How to Build Marketing Automation Workflows?
Featured Image - Marketing Workflows
Marketing workflows are tedious, and manually handling repetitive tasks often slow down marketing efforts. Sending newsletters, qualifying leads, updating contact information, and other activities require time and precision. That's where marketing automation workflows step in.
Imagine being able to automate sending personalized emails at the perfect moment, interacting with and scoring leads automatically, and updating your contact database effortlessly. All that and much more becomes possible once you automate your marketing workflows.
Today, 79% of businesses use some form of marketing automation. Automation frees the marketing team from manual work and helps them deliver personalized campaigns that increase conversion rates and revenue.
In this guide, we will learn all about the marketing automation workflow, covering its importance, how-to steps, examples, and best practices.
What is a Marketing Automation Workflow?
A marketing automation workflow is a predefined sequence of automated tasks triggered by specific user behavior or data inputs. These workflows are designed to handle repetitive marketing activities without manual intervention. They can autonomously run email campaigns, SMS alerts, CRM updates, lead qualification, etc.
Basically, marketing automation workflow arranges individual marketing tasks into a series of automated steps to drive faster marketing efforts. For example, consider that a customer signs up for a newsletter. This action can trigger a marketing automation workflow designed to nurture the new subscriber. The workflow can start with sending a welcome email, followed by regular follow-up emails containing valuable content, special offers, and relevant product information.
When a marketing team designs well-mapped automation workflows with clearly defined triggers, conditions, and actions, it can drive conversion with a personalized experience for each lead. In fact, 80% of marketing automation users witnessed lead generation, and 77% witnessed more conversions.
Importance/Benefits of Marketing Workflow Automation
Digital marketing is not new, but what's new is growing competition and evolving customer expectations. Today, customers demand personalized, relevant, and timely communication from brands. 80% of consumers will likely purchase with a brand that offers personalized experiences.
Marketing workflow automation empowers marketers to deal strategically with customers at every touchpoint. Below are some key points that highlight the importance/benefits of automating marketing workflows:
1. Improved Efficiency/Productivity
Marketers have many repetitive tasks to perform, such as sending follow-up emails, scheduling social media posts, updating records, and more. Automating repetitive tasks frees marketers from those activities, improves efficiency, and reduces manual errors. In fact, these automated workflows can improve sales team productivity by 14.5%.
2. Trigger Personalized Marketing
Automated marketing workflows can trigger at specific touchpoints in the customer journey and send personalized messages and offers based on individual behaviors and preferences. This personalization increases engagement and improves the chances of conversion. In fact, 80% of brands have experienced increased consumer spending (38% or higher) when they get personalized experiences.
3. Improve Conversion Rates
Automated marketing workflows can take the lead from initial awareness to becoming a loyal customer by delivering the right content at the right time. Research indicates that automated workflows, like abandoned cart emails or re-engagement campaigns, can yield revenue many times higher than standard one-off campaigns. Moreover, 77% of marketers using marketing automation have witnessed an increase in conversion rates.
4. Consistent Customer Experience
Marketing automation workflows treat every customer equally. Each customer gets the same personalized marketing exposure, which ensures consistent messaging and branding across all channels.
5. Cost Savings and Scalability
Marketing automation eradicates the need for a large in-house marketing team or financial resources. The automated workflows can handle large volumes of leads and customers without any downtimes. This leads to lower operational costs (12.2%) and smooth scalability of marketing efforts as the business grows. In fact,
How to Create a Marketing Automation Workflow
Marketing automation is impressive and necessary, but the real question is how to create a marketing automation workflow. Luckily, there are now tools that help businesses automate workflows with minimal effort and technicalities.
Below is a complete roadmap on how to create a marketing automation workflow:
Step 1. Set Your Automation Goals
The first step is to determine what you want to achieve with the marketing automation workflow. You can apply marketing automation for:
- Lead generation
- Lead scoring
- Customer segmentation
- Email marketing
- Cross-selling
- Customer onboarding
- Event promotion
Therefore, it is important to define your automation goals. For example, you can set the goal of automating lead generation and increasing qualified leads by 25% in the next quarter.
In addition, you should map out the customer journey to identify all the touchpoints where you can add automation.
