Personalization marketing is all about tailoring your marketing efforts to fit individual customer preferences and behaviors. By using data-driven insights, businesses can engage customers more effectively, boosting satisfaction and loyalty. This article will guide you through the key aspects of personalization marketing, its benefits, and how you can implement it in your strategy.

Key Takeaways

• Personalization marketing uses data to deliver tailored experiences, significantly improving customer engagement and loyalty.
• A successful personalized marketing strategy requires increasing both the quantity and quality of personalized interactions to drive growth.
• Implementing AI and advanced technology can streamline personalized marketing efforts, enhancing efficiency and ensuring a consistent customer experience.

Understanding Personalization Marketing

Marketing personalization is defined as using data to target leads with messages reflecting their interests and behaviors. Unlike traditional marketing that targets broad audiences, personalization focuses on individual experiences and preferences. This one-to-one strategy leverages real-time data to engage customers more effectively. The aim of personalized marketing is to engage the audience with tailored content relevant to their interests and behaviors.

Personalization in marketing is not just a buzzword; it’s a fundamental shift in how businesses interact with their customers. It builds trust, eases the customer journey, and transforms transactions into relationships. It’s no wonder that 90% of leading marketers believe personalization contributes to business profitability. However, if a personalized marketing strategy isn’t tailored properly, consumers won’t feel engaged and are less likely to purchase.

The importance of personalized marketing is further underscored by the fact that 81% of today’s consumers prefer personalized marketing experiences. Moreover, 66% of consumers will abandon a brand that does not offer a personalized experience. Most marketers recognize how crucial it is for businesses to invest in personalized marketing strategies to maintain customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Personalization modifies customer experience for customers based on known information without needing their input. This can include anything from personalized emails and subject lines to customized product recommendations and targeted messaging. Harnessing customer data and using personalization software tools enables businesses to create content that speaks to the unique characteristics and behaviors of their customers.

The Formula for Personalization Advantage

The formula P = n × v² helps illustrate the advantage of personalization in marketing. Here, ‘P’ represents the personalization advantage, ‘n’ stands for the number of personalized experiences, and ‘v’ symbolizes the value of each experience. This formula illustrates that both the quantity and quality of personalized interactions significantly impact the overall effectiveness of personalization efforts.

The variable ‘n’ indicates that increasing the number of personalized interactions can enhance the overall effect of personalization. On the other hand, the variable ‘v’ emphasizes the importance of delivering high value customers personalized experiences to customers, as their impact grows exponentially with value.

By focusing on both increasing the number of personalized interactions and enhancing the value of each interaction, businesses can achieve a successful personalized marketing strategy that drives growth and customer engagement.

Why Personalization Marketing Drives Growth and Loyalty

Integrating personalization into marketing strategies enhances customer engagement and boosts conversion rates. Effective personalization not only boosts customer satisfaction but also contributes to the long-term growth of revenue. Making customers feel seen, heard, and understood significantly improves their overall experience.

Personalization leads to greater returns by generating more loyal followers and increased revenue. Brands that utilize personalization effectively often see a significant increase in transaction rates and overall sales. This is because personalized marketing is more cost-effective, driving higher spending and increasing sales by 10% or more.

Moreover, effective personalization can increase a company’s revenue by enhancing repeat purchases and customer retention. Building long-lasting customer relationships through personalized marketing strategies fosters increased customer loyalty and satisfaction, providing a competitive market advantage. Personalized marketing efforts create a seamless customer journey, encouraging consumers to seek more information and engage with the brand on a deeper level.

Leveraging Customer Data for Personalized Experiences

Collecting data from sources like surveys, social media analytics, and CRM systems is key to capturing data on customer preferences. First-party data collected from sign-up forms can provide vital insights such as birth date and interests for personalization. Analyzing collected behavioral data allows businesses to use data to segment audiences based on demographics and behaviors, enabling targeted marketing.

Utilizing customer data effectively is essential for creating personalized marketing strategies that cater to individual preferences. Analyzing page views and email clickthrough rates gathers insights into customer behaviors. A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is beneficial for personalization as it gathers and leverages market data while providing actionable insights.

However, it is crucial to be mindful of consumer consent and keep track of how data is used to build trust. Businesses can allow customers to opt out of data tracking through account creation, ensuring user privacy preferences are respected. Feedback loops can help businesses refine personalization efforts while adhering to privacy laws and consumer expectations.

Implementing AI for Scalable Personalization

Advanced technologies like AI and machine learning facilitate scalable personalization, offering real-time, relevant customer experiences. AI technology helps unify personalization efforts across various platforms, ensuring a consistent experience for users. The right automation technology and improving data processing efficiency with AI enables businesses to deliver personalized messages and recommendations at scale.

Machine learning enhances the accuracy of sales forecasts and provides personalized recommendations based on customer behavior and preferences. This not only improves customer engagement but also drives higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction, leading to an improved customer experience.

Implementing AI in personalized marketing strategies allows businesses to stay ahead of the competition by delivering highly relevant messages to their audience.

Examples of Successful Personalized Marketing Campaigns

Exploring real-world examples of successful personalized marketing campaigns illustrates its effectiveness. Companies like Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube are renowned for their personalized marketing strategies, which have significantly enhanced customer engagement and satisfaction.

In the following subsections, we will delve into specific examples of personalized email campaigns, custom product recommendations, and social media personalization.

Personalized Email Campaigns

Personalizing emails boosts ROI, improves engagement, and creates relevant content for customers. 73% of customers prefer brands that personalize their email communications. Personalized emails can significantly increase engagement, with tailored messages being six times more likely to achieve click-throughs. Additionally, personalized subject lines are 50% more likely to be opened compared to non-personalized ones.

Effective email personalization strategies include segmenting mailing lists and tracking user behavior. Brands can send customized messages, offers, and notifications through personalized email campaigns.

AI-driven personalization can enhance productivity by automating processes, leading to increased click-through rates for personalized emails.

Custom Product Recommendations

Data collection is used to suggest products users are likely to be interested in. Data-driven personalized recommendations can lead to higher customer purchase likelihood. For example, Amazon’s recommendation engine analyzes customer browsing history and past purchases, along with purchase history, to suggest products that are highly relevant recommendations to individual customers. This approach not only increases sales but also enhances customer satisfaction by providing a personalized shopping experience.

