clients and display them prominently on your website.
Test your CTAs. Improve your CTAs by changing the size, fonts, or colour. Try making changes to your CTA and test the results by using A/B testing.
Conversions that will benefit this: Purchase, Form submission, Sign-up, Clicks, Account creation, Content shares, App install
2. Email marketing automation tactics
If you automate your email marketing, you can easily increase your conversions. All you have to do is determine what messages and templates work best for your business. You want your audience to understand you better as a value provider and to that, you can start with the following:
Hyper-personalization of emails. Instead of sending generic email letters, create emails with personalization fields such as name, company name, location, etc. Let them feel that each email they receive is dedicated to them.
Segmentation of mailing list. Set up different profile segmentation for your target audience. You can segment them by identifying active vs. inactive users, such as those who have not opened your emails in three months. You can then come up with a specialized campaign designed to re-engage your inactive subscribers. Or you can prioritize subscribers who are more engaged and target them more specifically with promos or other plans.
Make mobile-friendly emails. A lot of people nowadays check their email on their mobile phones. Rework your design so that they are easy to read on mobile devices and that they are responsive to clicks from your email campaigns.
Conversions that will benefit this: Form submission, Sign-up, Clicks, Content shares
3. Phone call automation tactics
The way you communicate with your prospects should also adapt to their preferences. Future trends in contact center automation will likely be fueled by remote working and 5G technology. Your marketing efforts should include the following to get more conversions:
Get a local presence. Choose a phone system and sales dialer with local presence dialing so you can automatically match your outbound phone number to the area code you dialed. This helps build trust from your prospects in order to get a callback or text from them. An anonymous number is more likely to get ignored or blocked by a mobile user.
Use dynamic tags. Call tagging is essential in marketing and especially for sales automation. You can identify leads that are worth retargeting with emails or text messages in future campaigns.
Attach GIFs, Images, or videos for SMS. Never underestimate the power of text messaging these days, especially since many businesses are shifting to text marketing. Be creative with the use of GIFs or short videos to persuade them to click the URL in your text message.
Conversions that will benefit this: Purchase, Clicks, Account creation, Content shares, App install
4. Chatbot automation tactics
Leverage chatbot automation to provide assistance to website visitors. It also works best for social media messages. Take advantage of chatbot automation by doing the following:
Ask the right questions. Your chatbot can be programmed to ask qualifying questions. These may include:
- What do you want to find out?
- What problems are you trying to solve?
- Where are you located?
- What industry are you in?
- What departments are you from?
- Would you like to speak with a live representative?
Make a relevant opening message. Create a compelling chatbot message that is relevant to the customer journey. Start meaningful conversations and drive more qualified leads.
Conversions that will benefit this: Purchase, Sign-up, Account creation, App install
5. Set notification triggers
When your visitors have left your website, you can still reach them via retargeting ads. These can remind them to revisit your website or go back to their abandoned shopping cart. You can reduce your website’s bounce rate with push notifications.
Create a welcome notification for new visitors. Once they accept cookies, they can view your ads placed in search engines and other similar websites.
Send a confirmation message when they are subscribed to push notifications. This is to boost re-engagement and drive more traffic to your website. Your prospects will be updated with your newly published content and featured products across different devices.
Trigger notifications. This can be triggered based on certain user interactions on the website. You can schedule and automate push alerts on specific dates in a week. Let them know when you have new articles, products, and news items on your website.
Send notifications for abandoned carts if you are an e-commerce store. You can use the Truepush Shopify plugin to send them back-in-stock updates so you can get immediate sales. You can also let your customers know about shipping updates.
Conversions that will benefit this: Purchase, Sign-up, Clicks, Content shares, App install
Your Takeaways
Marketing automation allows you to have your sales work independently so you can focus your attention on more profitable activities for your business. If you implement the right marketing automation tactics, you can turn your prospects into qualified sales leads in a shorter period of time. By leveraging marketing automation, you will supercharge your conversions.
