Running a business is hard. It’s not only product planning and development that take up your time, it’s everything else too.
You’re doing marketing tasks like sending emails, updating social media, creating content, etc.
And then there are all the other things you’ve to do like accounting tasks, customer service calls, etc.
It’s a lot running on in your head all the time.
Implementing marketing automation in your business will not only help you automate repetitive and boring marketing tasks – it will also free you of unnecessary stress so you can focus on what matters most: growing your business!
So, to make it easy for you, here’s a list of 9 marketing processes you should consider automating right now.
1. Social media marketing automation
Around 57% (4.48 billion people) of the world’s population have a social media account. And, by the time you’re reading this, the number has already gone up.
Considering this, developing a social media presence has a huge ROI.
But attracting the attention of millions of people is no simple task.
Certain things like:
- content creation and curation
- content distribution
- measuring content effectiveness
have to be done on a regular basis which is not only time-consuming but also repetitive and boring.
The good news, these boring and repetitive tasks can be automated.
Thankfully, with the rise of GPT-3 based AI writing software, you can finish batching content creation for a month for your social media in less than an hour.
You can also curate other people’s material and adapt it to fit your brand’s personality.
Furthermore, creating reusable blog templates will definitely help with content preparation and outsourcing too.
Coupled with social media automation tools, they can be scheduled to go live on specific dates.
All this is now practically achievable in less than 2 hrs. I’ve been doing this for the last 3 months for my social media and have personally observed that it’s delivering more traffic to my website. And I was able to reduce the time spent on social media by almost 50%.
My only regret is not doing this earlier!
2. Customer service and support
The most frequent issue that any business’ customer support staff encounters is that the majority of their consumer inquiries have already been addressed.
People frequently ask the same questions over and again, which can wear down your customer service operation.
Having something as a barrier between your customer support and those repetitive queries will not only help you save time, but it’ll also help you to focus more on meaningful support requests to deliver the best customer experience.
You can definitely achieve this by using chatbots or live web chat software (like the one from GetResponse) on your website. They’ll help you, for example, easily redirect those already addressed requests to certain blog posts or forum questions.
Having live chat support is a win-win situation: it significantly reduces waiting time for customers and saves a lot of work & resources for you and your employees.
If you want to improve the customer service experience even further, use an internal ticketing system. It’ll help you handle and organize all customer support requests properly. This can be achieved by using suitable customer support software like Freshworks.
3. Content marketing automation
Content is king and marketing is queen.
Creating content is the best way to perform inbound marketing and generate quality leads.
In fact, this is how I’ve been able to land several freelance writing clients for myself.
Well, good news – you can automate the process of content creation, too.
It will help you create faster and distribute the content more efficiently.
With the growth of GPT-3 based AI writing software, you can create a 2000+ word blog post in less than 15 minutes.
You can also promote your blog posts automatically using email marketing software like GetResponse.
With certain tweaks (like adding text and personalization) you can send automated emails with your fresh new blog content to your lists, so that the traffic comes while you sleep.
All such tools come with detailed analytics and reporting too, so you know which posts are performing well and which aren’t.
4. Email marketing automation
Email marketing has come a long way. Today, investment in this type of advertising returns up to $42 per dollar spent.
This means that if you spend $1,000 a year on email marketing, you can expect a return of $42,000!
You can also automate email marketing, to make it more profitable and simple.
Email marketing and marketing automation software will send emails at fixed intervals to new leads, gently encouraging them toward a sale.
Furthermore, once they buy from you, a consumer isn’t done with your company.
In reality, it’s just the start of your relationship.
To stand out from the crowd, you can send warm automated thank you emails with GetResponse after they finish purchasing their orders.
Similarly, you can also make a good first impression on new leads by sending them a series of automated welcome emails, using a simple automation workflow.
This will show that you care about them and their experience with your company.
Moreover, with features like automated lead segmentation and lead scoring, you can segment qualified leads.
Additionally, with email list cleanup, you can even delete low-quality leads too.
The best thing.
All these processes can be automated with GetResponse’s marketing automation platform.
You’ll only need to set what to delete or keep based on customer data like user behavior, engagement levels, email open rate, link click rates, etc. and it’ll do the rest for you.
You can also hire skilled email newsletter copywriters who can lead the discussion and persuade your audience with their mouth-watering words to buy from you.
Doing this will further automate this marketing process for your business.
Automating these marketing processes with GetResponse will help you squeeze every last drop of ROI from your email marketing campaigns while you can focus on other important tasks.
5. Website conversion rate optimization and audit
Lead generation runs at full capacity when you know which lead forms are converting the best.
There are a variety of metrics like the placement of lead forms, call to action, etc. that determine the conversion rates for your lead forms. A/B testing all these factors becomes equally important.
Testing every aspect of these forms manually can be time-consuming and stressful for your marketing funnel. Also, keeping complete records of all small modifications isn’t doable at all.
Conversion optimization tools like Thrive Themes (aka Thrive Suite) allow you to automate and test every tiny detail of your website.
They can aggressively test many metrics ranging from blog headlines, lead form placement, form headings, CTAs, etc.
You can create and test unlimited variations of a single form simultaneously with just one click to see which one performs the best.
