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The robots are here and they’re taking everyone’s jobs.
Ok, we may not be quite there yet….
But the level of automation available to companies today would astound someone from just ten years ago.
More than ever, companies can engage with their customers and provide them with the right products at the right time.
These marketing workflow automations are here and they’re only getting more sophisticated by the day.
The companies which utilize them to their full potential will thrive, the ones which don't… well, this cautionary tale from WordPress pretty much says it all.
Automating marketing workflows is a no-brainer for companies looking to boost efficiency, improve accuracy, enhance personalization (provided that it’s not overdone), and increase scalability.
Of course, there are the usual suspects of email, social media, lead scoring, and pipeline management. Most well-oiled companies have at least some degree of automation in place for these areas already.
But there are other unique (i.e. underutilized) forms of marketing workflow automation which a lot of people may not think of…
“So, how’s the weather?” just might be the most commonly asked question around, but for a marketing team, it can also be a way to capitalize on how weather can trigger interest in certain items.
Weather-based workflows are a type of marketing automation strategy that leverages weather information to personalize marketing campaigns based on local weather conditions. Businesses can then use this data to create relevant and timely marketing messages, offers, and promotions.
How Can I Set This Up?
There are several tools that can be employed, with OpenWeatherMap being one of the better known.
It provides a comprehensive weather API that can be integrated into marketing automation platforms to fetch a wide range of weather data, including current weather conditions, forecasts, historical data, and more.
Once obtained, this information can be used as triggers.
These triggers can be customized to activate when specific weather conditions or changes in weather parameters occur.
And then automate various marketing tasks, such as sending targeted emails, updating social media posts, or adjusting ad campaigns based on weather conditions.
This can be scheduled to occur in real-time, at specific intervals, or triggered by predefined events, based on your marketing goals and requirements.
Temperature in the 90s? Set up a workflow in your marketing automation platform that triggers an email campaign promoting summer clothing.
Steps:
This all translates to less guessing and more customization. #PersonalizationFTW
Although high levels of customer engagement do not always equate to sales, they are a coveted metric. A fun way for companies to engage customers, while collecting data, is through gamification, often in the forms of quizzes, polls, or challenges.
This process can be automated so that gamification elements and experiences are delivered to users based on predefined rules and triggers.
These workflows typically include various gamification elements, such as points, badges, levels, leaderboards, challenges, and rewards, to motivate users and make their interactions with the brand or product more enjoyable, interactive, and rewarding.
How Can I Set This Up?
A great choice here is Gametize (it doesn’t hurt that they’ve nicknamed themselves “The World’s Simplest Gamification Platform). You can create a Gametize project with the company's branding, and customize the game mechanics, rules, and settings to align with your own company's marketing objectives.
Then, the fun part: Creating challenges/tasks that are specific to your company's product or service. This includes things like product quizzes or interactive tutorials with triggers based on customer actions like:
How does automation fit into this? By automating up a trigger after your customers complete a challenge or achieve a specific goal. This could mean awarding points, discounts, or special offers — or sending personalized emails or push notifications.
Steps:
A great B2B example is what biotech company Stemcell Technologies put together during the pandemic. In fact, it was so good, NPR took notice.
If you don’t know what dynamic pricing is, go to a website where you can book hotel reservations and look up the prices of a specific hotel (and room) for a Tuesday in September. Now, look at the prices for that same room at that same hotel on a Friday during spring break.
Spoiler: the prices will not be the same, or probably even remotely close to each other.
The same thing happens with plane tickets.
Any company can do this with their products…and they can automate the procedure!
How Can I Set This Up?
It’s Wiser for the win. You can connect your product data — including prices, inventory, and competitors' data — to their platform.
Then, set up pricing triggers, such as changes in demand, competitor prices, or market conditions.
When a trigger is activated, Wiser automatically adjusts the prices of the affected products according to the defined pricing strategies.
When it comes to automation, Wiser allows for automated pricing updates, which can be scheduled at specific intervals or triggered by predetermined events.
Steps:
When you make a purchase online, you know a deluge of emails will follow.
Chances are, one of the first emails you get is one asking for a review of the product you just received.
This is because companies know the most powerful and effective advertising often comes from customers, not the company itself. Evangelism is gold.
One way for companies to increase the amount of feedback they receive is by employing automated advocacy campaign workflows
These are designed to mobilize advocates, such as customers, employees, or influencers, to actively promote a brand, product, or cause. Usually be in the form of user-generated content, such as reviews, testimonials, or social media posts.
How Can I Set This Up?
You can’t go wrong with Influitive, where you can customize the messaging of your advocacy campaign to align with your brand’s voice and tone and set up rewards for your most loyal advocates based on challenge completion.
Points can be set up as triggers to automatically reward advocates, send notifications, or unlock higher-level challenges.
Progress can be monitored in real-time and advocates can receive automated emails, notifications, or reminders to complete challenges or redeem rewards. Bonus: For those advocacy overachievers, there are higher-level challenges.
