Category: Marketing Automation Basics

Investing in marketing automation is one of the most effective steps you can take to increase your productivity and your ROI while saving your marketing and sales teams time.

The right software can give your teams tools to automate key lead engagement, nurturing, and conversion tasks to increase conversions.

Do not just settle for the first platform you come across, though. Use these 10 tips to identify the one that will work best for your business.

1. Don’t sacrifice features or usability

Never make compromises with your marketing automation platform. You can have robust features AND an intuitive user interface.

The right user interface can take the many features of a powerful software and translate them into easy-to-use navigations that simplify staff onboarding and day-to-day use.

With the right features for your business and a seamless user interface, you will enjoy:

1. Improved team buy-in on the technology, and
2. Improved marketing and sales activities, as you embrace all of the advantages that automation has to offer your business.

For the best combination of features and usability, consider GoCRM. Our solution is designed for simplicity of use, with drag-and-drop features and a centralized dashboard that you can begin using right away.

At the same time, we offer hundreds of customizable features to ensure that you enjoy automations tailored to your business needs. Form AND functionality: You can have it all, so never settle for less.

2. Choose a platform that has all the features you need…and none that you don’t

Your business has unique sales and marketing needs. Chances are, a one-size-fits-all automation software will leave you with some features you cannot use and without others you wish you had.

Do not settle for a cookie cutter solution that may or may not have what you need. Choose a marketing automation platform that provides customizable features you can tailor to your business.

For example, GoCRM allows you to craft automated workflows that follow your best practices and target your preferred audiences.

Plus, choose from our array of features to build the automations that fit your business with every functionality you need, and none that you do not need.

3. Integrate marketing automation with your CRM

Improve the power of your marketing automation, and get real insights into its effectiveness, by choosing a platform that integrates with your CRM.

By integrating your automated processes with your CRM, you allow your sales and marketing teams to collaborate in meaningful and effective ways.

Imagine the possibilities if marketing and sales could do the following:

• Tailor marketing campaigns based on the performance of previous campaigns.
• Visualize every lead’s entire journey.
• Pinpoint lead origins
• Automatically nurture leads along the sales funnel
• Assign an accurate ROI to each marketing effort.
• Qualify leads for appropriate follow-up
• Align marketing campaigns across channels for cohesive messaging
• And more

With GoCRM, you can easily integrate all of your automations with your sales and marketing team’s communications and campaigns. The result is a cohesive approach that builds collaboration and effectiveness throughout your organization.

4. Go beyond marketing automation with integrations

Marketing automation on its own can be powerful. Combined with a CRM, it can be life changing. An automation solution, however, becomes an irreplaceable part of your organization when it integrates with the tools you already use.

GoCRM integrates with hundreds of apps so we can deliver seamless automations, tracking, analytics, and data importation no matter where you interact with your leads. Comprehensive integrations make customizing your automations simple and easy.

5. Focus on scalability

Since effective automation will make it possible to earn and nurture more leads, growth is the natural result of a successful platform.

The technology you choose should be flexible enough to meet your needs even as your business grows.

Choosing a software solution that can grow with you makes it easier to incorporate the changes you need as you grow.

Look for automated marketing programs, like GoCRM, that can add features and capacity as needed, that do not lock you into a certain package for the long-term, and that do not require you to move to a different system when your business reaches a certain size.

6. Think ahead when choosing your automation technology

Related to scalability is the need to think about your future marketing requirements and to choose an automation technology solution that fits those needs.

Choosing future capability does not mean choosing every possible feature. It does, however, mean anticipating changes in your marketing and your business over the next 3-5 years and building features into your system that will serve those needs.

With GoCRM’s wide array of customizable features, you can create a tailored platform that simplifies your present and future marketing campaigns.

7. Use your automation platform to reach your business goals

As you consider your future automation needs, you should also use the software you choose to meet the goals you have for your business.

