How To Build Valuable Business Relationships With Automated Campaigns

Marketing automation offers the unique opportunity to reduce laborious tasks that are often involved with building large campaigns. From maximizing efforts within lead generation campaigns to ensuring that those all important thank you emails are sent, automation is a tool that should not be overlooked by the savvy marketer. In fact, with the right mindset, you can even use marketing automation to strengthen or build valuable business relationships with any type of prospect, lead, or customer.

Behavioral Tracking And Automation Tips

It is no secret that business executives want marketers to discover some sort of secret elixir that results in quickly acquired leads. As a result, many marketers and sales associates feel the push to make a possible lead become a customer (no matter the cost). The challenge of the latter mentality is that it creates a short-term focus that often neglects the larger, long-term focused, business relationship. Instead of letting a potentially great relationship flounder, you can instead choose to ensure that your leads are not only placed in the appropriate sales funnel, but that they are given the time that they need for the relationship to mature.

To do this, you should track a few key metrics:

• How many times did the lead visit the website, blog series, social media pages, or other conversion-based published content?
• When did the lead visit?
• If tracking website data, what pages did the lead navigate to?
• If tracking general behavioral data, what paths did the lead take after they visited the conversion-based published content?

Based on the above metrics, you can then adjust your automation efforts to match the priority assigned to each lead. For example, if your lead is still “shopping around,” then they need to be assigned to a nurturing campaign that will help your lead make their decision in their own time. Next, you can use automation efforts to build the relationship, so that the lead receives the right kind of attention to convince them to become a loyal customer.

Tactics For Improving Automation Efforts

No matter what type of lead you encounter, you can use the following proven tactics to improve your automation efforts (and subsequently build stronger, more valuable relationships with all of your leads and customers).

1. Deliver More Targeted Content Via Several Sequences. — Most automated campaigns are designed to begin when a lead takes a certain action. However, if you want to deliver the targeted content that leads to a more personalized relationship, then you need to create more than one or two sequences. For example, many companies have a “welcome” and a “we’re sad to see you go” sequence that is sent out via automated efforts. While the latter two sequences are a good start, they don’t cover all of the stages of a customer journey or the various lead segments that you will encounter. By leveraging behavioral metrics you can create more targeted content, which can be delivered via different sequences throughout the leads’ buying journey. Through more targeted content you can improve the relationship by understanding that the leads’ needs will change throughout their buying journey. Finally, the more you can showcase your understanding of the lead, the easier it will be for you to build a stronger relationship as the lead transitions into a loyal customer.
2. Real Time Data Is Important. — During an effective automation campaign you must remember to spend time personalizing your content so that it effectively nurtures the leads. Without personalization your leads will lose interest or feel as if your efforts are disingenuous. With this in mind, remember that automation is meant to streamline efforts so that you can more easily delegate your time. In this vein, personalization efforts can be enhanced when you leverage real time data. Through real time data you can tailor efforts to encourage your lead to become an active customer. In short, real time data can provide you with additional insights into the behavioral indicators that highlight when a lead is ready to take action. Combine real time data with personalization to produce the most effective automation campaigns.
3. Automation Is An Ongoing Process. — It is true that automation is designed to streamline efforts and assist with the lead generation process. However, like any marketing tool, automation shouldn’t be thought of as a “one-time solution that will continuously work throughout the years.” In other words, your automation campaigns should be monitored even if you are experiencing a high level of success. Throughout the quarter and year, you should analyze each stage of the automation campaign to ensure that all areas are performing at the optimal levels. By remaining engaged in the automation process, you can continue to leverage this effective tool to generate a consistent stream of leads and revenue.

The Bottom Line: Use Automation To Build Valuable Business Relationships With Leads, Prospects, and Customers

Automation is a great email marketing tool that can and should be leveraged by the savvy marketer. However, don’t let the name fool you. Automation does not mean that you should suddenly send generic messages that don’t take into account gathered behavioral metrics, real time data, or personalization efforts. Instead, automation should be used to help you strengthen your relationships with leads, so that you can turn them into loyal customers by catering to their needs throughout their buyer’s journey.