Leveraging customer data allows businesses to create personalized product recommendations that cater to unique loyal customers’ preferences and behaviors. This not only drives repeat purchases but also fosters customer loyalty and retention. Personalized product recommendations are a powerful tool for businesses looking to enhance their marketing efforts and improve customer satisfaction.

Social Media Personalization

Consumers prefer customized marketing to their interests over generic advertising. Social media platforms enable brands to retarget users and send tailored messages through chatbots, enhancing customer interaction. For instance, Facebook and Instagram allow businesses to create personalized ads based on user behavior and preferences, ensuring that the content is highly relevant to the audience.

Social media personalization allows brands to enhance engagement by delivering relevant content tailored to the interests of their audiences. Leveraging customer data and advanced targeting options helps businesses create personalized social media campaigns that are all the rage, driving higher engagement and conversion rates.

Personalized social media marketing is an effective way to connect with existing customers on a personal level and build lasting relationships through a personalized approach, personalized communication, personalized campaigns, a marketing campaign, and many marketers’ personalized marketing faqs.

Challenges in Personalization Marketing

Many businesses struggle with scalability in personalization due to the complexity involved in analyzing vast amounts of customer data. Companies frequently underestimate the importance of collaborative efforts among different departments in successfully implementing personalization strategies. Data integration challenges arise when attempting to merge insights from various sources, hindering comprehensive measurement of personalization efforts.

The effectiveness of personalization is often hampered by bad data, which can arise from outdated or incorrect information. Organizations also face hurdles in achieving omnichannel personalization due to the lack of synchronized data across various digital channels and past behavior.

Additionally, the risk of sending duplicate or conflicting messages is a significant issue that arises from consumer data silos. Providing a seamless personalized experience requires overcoming challenges related to real-time content delivery, including alignment and orchestration across the tech stack.

Best Practices for a Successful Personalization Strategy

Clear goal-setting is vital for effective personalization, aligning marketing efforts with user needs. Effectively using data enhances personalized marketing experiences and fosters deeper customer connections. Implementing A/B testing can help compare the performance of personalized experiences against standard ones to determine effectiveness.

Measuring customer lifetime value (CLV), average order value (AOV), and net promoter score (NPS) provides insights on the effectiveness of personalized marketing efforts and marketing roi. Consent management platforms (CMPs) help automate adherence to privacy laws, ensuring compliance in personalization strategies.

Following these best practices helps businesses create successful personalized marketing strategies that drive customer engagement and happier customers satisfaction.

The Role of Marketing Automation in Personalization

Marketing automation uses software to streamline marketing tasks, making it easier to target audiences and nurture leads. Marketing automation improves efficiency, allowing marketers to focus on strategic initiatives rather than routine tasks. A unified customer profile is essential for delivering relevant experiences, as it allows businesses to understand customer interactions across multiple platforms. Additionally, marketing technology plays a crucial role in enhancing these processes.

Proactive engagement strategies, such as automated chat pop-ups or predictive analytics, can anticipate client needs before they arise. Personalized messages delivered across multiple channels create a consistent brand experience for customers. Marketing automation supports personalized marketing strategies by enabling businesses to deliver timely and relevant messages to their audience.

Measuring the Success of Personalization Efforts

Key metrics for evaluating personalization success include:

• Conversion rate
• Click-through rate
• Average order value
• Customer lifetime value
• Engagement metrics
• Retention rate
• Return on investment

Only 30% of companies utilize adequate metrics to assess their personalization initiatives, indicating a significant gap in measurement practices. Engagement metrics reveal how users interact with personalized content, helping determine the effectiveness of personalization strategies.

The insights gained from automated data collection facilitate informed decision-making in refining marketing strategies. Companies can measure the effectiveness of personalized marketing using intuitive reporting dashboards and advanced analytical capabilities in data analytics reporting insights.

Measuring the success of personalization efforts can be challenging due to the intangible metrics involved, like customer attachment and trust.

Summary

Personalization marketing is a powerful tool that allows businesses to connect with their customers on a personal level, driving engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty. By leveraging customer data and implementing advanced technologies like AI and marketing automation, businesses can create highly relevant and personalized experiences that resonate with their audience.

In this guide, we have explored the various aspects of personalization marketing, from understanding its fundamentals to implementing successful strategies and measuring their success. By following best practices and overcoming common challenges, businesses can harness the power of personalization to achieve long-term growth and customer loyalty.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is personalized marketing important?

Personalized marketing is crucial as it fosters customer engagement through tailored content that resonates with individual interests, ultimately enhancing satisfaction and loyalty. By addressing specific needs and preferences, businesses can build stronger relationships with their customers.

How does AI help in scalable personalization?

AI enhances scalable personalization by automating data analysis and allowing for real-time delivery of tailored customer experiences, ensuring that businesses can efficiently meet individual preferences.

What are the key metrics for measuring the success of personalization efforts?

To effectively measure the success of your personalization efforts, focus on key metrics such as conversion rate, click-through rate, average order value, customer lifetime value, engagement metrics, retention rate, and return on investment. These indicators will provide a comprehensive view of your personalization impact.

What are some examples of successful personalized marketing campaigns?

Successful personalized marketing campaigns include tailored email campaigns with dynamic content, custom product recommendations, and targeted social media marketing, all of which effectively cater to individual customer preferences. These strategies enhance engagement and drive conversions.

What challenges do businesses face in implementing personalization marketing?

Businesses face significant challenges in implementing personalization marketing, such as scalability, data integration issues, and managing bad data. Additionally, achieving omnichannel personalization and ensuring real-time data delivery are critical hurdles to overcome.

The post Mastering Personalization Marketing: Strategies for Success and Growth appeared first on Done For You.

What makes AI marketing tools so powerful is their ability to process massive amounts of data in seconds, uncovering patterns and insights that would take humans hours—if not days—to analyze. This means marketers can make data-backed decisions faster, optimize their strategies in real-time, and stay ahead of the competition without second-guessing their next move.