For example, you can use automatizations to achieve any of these goals (and more):

• Increase your teams’ productivity.
• Improve your overall ROI.
• Earn more leads.
• Better track and nurture leads.
• Acquire more customers

Automations, particularly a robust, CRM-integrated solution like that offered by GoCRM, makes it easier to reach these goals while spending less time and money on pursuing them.

8. Prioritize customer support

You know how important customer support and service is for keeping your own customers happy. Do not settle for less than stellar customer support from the automated marketing tool that you choose.

The best programs provide comprehensive customer support that makes it easier to handle issues such as onboarding your teams, answering questions, setting up features and tools, solving technical problems, and more.

Look for an automation software that provides the following features as part of their customer support:

• Multi-channel customer support options
• Rapid responses to inquiries
• Knowledge-base resources for self-help
• Flexible support hours

9. Choose an automation solution that offers training

Sometimes is best not to try to figure out how to use your marketing automation software yourself. Instead, choose an automation technology that provides in-depth training. For example, GoCRM will assist with the onboarding of your sales and marketing teams to ensure that you understand how to use the tools at your disposal.

In addition, you can access a library of resources that you can consult at any time. These resources can answer commonly asked questions, provide insights, and offer a constant source of education to help you make the most of your platform.

10. Make sure you can track your automations

Automated marketing only works if you can see its effect on your leads and your ROI. That is why the automation solution you choose should automatically track the impacts of those automations. In particular, look for a software that can deliver the following metrics:

• Lead origination
• A/B testing
• Lead activity and history
• ROI for each marketing campaign
• And more

💡 Takeaways

Choosing the right marketing automation platform allows your business to thrive. If you need a software solution that integrates with a CRM, delivers endless features and integrations, and allows you to customize your automations to your needs, then choose GoCRM. Schedule a free demo today to learn more!

You may have heard about the power of marketing automation, but still wonder: What exactly does marketing automation do? And how can it save you time and money?

Automating many of your repetitive marketing tasks is one of the easiest and most effective ways you have of improving your productivity. Here is a look at what marketing automation is and what it can do for you.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation uses software to automate many of the repetitive tasks your sales and marketing teams currently complete manually.

From drafting emails to sending appointment reminders, these tasks eat up time that your teams could be spending nurturing high-value leads or pursuing new clients.

The possibilities of marketing automation are almost endless. With a strong platform like GoCRM, you can take automation beyond basic tasks like scheduling appointments and make automation part of the process of capturing and nurturing leads.

What Marketing Tasks Can Be Automated?

Marketing automation can streamline almost every stage of the sales funnel, from capturing leads’ attention to helping nurture them toward conversion.

Here are some of the biggest tasks you can automate with the set of tools provided by a robust platform such as GoCRM.

Emails

Chances are, your sales and marketing teams write many emails every day that the GoCRM system could deliver on your behalf.

Simply create the email template you wish to send, tell the system what parameters to use when choosing who should receive the email, and activate. GoCRM will automatically send the email for you, from the email account of the correct team member.

Use automated emails for tasks such as the following:

• Confirmation emails (e.g. Appointments, form submissions, etc.)
• Marketing emails (e.g. Alerts, resources, and promotions to your email list)
• Reminder emails (e.g. Upcoming appointments, account reviews)
• Delivery emails (e.g. Send out paperwork, onboard new clients)
• Request emails (e.g. Ask for a review)

Lead Engagement and Nurturing

Marketing automation can also streamline the process of engaging and nurturing leads through customized workflows.

In GoCRM, you build each workflow using your business’ best practices and target audiences to reach and nurture potential customers.

Each workflow consists of a series of emails, SMS messages, and phone calls written by you and sent according to the timeline you set, from the personal account of the assigned team member.

All you do is build the workflow, write the emails and SMS messages once, and activate the workflow. GoCRM then works to engage and nurture leads until they respond to one of the messages.

