Have you ever sat down at your favorite Mexican restaurant and been so hungry that you can’t decide what to order?  From chicken enchiladas and rellenos to carne asada and shrimp ceviche, it all looks so good that you sit there…stumped.  The wait staff may have to make several extra trips because you are distracted by the choices and can’t decide.

Now think about this scenario in the context of setting up a multi-week, multi-step marketing automation campaign.  Sounds familiar, right?  You have so many decisions and moving parts to control that getting started can be overwhelming.

We suggest answering these four simple questions beforehand to make structuring your first few marketing automation campaigns a little easier…a little more digestible, if you will.

1.       Who are your leads and what is their source?  Answering this question will help determine their initial interests and how you first communicate with them.  For example, leads from outbound calling efforts should probably be segmented and receive different communications than those generated via an affiliate email program.
2.       What would you say in a 1:1 conversation – why should these leads care about your communications?  Are you offering them something of value such as a special offer, educational material, free assessment, etc?
3.       How can you support your campaign?  Content rules as a way to interact with leads so audit your existing content and determine what is relevant or can be repurposed.  White papers, case studies, testimonials, webinars and videos – you probably have more than you think!
4.       What do you want to accomplish?  Are you qualifying leads to hand off to sales or are you driving them to an online demo?  It makes sense to identify your end-goal at the beginning of the campaign because you can review every step to see if it logically supports the overall objective.

Armed with the answers to the above questions, the next step is to actually hit the whiteboard, Visio or old-fashioned pen and paper to map out the decision-tree and possible outcomes.  The few minutes that spent answering these four questions will have a huge pay-off as you become familiar with developing and structuring your marketing automation campaigns.  Be prepared for delicious results!

The term marketing automation has been around for some years now, and many (like us) in the industry believe this term to be pretty commonplace.  Truthfully, however, I can’t tell you the number of times we get blank stares or bits of awkward pauses when we say ‘marketing automation’ with prospective customers, and even prospective channel partners. Then I will say something like “What if you could identify the real prospects who are visiting your site, the things they are interested in, and how often they are visiting? Then you could follow up with an integrated email campaign targeted at a variety of segments based on their interests, behaviors and feedback? And provide scoring and nurturing of these leads within your system, all the while tying it into your CRM system and passing it on to salespeople to turn that information into revenue?” Read more

There are certainly benefits to sending both TEXT-Only and HTML emails when launching an email campaign. HTML emails are of course attractive when well-designed, allow you to insert images which help you determine an open rate, can be more compelling to click through, and convey multiple messages in an organized format. On the other hand, text emails can have a better deliverability rate, look more personalized, and are generally less likely to be confused with spam (although many spammers these days have caught on to that notion). So which one is right for your campaign? Well, it all depends on what message you are sending to what audience. Read more