Steps:
Hammers can be used to both build and destroy things. Like hammers, the software used for marketing workflow automation are tools. If used improperly, then they can end up doing more harm than good. Here are a few examples:
We’ve all received an email like this (hopefully the greeting line and company section were at least filled in correctly):
This is what can happen when you over-automate, and by extension under-regulate, your email workflows.
It’s clear to the recipient that this was not hand-crafted and personalized by a caring human on the other end of the screen.
Automation is great, but emails that sound cold and impersonal are not.
Automating something does not mean you now have the freedom to ignore it.
Irregular data analysis can result in.…
A good fix for the latter is the creation of ‘no-go’ client or buyer profiles, which are personas of buyers or clients who aren’t likely to take a serious interest in the particular products or services you’re offering.
In the not-too-distant past, the ability to automate marketing workflows would have been labeled a future trend itself. What does the future hold for it now that it has become reality?
The use of these two will only continue to expand. These technologies can help businesses to better understand their customers, personalize interactions, and streamline processes. With AI and machine learning, businesses can automate tasks that were once thought impossible, like predicting customer behavior or creating targeted content.
Companies will continue to invest in personalization techniques like dynamic content, targeted advertising, and individualized messaging. As automation technology continues to improve, businesses will be able to deliver hyper-personalized experiences that are tailored to each individual.
Sometimes, marketing channels are siloed with separate strategies for email, social media, and other channels. However, the future of sales and marketing automation is moving towards an omnichannel approach. This means that businesses are starting to integrate their marketing strategies across all channels.
With an omnichannel approach, businesses can create a more seamless experience for customers, no matter how they choose to interact with the brand. Customers can expect to receive consistent messages and personalized experiences, regardless of whether they're engaging through email, social media, or in-person interactions.
For the automation skeptics…
Imagine hiring a bunch of new interns, who were working for free, to do all the repetitive tasks no one wants to do. Now imagine if those interns were actually good at their jobs. That’s automation!
For businesses to improve their efficiency, productivity, and increase revenue growth, it's essential to automate marketing workflows. According to Invesp, 80% of marketing automation users saw an increase in the number of leads and 77% had an increase of conversions. With automation tools, companies can simplify time-consuming and repetitive tasks, in turn allowing sales and marketing teams to concentrate on creating customer relationships and developing new business strategies.
The robots are here and they’re taking everyone’s jobs.
Ok, we may not be quite there yet….
But the level of automation available to companies today would astound someone from just ten years ago.
More than ever, companies can engage with their customers and provide them with the right products at the right time.
These marketing workflow automations are here and they’re only getting more sophisticated by the day.
The companies which utilize them to their full potential will thrive, the ones which don't… well, this cautionary tale from WordPress pretty much says it all.
Automating marketing workflows is a no-brainer for companies looking to boost efficiency, improve accuracy, enhance personalization (provided that it’s not overdone), and increase scalability.
Of course, there are the usual suspects of email, social media, lead scoring, and pipeline management. Most well-oiled companies have at least some degree of automation in place for these areas already.
But there are other unique (i.e. underutilized) forms of marketing workflow automation which a lot of people may not think of…
“So, how’s the weather?” just might be the most commonly asked question around, but for a marketing team, it can also be a way to capitalize on how weather can trigger interest in certain items.
Weather-based workflows are a type of marketing automation strategy that leverages weather information to personalize marketing campaigns based on local weather conditions. Businesses can then use this data to create relevant and timely marketing messages, offers, and promotions.
How Can I Set This Up?
There are several tools that can be employed, with OpenWeatherMap being one of the better known.
It provides a comprehensive weather API that can be integrated into marketing automation platforms to fetch a wide range of weather data, including current weather conditions, forecasts, historical data, and more.
Once obtained, this information can be used as triggers.
These triggers can be customized to activate when specific weather conditions or changes in weather parameters occur.
And then automate various marketing tasks, such as sending targeted emails, updating social media posts, or adjusting ad campaigns based on weather conditions.
This can be scheduled to occur in real-time, at specific intervals, or triggered by predefined events, based on your marketing goals and requirements.
Temperature in the 90s? Set up a workflow in your marketing automation platform that triggers an email campaign promoting summer clothing.
Steps:
This all translates to less guessing and more customization. #PersonalizationFTW
Although high levels of customer engagement do not always equate to sales, they are a coveted metric. A fun way for companies to engage customers, while collecting data, is through gamification, often in the forms of quizzes, polls, or challenges.
This process can be automated so that gamification elements and experiences are delivered to users based on predefined rules and triggers.
These workflows typically include various gamification elements, such as points, badges, levels, leaderboards, challenges, and rewards, to motivate users and make their interactions with the brand or product more enjoyable, interactive, and rewarding.
How Can I Set This Up?
A great choice here is Gametize (it doesn’t hurt that they’ve nicknamed themselves “The World’s Simplest Gamification Platform). You can create a Gametize project with the company's branding, and customize the game mechanics, rules, and settings to align with your own company's marketing objectives.