Step 2. Pick the Marketing Automation Tool
Next, you must pick the marketing automation tool to help you automate the targeted workflows. Your preference should be for a tool that is intuitive, feature-packed, and cost-effective. Shortlist a few tools, try their free trials, and then choose the best one.
Step 3. Design Automation Workflows with Triggers, Actions, and Conditions
Now, use the marketing automation tool to begin designing automated workflows. Using the visual workflow builder, map out the customer journey, including triggers, actions, and conditions, as follows:
- Triggers: Define what events will initiate the workflow, such as a newsletter subscription, form submission, or purchase. Triggers are usually based on user actions or periods of inaction.
- Actions: Determine what actions the system will take in response to a trigger. Examples include sending a follow-up email, updating contact information, or assigning a lead to a salesperson.
- Conditions: Set rules that must be met for the system to complete the triggered action. Conditions ensure actions are only triggered under the right circumstances. For example, a discount code is only sent if the initial purchase is over $50.
- Timing: Establish time controls to determine when an action is taken, such as minutes, days, or weeks later.
Based on the above factors, create effective marketing automation workflows.
Step 4. Create Personalized Content
Once the workflows are ready, it's time to fill the marketing content. You need to draft personalized content for each stage of the workflow, such as welcome email, discount coupon message, re-engagement email, or post-purchase follow-ups. You have to keep the content tone personalized and aligned with your brand's tone.
Step 5. Test, Launch, and Optimize Automated Workflows
Lastly, you have to test your workflows using the software built-in debug mode. Afterward, you can launch your automated workflows. Over time, you can monitor key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to identify areas for improvement.
Top 5 Marketing Automation Workflow Examples
Marketers can deploy an extensive range of marketing automation workflows to automate different marketing activities. Below are the top five examples of common automation workflows:
1. Welcome Workflow
A welcome workflow is triggered when a new subscriber or customer joins your email list or makes their first purchase. It typically starts with a warm welcome email introducing your brand, followed by additional emails that provide helpful resources, product recommendations, or exclusive offers.
2. Lead Nurture Workflow
A lead nurture workflow is designed to guide potential customers through the sales funnel by delivering personalized and timely content. It uses triggers like downloading a resource or visiting specific pages to send relevant follow-ups, such as educational content, case studies, or product demos.
3. Abandoned Cart Workflow
An abandoned cart workflow helps recover lost sales by automatically sending reminders to customers who leave items in their shopping carts without completing the purchase. These emails often include product details, urgency-driven messages (e.g., limited stock), and sometimes discount codes to encourage customers to finalize their purchases.
4. Renewal/Upselling Workflow
The renewal/upselling workflow targets existing customers nearing the end of a subscription or warranty period or those who might benefit from upgrading their purchase. It sends reminders to renew or upgrade, along with tailored offers or incentives.
5. Birthday Coupon Workflow
The birthday coupon workflow is a personalized way to delight customers on their special day by sending them exclusive discounts or gifts. It triggers on the day of the customer's birthday and strengthens the emotional connection, followed by encouragement for repeat purchases through a special discount.
Tips and Tricks for Automated Marketing Workflows
Marketing automation workflows need to be strategic and effective in delivering value to customers and achieving operational efficiency.
In this perspective, below are some useful tips and tricks for running successful automated marketing workflows:
- Segmentation: Segment your audience to send the right message to the right person at the right time.
- A/B TestingTest different versions of your messages to see which performs better. You can experiment with subject lines, body content, CTAs, and personalization.
- Multi-Channel Communication: Use more than one channel in your marketing workflows to increase sales. For example, send an email with an offer and follow up with an SMS if the recipient hasn't opened it.
- Engaging Content: Develop engaging content that provides value to your audience. High-quality content is essential for attracting and retaining customers.
- Timing: Make sure your marketing campaigns trigger at the right time to maximize their impact.
In short, marketing automation workflows are beyond just automating marketing tasks; they are about creating personalized experiences to drive business growth.
Wrapping Up: Get Started with Marketing Automation Workflows
Marketing automation workflows are necessary to deliver faster and more personalized campaigns. Effective automated workflows can streamline marketing efforts, improve productivity, and lead to higher conversion rates. Therefore, take your first step and start transforming your marketing strategy with strategic automation.