Beyond efficiency, AI marketing tools also open the door to hyper-personalization. Whether it’s delivering tailored content to specific audience segments or adjusting ad campaigns based on user behavior, AI enables businesses to create more meaningful, one-to-one connections with their customers at scale. This level of personalization leads to higher engagement, increased trust, and ultimately, better conversion rates.

Why AI Marketing Matters

AI marketing is not just a trend—it is a fundamental shift in how businesses approach customer engagement and operational efficiency. From automating repetitive tasks to analyzing vast amounts of data in seconds, AI enables marketers to focus on strategic growth rather than manual processes. Businesses that embrace AI marketing tools can improve customer personalization, optimize campaigns, and make data-backed decisions that drive real results.

If you’re looking to integrate AI into your marketing strategy, here are some of the best AI marketing tools available today.

1. ChatGPT for Content Creation

Best for: Generating blog posts, ad copy, and social media content.

ChatGPT is one of the most powerful AI-driven content generation tools available. It helps marketers craft compelling blog posts, landing page copy, and social media captions in minutes. By providing detailed prompts, you can create high-quality content that aligns with your brand voice and audience needs.

2. SEMrush AI

Best for: AI-powered keyword research and competitor analysis.

SEMrush AI is a comprehensive tool designed to help marketers optimize their SEO and PPC campaigns. It provides AI-driven insights into keyword trends, competitor strategies, and backlink opportunities. With its machine-learning algorithms, SEMrush AI helps businesses refine their digital marketing strategies and maximize their online visibility.

3. Surfer SEO

Best for: Optimizing content for search engines.

Surfer SEO helps marketers create content that ranks by analyzing SERP results and suggesting keyword placements, heading structures, and content length. With AI marketing tools insights, you can optimize your blog posts and web pages for better organic visibility.

4. Adzooma

Best for: Managing and optimizing ad campaigns.

Adzooma simplifies ad management by using AI to optimize PPC campaigns across platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads. It provides automated suggestions for improving performance, reducing wasted ad spend, and increasing ROI.

5. Smartly.io

Best for: Automating social media advertising.

Smartly.io is a powerful AI-driven ad automation platform that helps businesses scale their social media advertising. It allows marketers to create, test, and optimize ad creatives across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

6. Persado

Best for: AI-powered email marketing and messaging.

Persado uses AI to generate personalized email subject lines, headlines, and calls-to-action that maximize conversions. It analyzes customer response data to improve messaging effectiveness over time.

7. HubSpot AI Tools

Best for: Customer relationship management and marketing automation.

HubSpot integrates AI into its CRM and marketing platform, helping businesses automate lead nurturing, email marketing, and sales processes. The AI marketing tools analytics feature helps companies understand customer behavior and tailor their strategies accordingly.

8. Brandwatch

Best for: AI-powered social media listening.

Brandwatch helps businesses track brand sentiment and customer conversations across social media platforms. By using AI to analyze trends, businesses can gain insights into consumer behavior and refine their messaging strategies.

9. Pathmatics

Best for: Competitive ad intelligence.

Pathmatics provides marketers with AI marketing tools insights into competitors’ ad strategies. By analyzing ad placements, creative elements, and spending trends, businesses can refine their own marketing strategies and stay ahead of the competition.

10. MarketMuse

Best for: AI-driven content strategy.

MarketMuse helps content marketers plan and optimize their content strategy. It provides AI-generated topic recommendations, keyword insights, and content gap analysis to ensure your content performs well in search rankings.

The Role of AI in Data-Driven Marketing

AI marketing tools are not just for automation; it plays a crucial role in data-driven marketing. By analyzing large datasets, AI marketing tools can uncover trends, predict customer behavior, and provide actionable insights that improve decision-making. Marketers can leverage AI to optimize ad targeting, enhance customer segmentation, and measure campaign effectiveness in real time. This data-driven approach allows businesses to refine their strategies and maximize return on investment.

Maximizing the Impact of AI Marketing Tools

AI marketing tools are transforming how businesses attract, engage, and convert customers. By integrating these tools into your marketing strategy, you can streamline processes, improve efficiency, and ultimately drive more revenue. Which AI marketing tool are you most excited to try? Let us know how AI is helping your business grow.

FAQ

1. What are AI marketing tools? AI marketing tools leverage artificial intelligence to automate and optimize various marketing tasks, such as content creation, ad management, email marketing, and customer relationship management.

2. How can AI improve my marketing efforts? AI can enhance personalization, automate repetitive tasks, analyze data in real-time, and optimize ad performance, leading to more efficient and effective marketing strategies.

3. Are AI marketing tools suitable for small businesses? Yes, many AI marketing tools offer scalable solutions that fit the budgets and needs of small businesses, helping them compete with larger companies.

4. Do AI marketing tools require technical expertise? Not necessarily. Many AI-driven platforms are designed with user-friendly interfaces that require little to no technical knowledge.

5. Which AI marketing tool should I start with? It depends on your needs. If you focus on content creation, ChatGPT or Writesonic may be ideal. For SEO, Surfer SEO is a great option, while HubSpot AI Tools can help with CRM and automation. AI marketing tools are revolutionizing how businesses attract, engage, and convert customers. By integrating these tools into your marketing strategy, you can streamline processes, improve efficiency, and ultimately drive more revenue. 

AI Isn’t the Future—It’s the Present. Are You Using It to Your Advantage?

Most business owners are either wasting time on tasks AI could handle or missing out on powerful automation because they don’t know where to start. If you want to free up hours in your week, increase revenue, and scale without burnout, AI is the answer –> but only if you use it the right way.

Let’s talk. Book a free strategy call, and we’ll walk through how AI can be integrated into your business to make you more efficient, profitable, and unstoppable.

Schedule Your Free Call Now

The post Top AI Marketing Tools to Streamline Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

In the world of digital marketing, filtering your prospects isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s the key to sustainable growth and higher conversions. The reality is that not all leads are created equal. Without a system in place to filter and qualify prospects, your business could be wasting time, energy, and money chasing leads that will never convert.

After analyzing over 400 sales funnels and generating thousands of leads, we’ve identified the most effective strategies for filtering prospects and transforming them into high-quality leads. Here’s how to implement a filtering system that works for your business.