Then, the fun part: Creating challenges/tasks that are specific to your company's product or service. This includes things like product quizzes or interactive tutorials with triggers based on customer actions like:
How does automation fit into this? By automating up a trigger after your customers complete a challenge or achieve a specific goal. This could mean awarding points, discounts, or special offers — or sending personalized emails or push notifications.
Steps:
A great B2B example is what biotech company Stemcell Technologies put together during the pandemic. In fact, it was so good, NPR took notice.
If you don’t know what dynamic pricing is, go to a website where you can book hotel reservations and look up the prices of a specific hotel (and room) for a Tuesday in September. Now, look at the prices for that same room at that same hotel on a Friday during spring break.
Spoiler: the prices will not be the same, or probably even remotely close to each other.
The same thing happens with plane tickets.
Any company can do this with their products…and they can automate the procedure!
How Can I Set This Up?
It’s Wiser for the win. You can connect your product data — including prices, inventory, and competitors' data — to their platform.
Then, set up pricing triggers, such as changes in demand, competitor prices, or market conditions.
When a trigger is activated, Wiser automatically adjusts the prices of the affected products according to the defined pricing strategies.
When it comes to automation, Wiser allows for automated pricing updates, which can be scheduled at specific intervals or triggered by predetermined events.
Steps:
When you make a purchase online, you know a deluge of emails will follow.
Chances are, one of the first emails you get is one asking for a review of the product you just received.
This is because companies know the most powerful and effective advertising often comes from customers, not the company itself. Evangelism is gold.
One way for companies to increase the amount of feedback they receive is by employing automated advocacy campaign workflows
These are designed to mobilize advocates, such as customers, employees, or influencers, to actively promote a brand, product, or cause. Usually be in the form of user-generated content, such as reviews, testimonials, or social media posts.
How Can I Set This Up?
You can’t go wrong with Influitive, where you can customize the messaging of your advocacy campaign to align with your brand’s voice and tone and set up rewards for your most loyal advocates based on challenge completion.
Points can be set up as triggers to automatically reward advocates, send notifications, or unlock higher-level challenges.
Progress can be monitored in real-time and advocates can receive automated emails, notifications, or reminders to complete challenges or redeem rewards. Bonus: For those advocacy overachievers, there are higher-level challenges.
Steps:
Hammers can be used to both build and destroy things. Like hammers, the software used for marketing workflow automation are tools. If used improperly, then they can end up doing more harm than good. Here are a few examples:
We’ve all received an email like this (hopefully the greeting line and company section were at least filled in correctly):
This is what can happen when you over-automate, and by extension under-regulate, your email workflows.
It’s clear to the recipient that this was not hand-crafted and personalized by a caring human on the other end of the screen.
Automation is great, but emails that sound cold and impersonal are not.
Automating something does not mean you now have the freedom to ignore it.
Irregular data analysis can result in.…
A good fix for the latter is the creation of ‘no-go’ client or buyer profiles, which are personas of buyers or clients who aren’t likely to take a serious interest in the particular products or services you’re offering.
In the not-too-distant past, the ability to automate marketing workflows would have been labeled a future trend itself. What does the future hold for it now that it has become reality?
The use of these two will only continue to expand. These technologies can help businesses to better understand their customers, personalize interactions, and streamline processes. With AI and machine learning, businesses can automate tasks that were once thought impossible, like predicting customer behavior or creating targeted content.
Companies will continue to invest in personalization techniques like dynamic content, targeted advertising, and individualized messaging. As automation technology continues to improve, businesses will be able to deliver hyper-personalized experiences that are tailored to each individual.
Sometimes, marketing channels are siloed with separate strategies for email, social media, and other channels. However, the future of sales and marketing automation is moving towards an omnichannel approach. This means that businesses are starting to integrate their marketing strategies across all channels.
With an omnichannel approach, businesses can create a more seamless experience for customers, no matter how they choose to interact with the brand. Customers can expect to receive consistent messages and personalized experiences, regardless of whether they're engaging through email, social media, or in-person interactions.
For the automation skeptics…
Imagine hiring a bunch of new interns, who were working for free, to do all the repetitive tasks no one wants to do. Now imagine if those interns were actually good at their jobs. That’s automation!
For businesses to improve their efficiency, productivity, and increase revenue growth, it's essential to automate marketing workflows. According to Invesp, 80% of marketing automation users saw an increase in the number of leads and 77% had an increase of conversions. With automation tools, companies can simplify time-consuming and repetitive tasks, in turn allowing sales and marketing teams to concentrate on creating customer relationships and developing new business strategies.
Adam Statti is a Content Marketing Specialist at RevPartners, whose mission is to democratize RevOps by making it accessible, consumable, and actionable in HubSpot. When he’s not writing about revenue growth, he’s throwing, pitching, shooting, or kicking a ball with his three young boys.
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