Your First Month with Marketing Automation. How to start?

First months with Marketing Automation could be tough. With so many options and features to use, where should you begin? How to avoid mistakes that might backfire later? What features should be implemented first? How to prepare your team for a change?

We present a practical guide.

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1. Clean up

Before you start automating, implementing the monitoring code or analyzing, start with what you already have – your data, including your contacts and product catalog. It’s the material you’re going to automate. If it’s faulty, automation will reproduce these mistakes. A campaign sent to a base of outdated email addresses or to people whose addresses were acquired improperly is still spam, no matter how personalized or valuable it is.

The same refers to your catalog. If it’s a mess, if the products aren’t assigned to right categories and tagged correctly, if there is no system to organize it, your recommendations will be inaccurate.

For example, you want to use dynamic 1-to-1 banners and create a rule that displays products from the same category as previously bought the item. Your customer has bought a crime story, and you want to recommend something similar when she visits you next time. But instead of what might interest her, the banner shows a Harlequin, because it was mistakenly tagged as a crime story. The rule of automation works fine, but the effect is far from what you might expect.

Tidy up your database, products, and content.

2. Assess your resources

Before you buy the platform, check if you have enough resources to run it. Automation costs don’t end at the license; you need people (skills and time), leads and content.

Without these your investment in Marketing Automation will fail: either you won’t use the system because of lack of time, or you will use only a fraction of its potential, or you won’t have an audience to whom you could address your perfectly personalized messages.

3. Prepare your staff

Using Marketing Automation will force your marketers and salespeople not only to take on new tasks but also to change their style of work. So prepare them for a change and give your teams time to establish frames of cooperation. They should exchange data on customers and buyer’s journey and come up with a unified definition of a lead and sales qualification.

In other words, use the time before implementation to gather the data on the users you already have and think how to use that knowledge in the automation processes. Also, identify the gaps: what would you need to learn? Maybe the platform will deliver such insight.

4. Identification of key problem

Before you put your hands on the system, have a list of specific key goals you want to achieve. You bought a platform to address particular problems, didn’t you?
Keep them on your radar. Write down which features or automation will you implement to address these. Stick to the core issues, so no shiny new options will distract you from the main tasks. Will you begin by implementing personalized contact forms to boost lead generation? Or will you increase sales with dynamic upsell and cross-sell messages?

5. Monitoring code integration

Your first step should be installing the monitoring code on your website. Many companies neglect that step and reduce Marketing Automation to an email marketing tool. It’s such a waste!

Pasting the code on your website will enable you to start tracking your users and tap into Big Data potential. You don’t have to plan any particular actions based on data, just make sure that you begin to collect data as soon as possible.

After pasting the code check if it works correctly.

6. Import contacts

The second vital step will be to import existing contacts: either from the CRM you use, Excel or your email account. You can also add individual contacts manually.

When you have your contacts in the system and you monitor them, you’re almost ready.

7. Set scoring rules

Scoring means points assigned to users for defined actions (such as visiting the website, purchase or comment in social media). It helps you assess users’ engagement and knowledge: someone with high scoring knows a lot more about a brand than someone with small amounts of the point. That’s why we recommend starting assigning these as soon as possible.

Points are given to each user automatically. You just need to determine which actions are you going to award with scoring and what number of points are given for what action. Do it: Setting -> Scoring.

>> How to set scoring

8. Email marketing

Start by adding an email account from which you will communicate with your audience: Settings -> Email account.

After that, you can move on to building email templates. It’s more convenient to create templates instead of composing each email from a scratch.

Don’t stop at regular bulk newsletters or messages sent to segments. Use also dynamic 1-to-1 emails such as:
– welcome messages
– abandoned cart rescue messages
– birthday messages
– upsell and cross-sell messages

The essential rules

At the beginning of your Marketing Automation Journey follows these tips:
– Set KPIs to measure the performance of your actions. Develop a good habit of checking effects on a regular basis.
– Create rules of automation slowly. Start from pasting monitoring code and learn analytical modes. Observe your users and create new rules slowly. Run tests and measure how new rule performs.
– Use creators to create responsive messages and landing pages.