The Impact of Proper Filtering on How to Get More Qualified Leads

The difference between unfiltered and filtered leads is staggering. Let’s take a look at real-world numbers:

• Unfiltered traffic: 1-2% conversion rates
• Basic filtered leads: 4% conversion at a $497 price point
• Well-qualified leads: 30% conversion at a $97 price point
• Strategy session leads: 51% conversion for high-ticket offers

Why does this matter? Because a clear filtering process ensures you’re focusing your efforts on leads who are ready and able to buy. When you filter for intent and readiness, you’re not just increasing conversions; you’re building a more efficient, scalable business.

Proven Filtering Methods for Generating More Qualified Leads

1. Role and Seniority Within the Organization

Understanding a prospect’s decision-making authority is crucial, especially for B2B offers. For example, in our Done For You sales funnels, we ask prospects:

• What is your role in the company?
• Do you have decision-making authority?
• What is your current marketing budget?
• How large is your team?

These questions allow us to filter out leads who aren’t in a position to make purchasing decisions.

2. Level of Social Status

Social status provides another layer of qualification. Here’s how we apply it in practice:

• Requesting LinkedIn profiles for B2B leads to verify their professional background
• Checking business email addresses instead of generic ones like Gmail or Yahoo
• Assessing company domain authority to gauge credibility

This approach helps us focus on leads who are serious and credible.

3. Current Workflows and Systems

Every lead’s current setup tells a story about their needs and challenges. Here are some metrics we evaluate:

• Existing marketing systems and tools
• Current sales processes
• Key pain points in their funnel
• ROI expectations for new strategies

Understanding these elements allows us to tailor our approach and ensure we’re addressing real needs.

4. Product Interest Level

Tracking engagement metrics provides valuable insight into a lead’s level of interest. Key indicators include:

• Email open rates: Should be 40-55% within the first week
• Landing page engagement: Target a 30-40% conversion rate
• Webinar attendance: Aim for a 50% show-up rate

These benchmarks help us identify which leads are ready for immediate action versus those who need nurturing.

Implementing Strategy Sessions To Get More Qualified Leads

For high-ticket products or services ($2,000+), strategy sessions are one of the most effective ways to qualify leads. Here’s a real-world case study that highlights the power of proper filtering:

Case Study: From 15% to 52% Close Rates

A client selling a $997 product struggled with low conversions on their webinar funnel. Here’s how we transformed their results:

Before Filtering:

• 1,000 webinar registrants
• 300 attendees
• 12 sales ($997 product)
• 4% conversion rate

After Implementing Filtering:

• 500 qualified registrants
• 250 attendees
• 38 sales ($997 product)
• 15.2% conversion rate

What Changed? We added a detailed application form to the funnel. Prospects were asked about:

• Monthly revenue and ad spend
• Team size and decision-making authority
• Specific business goals and timelines

This allowed us to pre-qualify leads and ensure strategy sessions were only held with those most likely to convert. By the end of the campaign, close rates soared to 52% for strategy sessions, resulting in a significant boost in ROI.

Automated Filtering Systems

Automation makes it easier to filter prospects without adding extra work. Here’s the process we recommend:

Lead Magnet Delivery:

• Day 0: Welcome email with lead magnet
• Day 1: Consumption check
• Day 2-4: Engagement content
• Day 5-7: Qualification survey

Survey Segmentation: Based on survey responses, prospects are sorted into three categories:

• Ready to buy: Directly sent to the sales page
• Needs nurturing: Entered into an educational sequence
• Not qualified: Added to the general newsletter

This system ensures each lead is handled appropriately based on their level of intent.

Beyond Filtering: Building a Holistic System for Qualified Leads

While filtering is essential, it’s only one part of the equation. A holistic lead generation system also includes:

• Storytelling: Create narratives that resonate with your audience’s pain points and desires.
• Clear Branding: Ensure your branding reflects your values and aligns with the leads you’re targeting.
• Consistent Follow-Up: Nurture leads with email sequences, retargeting ads, and personalized outreach.

Final Thoughts: Take Action Today

Effective filtering is about more than just improving your numbers—it’s about building meaningful connections with the right audience. By implementing these strategies, you can focus your time and energy on prospects who are ready to take action, ultimately driving more sales and sustainable growth.

If you’re ready to get more qualified leads and take your business to the next level, start by refining your filtering process today. The results will speak for themselves.

The post How to Get More Qualified Leads: Why Filtering Your Incoming Prospects Is a MUST appeared first on Done For You.

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach potential customers and promote your business. With a well-planned email marketing strategy, you can build strong relationships with your audience, increase brand awareness, and boost sales.

In this blog post, we’ll share 10 killer email marketing strategies to help you take your business to the next level. We’ve got you covered, from crafting compelling subject lines to segmenting your audience!

1. Craft Compelling Subject Lines

The subject line is the first thing your subscribers see when they receive your email. It can make or break your email marketing campaign. A compelling subject line should be short, sweet, and concise. It should grab your reader’s attention and entice them to open your email.

Here are some tips for crafting compelling subject lines:

• Use numbers and statistics
• Ask a question
• Use humor
• Create a sense of urgency
• Personalize the subject line

2. Segment Your Audience

Segmenting your audience means dividing your subscribers into smaller groups based on their interests, behavior, and demographics. By segmenting your audience, you can send targeted emails more relevant to their interests.

Here are some ways to segment your audience:

• By location
• By behavior (e.g., opened/clicked on previous emails)
• By interests
• By demographics (e.g., age, gender)

3. Personalize Your Emails

Personalized emails can help you build stronger relationships with your subscribers. Adding the subscriber’s name and other personal details to the email can make them feel valued and appreciated.

Here are some ways to personalize your emails:

• Use the subscriber’s name
• Mention their previous purchases or interests
• Send birthday or anniversary emails
• Use dynamic content to show different products based on their behavior

4. Use Visuals

Visuals can make your emails more engaging and memorable. They can help you convey your message more effectively and make your emails stand out.

Here are some ways to use visuals in your emails:

• Add images or videos
• Use infographics to showcase statistics
• Use GIFs to add a touch of humor

5. Make Your Emails Mobile-Friendly

More than half of all emails are opened on mobile devices. If your emails are not optimized for mobile, you could miss out on potential customers.