At that point, your sales team can take over the process, providing a seamless transition to a personal connection that makes it easier for your team to close the deal.

Use automated workflows to accomplish tasks such as the following:

• Engage cold leads.
• Nurture leads earned through ads or form submissions.
• Alert leads to new promotions, discounts, and information to get them interested in your business
• Onboard new clients
• Retarget previous website visitors
• Engage previous customers
• And more

Using automated workflows allows GoCRM to nurture leads until they move further down the sales funnel, giving your team the time they need to focus on the most promising and highest-value leads.

Lead Assignment and Qualification

Assigning leads and determining the value and intent of each lead can take hours of your sales and marketing team’s valuable time, while receiving poor quality leads from your marketing team can create tension between your sales and marketing departments.

Automated lead qualification, such as that provided by GoCRM, can eliminate hours of labor and keep the pipeline full of high-value leads.

All you need to do is to set automated lead assignment. Set lead assignment by lead value, geographic area, position in the sales funnel, or simply use a round-robin style of assignment.

You can also set the parameters for qualifying a lead. For example, a lead that does not respond within 30 days may qualify as a cold lead, while a lead that fills out an online request form about a particular product may qualify for immediate follow up from a sales rep.

With GoCRM helping to assign, qualify and sort leads, your teams can focus on tending to the most important leads without taking time out of their day to evaluate every lead that comes through the pipeline.

Analytics Tracking

Your sales and marketing teams thrive off data that helps them segment audiences, target audiences, evaluate efficacy, optimize productivity and maximize ROI.

Deliver this information into their hands in less time with automated tracking from GoCRM. Our automated system can track and evaluate data in all of these ways:

• Import data from hundreds of integrations
• Record phone calls
• Centralize information in the database
• Track lead origin and journeys from any source, including phone calls
• Evaluate the value generated by each marketing campaign
• Implement dynamic number insertion and call tracking
• And More

With real-time data available, your sales and marketing teams can more efficiently earn, engage, nurture, and convert leads.

What Are The Benefits Of Automated Marketing?

Marketing automation can take over many time-consuming tasks, and in doing so deliver an array of benefits to your sales and marketing teams. Here are a few of the biggest benefits you will enjoy with automated marketing from GoCRM:

Never miss another lead.

With busy teams and lots of leads, it can be easy to overlook a lead. With GoCRM, however, you never have to miss another lead because the system nurtures the lead for you while you focus on more important tasks.

For example, automated workflows can nurture cold leads, while automated lead assignment ensures that every lead is immediately assigned to a specific team member.

Maximize your ROI.

With every lead promptly captured and properly nurtured, you can expect to win more customers, and that is good for your bottom line.

In addition, automated analytics tracking can help you focus on marketing strategies that are most effective for your target audiences. That means you can spend less money and earn more results. No more money thrown away on marketing campaigns that just do not work.

Personalize the customer experience.

Leads are more likely to become customers if they feel as if your business is invested in them. Automated marketing can help by personalizing the experience for the customer.

For example, personal names at the beginning of emails and texts, a personal connection to a real team member, and communications personalized to their pain points and needs all make the lead feel as if your business understands and respects them.

Personal connections lead to real relationships, and those relationships translate not just into customers but loyal customers who are likely to come back again and again.

Work smarter, not harder.

Marketing automation earns you more results, and leads, without actually making you and your teams work harder.

Instead of spending time nurturing cold leads, for example, you can focus on customers who are willing to buy right now, while GoCRM connects with your cold leads for you. Instead of tracking down information on a lead’s last communication with your business, you simply check the central database for all the relevant information.

With smart work, not harder work, you can take hours off your team’s workweeks while boosting their productivity and your ROI. That makes marketing automation a clearly good choice for your sales and marketing departments.

If you are ready to see what marketing automation can do for your business, contact GoCRM. We would be happy to give you a free demo and start you on the path to more productive, efficient, and profitable marketing and sales.