Marketing automation is all the rage right now. There’s no doubt that the right technology can streamline your marketing processes and help you provide a more engaging experience for prospects and clients, but there’s a little more to it than setting up a couple of tags and funnels in Infusionsoft. Recently, I talked to marketing automation guru and Infusionsoft expert Brad Martineau for my podcast, Marketing Speak. Brad spent over seven years leading the product development team at Infusionsoft. Now, his own company, SixthDivision, provides awesome training for businesses who want to be at the cutting edge of marketing.   We covered so much ground on the episode that I’d have to write an epic article to do our conversation justice. Instead, I’ve pulled out a couple of Brad’s helpful tips. If you want more amazing insights into marketing automation, take a listen to the full episode here.

1. Make Sure You Actually Need to Automate Your Business

Often a trend takes off in the marketing world and businesses quickly jump on the bandwagon without thinking critically. One question that Brad often gets is, “Why should I invest in a tool like Infusionsoft or Ontraport?” His answer: It really depends on your business and what your goal is. If you have a business with systems and processes that need real people to engage with your clients a key points in the sales process, then marketing automation can be very valuable. If you have a simple online sales funnel that is basically an autoresponder connected to an ecommerce platform, then using a tool like Infusionsoft could wind up making your processes messier. “If it’s a totally online business, informational only, then you may not need an Infusionsoft,” says Brad.

2. Know Your Client Journey

You can’t automate your marketing if you don’t know what you want your customers to do. The key to a successful and efficient automation process in knowing your client journey. Brad suggests creating a high-level visualization so you can quickly see every stage of the process, from entry points like ads and social media to webinar registrations, purchases, contact with your sales team, follow ups, and so on. Once you have a list of steps, you can create a detailed blueprint of exactly what you want to happen at each stage of the process. “The entire chain is important but the first key in the entire chain is you have to be able to step back and create a high-level playbook. A high-level playbook that says, ‘Here’s how I’m moving people through this client journey so that I create visibility at a high level,’” says Brad.   

3. Segment and Personalize

Tools like Infusionsoft are great for helping automate your sales funnel. But the real value comes from being able to create hyper-personalized sequences based on what you know about your customers. Did they sign up after clicking on a specific Facebook ad or attending talk you gave a conference? Since you know what they’re interested in, you can use automation to funnel them into an email sequence that provides them with even more valuable information on the topic. “What you’re optimizing is the message, you’re optimizing the sources that are coming in to make sure you get the right people and you’re delivering the right message,” says Brad.

4. Use Automation to Educate New Clients

When a new client makes a purchase, what you do over the next few days is crucial. If you find yourself on the phone with new clients answering basic questions about your service, why not package up that information and automate the delivery of it? That way, when you get on the phone with your a client for the first time, they will already be familiar with your processes and you can get right down to the important stuff. “What [you] do to automate the on-boarding of the client can literally shave half of the time that [you] have to spend delivering for that client right off the top, because of how [you’re] training, how [you’re] educating a person before [you] ever have to get onto a call,” says Brad.

5. Thank You Pages Are an Opportunity

When someone signs up to your list, makes a purchase, or downloads a free gift, they are often presented with a generic “Thank You” page. What most businesses miss is that this is a prime opportunity to take that person into a new phase of the customer journey. At this point, they are interested enough in your offer to sign up. Instead of simple presenting them with a “dead” thank you page, leverage that interest to move them on to something bigger and better. “That [Thank You page] is the most valuable prime real estate that you have in your entire client journey because you’re capturing them literally at the peak of their excitement. Unfortunately, it’s only downhill after that. The whole idea of automating the journey is to continue to keep it up,” says Brad. Listen to the full interview with Brad at the Marketing Speak website.  Photo source – Brad Martineau