Here are some tips for making your emails mobile-friendly:

• Use a responsive email template
• Keep your subject lines short
• Use a single-column layout
• Use large font sizes
• Add a clear call to action

6. A/B Test Your Emails

A/B testing involves sending two versions of your email to a small group of subscribers and measuring which one performs better. By A/B testing your emails, you can optimize your email marketing strategy and improve your conversion rates.

Here are some elements you can A/B test:

• Subject lines
• Call-to-action buttons
• Images
• Layout
• Personalization

7. Provide Value

Your subscribers receive dozens of emails every day. To stand out from the crowd, you need to provide value in every email you send. Your emails should offer something useful or interesting to your subscribers.

Here are some ways to provide value in your emails:

• Share industry insights or news
• Offer exclusive discounts or promotions
• Provide helpful tips or tutorials
• Send personalized recommendations based on their behavior

8. Use Social Proof

Social proof is a powerful tool that can help you build trust with your subscribers. By showing that other people trust and use your products or services, you can convince your subscribers to do the same.

Here are some ways to use social proof in your emails:

• Add customer reviews or testimonials
• Show social media shares or likes
• Mention awards or recognitions your business has received

9. Keep Your Emails Simple

Your emails should be easy to read and understand. They should have a clear message and a single call to action. If your emails are too complex or confusing, subscribers may lose interest or unsubscribe.

Here are some tips for keeping your emails simple:

• Use short paragraphs and sentences
• Use bullet points to highlight key information
• Avoid using jargon or technical terms
• Use a clear and concise call-to-action

10. Measure Your Results

Measuring your email marketing results is crucial to improving your strategy and achieving your goals. You can identify what works and what doesn’t by tracking your open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

Here are some metrics you should track:

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Conversion rates
• Bounce rates
• Unsubscribe rates

In conclusion, email marketing can be a powerful tool for boosting your business. Following these 10 killer email marketing strategies, you can create compelling emails that resonate with your audience and drive results. Remember to continuously test, optimize, and measure your results to improve your email marketing strategy.

The post Email Campaign Revolution: Implementing Killer Marketing Strategies appeared first on Done For You.

Digital marketing is constantly evolving, and keeping up with the latest trends and strategies can be challenging. However, staying ahead of the curve is essential to remain competitive in today’s ever-changing business landscape. This blog will explore ten game-changing digital marketing strategies you can’t afford to ignore in 2023 and beyond.

Strategy 1: Personalization

Personalization is the key to creating a unique and memorable customer experience. By leveraging customer data and using AI-powered tools, you can tailor your marketing messages to each customer’s needs and preferences. This approach can help you increase customer engagement and loyalty while boosting conversion rates.

Strategy 2: Voice Search Optimization

As more and more people use voice assistants like Alexa and Google Home, optimizing your content for voice search is becoming increasingly important. This means incorporating conversational keywords and phrases into your content and ensuring your website is mobile-friendly and fast-loading.

Strategy 3: Video Marketing

Video marketing has exploded in popularity in recent years and shows no signs of slowing down. Creating engaging videos showcasing your products or services can capture your audience’s attention and drive more traffic to your website. You can also use video to tell your brand’s story and build a stronger emotional connection with your customers.

Strategy 4: Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a powerful way to reach new audiences and build customer trust. By partnering with influencers in your industry, you can tap into their established networks and leverage their credibility to promote your brand. This approach can help you increase your reach and drive more conversions.

Strategy 5: Chatbots

Chatbots are becoming increasingly sophisticated and can now handle various customer service and marketing tasks. Using chatbots on your website or social media channels can provide instant support to your customers and streamline your marketing processes. This can help you save time and money while improving your customer experience.

Strategy 6: Social Media Stories

Social media stories are short, brief pieces of content that disappear after 24 hours. However, they can be an incredibly effective way to engage your audience and build your brand. Creating compelling stories showcasing your products or services can capture your audience’s attention and drive more traffic to your website.

Strategy 7: User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) is any content created by your customers and shared online. You can increase your brand’s reach and build social proof by encouraging your customers to create and share UGC. This approach can also help you improve your SEO by generating more backlinks to your website.

Strategy 8: Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that overlays digital content onto the real world. By using AR in your marketing campaigns, you can create immersive experiences that engage your audience and showcase your products or services. This approach can help you stand out from your competitors and drive more conversions.

Strategy 9: Micro-Moments

Micro-moments are brief, intent-driven moments when a person reaches for their mobile device to take action on a need or want. Understanding your customers’ micro-moments and tailoring your marketing messages to them can improve your relevance and drive more conversions. This approach requires a deep understanding of your customer’s needs and preferences and the ability to deliver personalized messages in real-time.

Strategy 10: Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly sophisticated and can now be used to automate many marketing tasks. By using AI-powered tools, you can optimize your marketing campaigns, personalize your messages, and improve your ROI. This approach can help you save time and money while delivering more targeted and effective marketing messages.

In conclusion, the digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving, and staying ahead of the curve is essential to remain competitive. By leveraging these ten game-changing digital marketing strategies, you can improve your customer experience, increase your reach, and drive more conversions. However, it’s important to remember that no single strategy will work for every business. You’ll need to experiment, test, and iterate to find the right mix of strategies that work for your unique needs and goals.

The post 10 Game-Changing Digital Marketing Strategies You Can’t Afford to Ignore appeared first on Done For You.

Discover the Best Sources for Products with Dropshipping: Your Guide to Finding Profitable Items

Are you planning to start a dropshipping business but struggling to find profitable products to sell? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Many entrepreneurs face this challenge when starting a dropshipping business. In this guide, we’ll show you the best sources to find products with dropshipping so you can create your business on the right foot.

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a business model where you sell products online without keeping inventory. Instead, you partner with a supplier who fulfills the orders on your behalf. When a customer orders on your website, the supplier ships the product directly to the customer.

Dropshipping has become popular because it allows entrepreneurs to start a business with minimal investment. You don’t need to invest in inventory or a warehouse, which reduces your startup costs.

Why Finding Profitable Products is Crucial

Finding profitable products is crucial for the success of your dropshipping business. You need to sell products with high demand or low profit margins to make enough profit to sustain your business.

