In a world where we have seemingly no time to get projects done, it's important to uncover some marketing tactics that you can do today. We call them "quick wins", you can call them whatever you'd like, but in the end, these items are marketing actions you can take and implement right away. More specifically, we will uncover some items to help you automate your marketing efforts. These marketing automation tactics are quick, simple, and will make your job easier tomorrow, so let's not make haste! Onwards, to the automation-mobile!
Connect Your Sales Team With Lifecycle Stage Rules
How connected is your sales team in regards to all of your marketing efforts? If your answer is "mehhhh not really connected", like I am anticipating, then here is something you can help connect the dots. And I should preface, this not only helps your sales team, it helps the marketing team uncover what contacts in your database are "more qualified" than others. Dig into your premium content pieces, and all of your conversion points on your site. Begin to bucket certain conversion areas such as "request a quote or assessment", or any point that would show that the contact is deserving of a direct contact from sales. From there, create a workflow that would change their "lead status" to "sales qualified lead" after they fill out, or download, a piece of content that you would deem an area of sales qualification.
How Does This Help?
Not only does this marketing automation tactic help segment your contact database, but it allows you to set rules and email alerts to you and whoever in your organization that needs to be notified of a potential hot lead that sales should follow up with. It helps automate and streamline the daily and weekly checks of your leads, and helps filter who is deserving of direct contact right now, versus who needs a little more time. Not only that, but it can help you accurately report on qualified leads with the instant update of your leads and contacts right away.
Do Away With Thank You Pages, Use Follow-Up Emails
This automation tactic is a bit two folded. But, in the end, it's both something you can do today, and it's something that goes a long way in your analytics and automation efforts. Here's how:
Follow-Up Emails = Better Insights
Let's say you have a pretty great eBook live on your site. Your current set-up has this eBook gated behind a form, and then takes you to a thank you page with a direct download CTA for the end user to click. Now, inside of HubSpot, if you are familiar with the page analytics area, it's useful and allows you to see all of the necessary information, from page views, to CTA clicks. Seemingly, it gives you everything you would need to know on someone downloading your eBook, and clicking to view it. Now, let's say you change this to instead of directing them to a thank you page, you instead send them an immediate follow up email with the CTA for the direct eBook download. Why is this better? What do you gain from this tactic? It all lies in the contact record, as well as email analytics. Gating your eBook behind an email follow up focuses solely on your email deliverability, open rate, and click through rate, rather than potentially having this information washed away in a thank you page. Not only that, but you get better intrinsic data inside of the individual contact record showing them when they received the email, opened it, and clicked the CTA for download. Like this:
Focus on the follow up email information. This contact not only "opened", but clearly "clicked" the CTA for this eBook download. Giving you the direct information you need to know on if he/she actually viewed the piece of content or not.
Getting Legitimate Contact Information
The last thing follow-up emails ensure is collecting a legitimate contact email address. If you gate your content, and make it available via thank you page, all I would need to do is fill in a bogus email address in order to have access to the content...what does that do you? Absolutely nothing. If you gate the content behind an email delivery, and someone puts in a bogus email, they don't receive the eBook...so joke is on them!
The "Subscribe To Our Blog" Trick, But Not Really A Trick...Tactic
One of the more subtle marketing automation tactics is getting more eyes on your blog, and building your audience. Most of the time, it's pretty difficult to build a successful blog, let alone a big enough following to make it worthwhile.
One easy tactic to help improve the eyes on your posts? Adding a field to all of your website forms that is "auto checked" to subscribe them to the blog. No, this is not a "dirty" or marketing pirate tactic, because we aren't necessarily subscribing people that don't want to subscribe. We are simply adding a section on the form that a contact needs to UNCHECK to not receive blog notifications. Most of the time, this tactic actually performs pretty well in terms of building an audience, in fact; most companies do this. Notice how everytime you purchase a product online you need to unselect a box to receive email updates? Well, this is that...although a little more pertinent to a marketing team, especially when your audience are people that understand your industry and want to learn more.
Pro Tip: Instead of a simple check box, give the user more options, like receiving instant, weekly, or monthly notifications. This gives the visitor more of a selection and a better chance of them selecting notifications that are more comfortable to them. You will see better engagement, and a bigger more relevant blog audience. Not only that, you aren't barring someone to just one option, you are giving them multiple ways to subscribe to your blog versus a "subscribe or don't" type message.
Allow Your Leads To Schedule A Call, With No Hastle Or Email "Back-and-forth"
One of the most frustrating ideas is scheduling time to talk. We have all had those moments, where instead of having a viable solution to schedule time on someones calendar, you have email chains trying to figure out "the best time to talk", and leaving it up to the time gods to decide how responsive someone may or may not be. Let me introduce, Calendly. This software allows someone to schedule time with the click of a button, after viewing your schedule openings that you have marked as available. Now, this technically might take you a little more work than the rest of these tactics to implement, but not as much as you'd think. This tool may be more pertinent for your sales team, or someone who handles assessments from a product stand point, but it certainly helps automate and streamline your marketing efforts when it comes to closing the marketing & sales loop. What this tool also does, is saves time. As mentioned, the amount of time, and email back-and-forth Calendly saves is tremendous, and with a little buy in from your sales team, it can help streamline your efforts for closing leads into customers. Not only that, but there is no anxiety or stress in your team finding openings in their busy schedule. It's easy to open and close times that you want to make available for these types of meetings and connections...plus, it integates with marketing software such as HubSpot, so you can receive real time data on appointment bookings and what comes of those meetings!
With busy schedules and a full calendar, it's hard to find time to implement quick wins, but when these wins deal with marketing automation tactics, spend the extra 30 minutes. When you spend the time implementing the ideas above, I guarantee that in the next week, those 30 minutes can be spent on 4 MORE automation tactics, that I haven't uncovered yet...my point is, spend the time, to save the time. And if you're still having trouble grasping that idea, then get in touch with us to help you out!