Moreover, with their automatic winner feature, it’ll select the winning variation for you, on autopilot.
Means it’s like “set-it-and-forget-it”.
Furthermore, if you’re reliant on SEO to drive traffic.
Then secondary CRO metrics must also be optimized, such as page speed, Core Web Vitals, SERP rankings, links (both internal and external), etc.
Broken links, redirects, images, etc. are a few things that search engines often consider as ranking parameters, so it’s important to keep a check on these too.
Also tracking SERP rankings is vital since it’ll help you analyze:
- when your competitors are climbing up the SERPs.
- What changes have they made in their marketing methods?
- what rankings changed by google algorithm updates, etc.
Thankfully, all the above website audit tasks can be fully delegated and automated to run either daily or weekly with SEO tools like Semrush.
It’s quite helpful and effective in detecting these problems, that too on full automation. It also generates full audit and performance reports for your website on automation so you can fix them as soon as possible.
6. Detailed analytics and reporting
To succeed with your marketing efforts, you must have a fully functional feedback mechanism in place.
You won’t improve unless you have something that offers good counsel on your efforts.
And to achieve this, it’s critical that you’re tracking every move and generating detailed reports on the results of your actions simultaneously.
Also, before actively marketing your website, Google Analytics and Search Console are some basic analytic tools that need to be set up.
Furthermore, if you’re utilizing your blog to promote affiliate items.
You’ll want to use UTM tags to track and identify which link placements or blog entries are converting best.
With UTM tracking set in place, you’ll know which posts and affiliate links are converting the best.
You can then promote such affiliate postings through paid ads to earn more profits.
The same applies to your email marketing efforts. Tracking which subject lines have the highest open rates will help you optimize your email marketing campaigns.
In a nutshell, monitoring every move of yours will help you better understand what works and what doesn’t. This way, you can further capitalize on what’s working for you while getting rid of everything else.
7. Push notifications and updates
Push notification marketing is one of the most effective and cheapest forms of marketing after email.
It offers:
- better reach
- high security
- higher engagement
- useful insights
- cheap communication channel
It has less signup friction than email since people can only click yes or no rather than filling out the full opt-in form.
Businesses can also increase user engagement through targeted drip post notification campaigns.
This marketing automation ensures that your name appears on your audience’s screen at least once every few days, so they don’t forget you.
There are many cases where you can use push notification marketing automation provided by GetResponse.
Some of them are:
- Cart abandonment notifications – for ecommerce.
- Automated re-engagement notifications – persuading the audience to visit your app.
- Recurring notifications – notification that repeats at certain intervals like blog post update.
- RSS feed campaigns – to drive traffic.
- Introductory notifications – welcome new customers.
- Transactional notifications – immediately after a transaction has been made.
- User-behavior-based automated campaigns – based on time, location, page visits, etc.
8. Ecommerce marketing automation
For most businesses, a sale isn’t a one-time event. You want your consumers to keep buying from you.
Particularly if you sell a recurring service or product that needs to be repaid on a regular basis.
After all, the chance of selling to an existing client is 60 to 70%, compared with 5 to 20% for a new one.
Furthermore, in some cases like when a customer cancels or replaces their card, you will not have any of their new records.
With ecommerce based email in email and marketing automation platforms like GetResponse.
You can set up automated early billing notifications in your marketing automation software.
You can also offer them some discounts on early payments for their subscription.
Doing this will notify them early and you can collect payments in advance.
Similarly, setting up automated triggers will notify your customers when a payment fails. This notification will push the consumer to pay so you can receive compensation right away.
With GetResponse, you can automate sending birthday discount emails too. Doing this will additionally provide a more personalized experience to your customers.
You can also set up abandoned cart emails to remind them that they haven’t completed their purchase.
By implementing marketing automation within your ecommerce business, you can not only create a good customer experience but also maximize your sales revenue.
9. Communication between different departments
Interconnection between several departments in your company will help you generate revenue and operate your business more effectively.
With marketing automation built in, new incoming leads can be transferred to the sales team directly with a CRM.
This way, the marketing team can focus on generating leads instead of transferring them to other departments.
The workflow automation between different departments will also help you track your prospects effectively, and increase productivity.
Although setting up the right marketing automation software might sound costly at first, it’ll definitely reward you later.
Related read: 21 Company Newsletter Ideas: Examples & How-to Guide
Should you use marketing automation tools?
The type of business you run will determine the best marketing automation tools you should consider.
For example, if you sell products or services, then email and marketing automation by GetResponse can help you increase turnover in a short time.
But, investing in good marketing automation platforms can be a game changer for any type of business. Why?
Since GetResponse offers essentially everything under one roof, you can automate your marketing and sales activities and it’ll also allow you to manage it all from a single dashboard ranging from push notification, e-commerce campaign, landing page, to email marketing, and everything else.
You’ll also need a successful marketing automation strategy in place that will assist you in deciding which marketing activities should be automated and which ones should be left to humans.
I’m pretty sure that after implementing automation in your marketing strategy, you’ll not only boost your sales and marketing ROI, deliver a better customer experience, but also free yourself of unnecessary stress.
Which boring and repetitive marketing operation of your business would you like to automate first?