Therefore, finding products with high demand and a high-profit margin is essential. But how do you find these products? Here are the best sources to find profitable products with dropshipping:

1. AliExpress

AliExpress is a popular marketplace for drop shippers. It has a wide range of products at low prices, making it an attractive source for drop shippers. You can find almost any product on AliExpress, from electronics to home decor to fashion.

To find profitable products on AliExpress, you can use tools like AliExpress Dropshipping Center and AliExpress Product Analysis. These tools allow you to analyze each product’s demand, competition, and profitability.

2. SaleHoo

SaleHoo is a directory of wholesale suppliers and drop shippers. It has over 8,000 suppliers and 2.5 million products, making it a valuable source for drop shippers.

SaleHoo’s suppliers are verified and trustworthy, which reduces the risk of getting scammed or receiving low-quality products. You can also use SaleHoo’s market research lab to find profitable products based on demand, competition, and profitability.

3. Oberlo

Oberlo is a dropshipping app that allows you to import products from AliExpress to your Shopify store. It has a wide range of products at low prices, making it a popular source for drop shippers.

Oberlo’s product statistics allow you to analyze each product’s demand, competition, and profitability. You can also use Oberlo’s trending products feature to find currently popular products.

4. Google Trends

Google Trends is a free tool that allows you to analyze the popularity of search terms over time. You can use it to find products that have a high demand and are trending.

To use Google Trends, enter a keyword related to your niche and analyze the search volume over time. If the search volume increases, it’s a good sign that the product has a high demand.

5. Amazon Best Sellers

Amazon Best Sellers is a list of the top-selling products on Amazon. You can use it to find products with high demand and a high profit margin.

To use Amazon Best Sellers, go to the Amazon website and click on the Best Sellers tab. You can filter the products by category, which allows you to find products related to your niche.

Conclusion

Finding profitable products is crucial for the success of your dropshipping business. You can find products with high demand and a high-profit margin using the sources mentioned in this guide. Remember to analyze each product’s market, competition, and profitability before adding it to your store.

Good luck with your dropshipping business – let us know if you need help getting started!

The post Unlocking Hidden Treasures: 10 Unconventional Sources for Your Dropshipping Products appeared first on Done For You.

Will Dropshipping Make You Rich? Uncovering the Truth Behind the Hype!

You might have heard about dropshipping if you have searched for ways to make money online. Dropshipping is a business model where you sell products without holding inventory. The supplier ships the product directly to the customer, and you profit from the difference between your selling price and the supplier’s price. Dropshipping has been touted as a way to get rich quickly, but is it really true? In this post, we will uncover the truth behind the hype and answer the question: will drop shipping make you rich?

What is Dropshipping?

Before diving into the question, let’s define what dropshipping is. As mentioned earlier, dropshipping is a business model where you act as a middleman between the supplier and the customer. You set up an online store and list products from the supplier on your website. When a customer makes a purchase, you place an order with the supplier, who then ships the product directly to the customer. You profit from the difference between your selling and supplier prices.

The Pros and Cons of Dropshipping

Like any other business model, dropshipping has its pros and cons. Let’s take a look at them.

Pros

• Low startup costs: Unlike traditional retail businesses, dropshipping has low startup costs. You don’t need to hold any inventory, so you don’t need to invest in a warehouse or a physical store. All you need is a website and a supplier.
• Location independence: You can run a dropshipping business anywhere in the world if you have an internet connection. This makes it an excellent option for people who want to work remotely.
• Wide product selection: Since you don’t hold any inventory, you can list as many products on your website. This gives you a wide product selection to choose from.

Cons

• Low-profit margins: Since you are acting as a middleman, your profit margins will be lower than if you were selling your products. You will need to sell many products to make a decent income.
• Customer service: Since you are responsible for the customer experience, you must handle customer service issues such as returns and refunds. This can be time-consuming and stressful.
• Reliance on the supplier: Your success in dropshipping depends on the reliability of your supplier. If the supplier is out of stock or delivers a faulty product, it reflects poorly on your business.

Will Dropshipping Make You Rich?

Now that we have looked at the pros and cons of dropshipping let’s answer the question: will dropshipping make you rich?

The answer is it depends. Dropshipping can be a profitable business model if you do it right. However, it is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You will need to put in a lot of time and effort to make it work.

To be successful in dropshipping, you will need to:

• Choose the right niche: You will need to choose a profitable niche with low competition. This will require some research and analysis.
• Find reliable suppliers: You must find reliable suppliers with good quality products and competitive prices.
• Optimize your website: You must optimize your website for conversions using persuasive copy, high-quality images, and a user-friendly design.
• Drive traffic to your website: You must drive targeted traffic through various marketing channels like SEO, social media, and paid advertising.
• Provide excellent customer service: You must provide excellent customer service to ensure customer satisfaction and repeat business.

Dropshipping can be a profitable business model if you are willing to put in the time and effort. However, it is not a guaranteed path to riches. It requires hard work, dedication, and a willingness to learn and adapt.

Conclusion

Dropshipping is a business model that has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. While it can be profitable, it is not a get-rich-quick scheme. To be successful in dropshipping, you will need to put in a lot of time and effort. You must choose the right niche, find reliable suppliers, optimize your website, drive traffic, and provide excellent customer service. 

Dropshipping can be a rewarding business venture if you are willing to do all these things and we can help you get started.

The post From Rags to Riches? Navigating the Reality of Wealth with Dropshipping Business appeared first on Done For You.

Understanding Your Target Audience

Creating Compelling Content

Nurturing Relationships with Leads

Optimizing Your Sales Funnel

The post Unlocking the Secrets to Successful Lead Marketing: Tips and Strategies for Boosting Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

Marketing is an essential aspect of any business, and a well-crafted, effective marketing strategy can be the difference between success and failure. In today’s digital age, numerous marketing channels are available, making it challenging to know which ones to focus on.

A powerful marketing strategy can help you connect with your target audience, boost brand awareness, and ultimately increase revenue. If you want to propel your business to new heights, here are ten tips to help you craft an effective marketing strategy. 

1. Define Your Target Audience

Defining your target audience is the first step in crafting an effective marketing strategy. Who are you trying to reach? What are their needs and pain points? Understanding your target audience will help you create a message that resonates with them and ultimately drives results. 

