Marketing Automation Part III: How to Create Workflows

Last week in Part II of our marketing automation series, we walked through a strategy to determine which automation tools are right for you (if you would like to start at the beginning of the series to get an introduction, you can find Part I here). This week, I’m going to walk you through how to create successful workflows.

We narrowed down the different segments of marketing automation last week, but even once you’ve completed this step, there are still more individualized options to consider. We will go through some of the best marketing automation workflows you can execute once you’ve chosen the tools for your business. Compiled with the help of SendinBlue, below we walk through eight success-driven workflows that can strengthen your marketing automation and instill results.

1. Welcome Email: A welcome email following a subscription is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a place to reaffirm your brand messaging and instill confidence in the customer that they made the right choice. You can also use this space to offer a bonus reward for subscribing (usually a coupon or a select piece of content for them to enjoy). This will allow you to continue to share your Story in the process.
2. Onboarding Series: After someone creates an account or profile with your business, they’re going to need to know how to navigate your products and services. You’ve spent a significant amount of time providing these opportunities, so why wouldn’t you educate your audience on how to access them? A great Story and sound Strategy mean nothing if you don’t have the audience to appreciate them. When done right, this is a win-win for both you and your audience; you get the engagement that you want, and your audience has the confidence of knowing your platform.
3. Abandoned Cart Follow Up: How often do we all look on a website, put items in a virtual shopping cart, then forget about it and leave the page? An automated workflow that reminds people to return to their shopping after a designated amount of time can increase ROI with a limited amount of work. And while simply reminding them to return to their cart is useful, don’t underestimate the value of offering a coupon or making purchasing suggestions.
4. Gated Content: Gated content is the next step in the Customer BuyWay, and it’s one that allows you to collect information from your leads in return for valuable, appealing content. You advertise the content, then people follow through with giving you their information; they get their content, you get their information. After this step, you know exactly who is interested in your products, services, and offers.
5. Engagement Follow Up: Once you know who your most loyal customers are, you can use further communication to hold their attention and ensure you stay at the top of their lists. The most common benefits usually range from coupons to exclusive content, deals, surveys, new release announcements, and social media incentives. Always keep in mind that the most accurate data for “most engaged” lists will become more defined with time.
6. Refining Contact Lists: As you start to implement a marketing automation strategy and gather leads, you’ll find that not everyone will want to remain on your email list—and this is fine. It’s expected that people will change their minds, have changing needs, or might not want to opt-in to another content subscription. Part of centering the customer as the hero means being open about the value their voice has. Sending out an email that allows them to re-opt-in to emails or texts will lower unsubscribe rates and ensure that everyone on your contact list wants to be there.
7. Lead Scoring: Lead scoring is less an individual workflow and more a process that you can use throughout your other workflows. Lead scoring means that you assign points to a lead depending on their engagement and behaviors. The information you gather will help you segment lists and deliver relevant information to the people who want it most.
8. Lead Nurturing: Growing your customer base isn’t something you can do well (or efficiently) by hand. Lead nurturing automation will sustain engagement throughout the Customer BuyWay and guide them to purchase. For example, if someone has subscribed to your email list then later follows a link to a pricing page, you can email them with a coupon to promote purchasing. Like lead scoring, lead nurturing is a workflow that is integrated throughout the Customer BuyWay.

The fundamental thing to remember about automation workflows is that they should all stem from a place of customer understanding. Ideally, workflows work together to create a smooth path down the Customer BuyWay – and ultimately guide leads to purchase.

We hope this week’s marketing automation segment was useful in learning the steps to implementing an automation strategy. Next week, we will discuss marketing automation specialists and how to build an effective marketing automation System (i.e. how to build the right marketing automation team).

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