2. Conduct Market Research

Conducting market research is crucial to understanding your industry and competitors. It will help you identify gaps in the market and opportunities to differentiate your brand. Use surveys, focus groups, and social media listening to gather insights and make informed decisions. Thorough market research will allow you to identify your ideal customer’s demographics, interests, and pain points. You can tailor your marketing messages to resonate with them effectively. 

3. Set Measurable Goals

You can start by setting clear and specific goals for your marketing strategy. Whether you aim to increase website traffic, generate leads, or boost sales, having well-defined objectives will guide your efforts and measure your success.

Setting measurable goals will also help track your progress and determine whether your marketing strategy is effective. Could you make sure your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART)?

4. Develop a Unique Value Proposition

A unique value proposition (UVP) sets your brand apart. It is a clear statement that communicates the benefits of your product or service and why customers should choose you over others. Could you ensure your UVP is concise, compelling, and easy to understand? Your UVP should address the specific needs and desires of your target audience.

5. Choose the Right Marketing Channels

Choosing the proper marketing channels is essential to reaching your target audience effectively. Please look at the channels your audience is most active on and focus your efforts there. Common marketing channels include social media, email marketing, SEO, PPC, and content marketing.

6. Create Valuable Content

Creating valuable content is an effective way to attract and engage your target audience. Ensure your content is updated with the latest digital trends to remain relevant, informative, and entertaining. Use visuals and storytelling to make your content stand out and leverage social media, content marketing, SEO, and email marketing to reach a broader online audience.

7. Build a Strong Brand Identity

Your brand identity is what makes your brand recognizable and memorable. It includes your logo, color palette, typography, and messaging. Please ensure your brand identity is consistent across all channels and resonates with your target audience.

Building and nurturing relationships with your customers is vital for long-term success. Implement customer relationship management (CRM) systems to track interactions and provide personalized experiences.

8. Leverage Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a powerful way to reach your target audience and build brand awareness. Identify influencers in your industry and collaborate with them to create content and promote your brand. Ensure the influencers you choose align with your brand values and have an engaged following.

9. Measure and Analyze Your Results

Measuring and analyzing your results is essential to determining the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. Use tools like Google Analytics, social media, and email marketing analytics to track your progress and make data-driven decisions. Monitor critical metrics like website traffic, conversion rates, and customer behavior. Use this data to refine your strategy continually.

10. Continuously Improve Your Strategy

Finally, continuously improving your marketing strategy is critical to staying ahead. Be willing to adapt and make necessary changes based on what works and doesn’t. The marketing landscape is dynamic, and flexibility is critical. Use the insights you gather from measuring and analyzing your results to tweak your strategy and optimize your performance continually.

Crafting an effective marketing strategy is an ongoing process that requires dedication and a willingness to evolve. By following these ten tips and staying committed to your system, you’ll be well on your way to achieving significant business growth. Remember that success may not happen overnight, but you can skyrocket your business with persistence and the right approach.

Still, trying to figure out where to start? Click here.

The post Effective Marketing Strategy Essentials: 10 Tips for Business Growth appeared first on Done For You.

Customer segmentation analysis is a powerful tool that enables businesses to unlock growth potential by identifying unique customer groups with specific needs and preferences. Understanding your customers is a critical element in maintaining a competitive edge.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the benefits of customer segmentation analysis and how it can help businesses thrive.

Understanding Customer Segmentation Analysis

Customer Segmentation Analysis divides customers into distinct groups based on shared characteristics such as demographics, behavior, and needs. By segmenting customers, businesses can fine-tune their marketing strategies and offerings to meet the unique needs of each group, gain a deeper understanding of customers, and tailor marketing, product development, and customer service efforts to meet the individual needs of each segment, thus increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Benefits of Customer Analysis

1. Better Understanding of Customer Needs

By segmenting customers, businesses can better understand their needs and preferences. This understanding enables businesses to create targeted marketing campaigns, products, and services that cater to specific customer segments. This approach leads to an increase in customer satisfaction and loyalty, as customers feel seen and heard.

2. Increased Revenue

Customer segmentation analysis can lead to revenue by identifying high-value segments most likely to purchase from the business. Businesses can increase their sales and revenue by targeting these segments with tailored marketing campaigns and offerings sales and revenue.

3. Improved Customer Retention

Customer segmentation analysis can help businesses identify at-risk customers and take proactive measures to retain them. Companies can offer personalized solutions that increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by understanding each customer segment’s unique needs and preferences.

How to Conduct Customer Analysis

1. Identify key customer characteristics, such as demographics, behavior, and needs.
2. Collect data: Collect data on these critical characteristics by conducting surveys, analyzing customer interactions, and using data analytics tools.
3. Analyze the data: Analyze the data to identify patterns and similarities between customer groups.
4. Segment customers: Use the data analysis to segment customers into distinct groups based on shared characteristics.
5. Tailor marketing strategies and offerings: Tailor marketing strategies and offerings to meet the unique needs of each customer segment.

To take your business to the next level, consider investing in Customer Segmentation Analysis. Book an Action Plan Call if you aren’t sure where to start!

The post Demystifying Customer Segmentation Analysis: A Roadmap to Business Growth appeared first on Done For You.

The Need for a Marketing Automation Agency

A marketing automation agency can be your secret weapon when seeking to enhance your business’s marketing efforts. Contrary to popular belief, marketing automation isn't only for giant corporations but can be a game-changer for businesses of all sizes. In this guide, we'll focus on how to pick the right marketing automation agency to meet your specific needs and objectives.

Debunking Myths: Marketing Automation is For Everyone

Is Marketing Automation Overwhelming?

The term "marketing automation" might seem daunting, particularly if you're a small business or a creative agency. Rest assured, the right marketing automation agency will make the process seamless, efficient, and highly effective.

Marketing Automation Across the Board

Marketing automation agencies cater to businesses, big and small, spanning various industries. Whether you're a tech startup or a local retail shop, marketing automation is applicable and beneficial.

Critical Advantages of Partnering with a Marketing Automation Agency

Achieve Scalability and Efficiency

Its scalability is one of the most compelling reasons to work with a marketing automation agency. Automation handles repetitive tasks around the clock, freeing up your valuable resources.

A Hands-Off Approach to Lead Generation

Imagine generating qualified leads without lifting a finger. With the right marketing automation agency, you can set up systems that acquire, nurture, and convert leads automatically.

Not Just Set It and Forget It: Ongoing Benefits

Investment and Returns

While implementing automation requires an initial investment in time and capital, the long-term benefits far outweigh the costs. Your selected marketing automation agency will ensure that your systems work tirelessly, growing your business even when you're not actively involved.

Beyond Email: Multi-Channel Capabilities

The Misconception: Email is Everything

A common misconception is that marketing automation only involves email campaigns. In reality, a competent marketing automation agency can do much more.

What Multi-Channel Means for You

From SMS marketing to social media discovery and CRM synchronization, the right agency will allow you to reach your customers at every touchpoint. This ensures a customized and highly effective marketing strategy beyond simple email campaigns.

The Ultimate Advantage: Deep Customer Connections

What Meaningful Connections Can Do

A significant advantage of working with a marketing automation agency is forming more meaningful connections with your customers. Whether through personalized messaging or timing your customer interactions perfectly, automation enables a whole new level of engagement.

Final Thoughts: Simplifying Marketing Automation

Marketing automation may seem complex, but it's straightforward and highly effective with the right agency. If you're interested in diving deeper into this topic, we have a free webinar to watch to learn how easy it is to implement automation for your business.

By choosing a competent marketing automation agency, you’re not just buying a service; you're investing in your business's scalable growth and long-term success.

[Video Transcript]

Today, we will discuss what working with a marketing automation agency should look like. Now, there's a lot of different automation play. There are so many other things about marketing automation, so many different ways to cut it up and so many different ways to generate revenue from it, profit from it, and use it. But at the end of the day, some straightforward tools tend to be plug-and-play. From a marketing automation standpoint, how you combine those tools is just up to your imagination.

For those who don't know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn, creator of doneforyou.com. We specialize in creating offers, building sales funnels, and doing marketing automation and traffic for clients. Marketing automation tends to be a place we thrive in because it's the glue between many different things. It's the glue that brings a lot of other elements together. It brings the pages together, and it brings the email marketing together, and it brings outbound kind of SMS stuff, and sales, and sales staff, and sales teams and, pipelines, and workflows. It all comes together in this idea of marketing automation.

What should be the goal in setting up a Marketing Automation?

When setting up marketing automation, the big thing you're looking for is making sure that the different pieces talk together. They go through, and you have your marketing. You have your CRM that speaks to your sales pages and your sales page; they talk to your CRM, and then all of that.

What we're going to talk about today is what a marketing automation agency is going to do or should do to help you grow your business online.

First, as marketing artists, we do a lot of marketing automation. We're a marketing automation agency. Although, I don't classify that as what we are. We're more like a growth team that does marketing automation.

Marketing automation is a key fundamental kind of building block of what sales funnels are and what sales funnels do.

Everybody does a small amount of marketing automation. Some agencies specialize in marketing automation, though. I would say that we specialize in marketing automation. We can make the website do things you haven't seen before, even in some of the stuff we do.

DFY website Marketing Automation

It's funny because we have our page visits tracked to Slack every once in a while. If we have somebody's email address or phone number, and they come to our website and hit a specific page, then it will send up kind of a warning flare and say, "This person is on your page." Ding and the whole deal.

When that happens, it also outputs their phone number and email address. If you have been to our website and any of our sales pages, and you get an email from me or one of my staff, it's a personalized email. That is why. It's because we have Slack configured through Zapier. We have our CRM send an alert over to Zapier. Zapier makes connections between software. It's the API hub between a bunch of different, 1000s of other, applications. A CRM sends a Zap to Slack and says, "Show, basically ping, these people on Slack every time this person, or we know who a person is, who hit a sales page.

Every once in a while, if you get a call from somebody on my team or an email from somebody on my team or even me, it's because we're watching that channel. You showed up on that page and ping; we see your email; we see your phone number because you've given it to us in the past. Not because it's weird, and we're spying on the world. But it's because it's all used from our collected data.

There have been times where we've noticed, I've seen, somebody be on page two or three or four days in a row. I don't even wait for them. I'll call them and say, "Hey, what's up, blah, blah, blah. This is Jason. You know, I saw you were on the page." And they're like, "What? You know, like, that's creepy." I'm like, "Yeah, it's creepy, but this is what we do. This is marketing automation. It's what we do. We wrote a book on it. You know what I mean?"

A good marketing agency must be able to implement workflows that will reap benefits and rewards from marketing automation.

That is one of the blessings of marketing automation. When you can run it correctly, a good marketing automation agency can do that for you. That's the idea. They're going to be able to implement those same workflows so that you reap the benefit and reward from it. There are marketing automation agencies, and then there's marketing automation for agencies. Both of those things they're the same. Marketing automation is marketing automation, whether you are an agency that is using it for your clients or you're an agency that's using it to acquire clients. It's all the same thing.

It's connecting different pieces of software so that things talk and trigger.

Zapier

There are lots of ways to do marketing automation. Zapier tends to be the place that everything comes to. It's kind of the head between all of the different sides. If you're running a Facebook lead ad, you will use Zapier to put that email address inside your CRM. Let's go over here to apps. There's all kinds of stuff, Google Sheets.

Most of the Google Suite has some pretty exciting stuff:

• Google Drive
• Facebook Lead Ads
• ActiveCampaign
• Facebook Pages

All of the things that it can do. We can get or send Gmail emails to new leads from Facebook Lead Ads, which I don't recommend.

You can also get emails with new Facebook Lead Ads leads. You can send lead ads to different rows in Google Sheets. We do that all the time, especially for our real estate clients.

1. We'll set the trigger.
2. Facebook sends the lead-in.
3. Then, it adds them to the CRM.
4. Then, finally, it puts them in a spreadsheet.

The CRM triggers, then the email marketing workflows, and then the spreadsheet is what somebody would call a sales guy would start screaming and working those leads.

If somebody comes in from a Facebook lead ad, we can add or update active campaign contacts—lots of different things you can do there. Your imagination is the limit when it comes to marketing automation. It is that simple. There are so many ways to trigger all kinds of cool stuff.

Slack

Slack is huge. There are so many integrations you can run with Slack. Microsoft Teams is fantastic, too, but Slack will integrate with everything. I'm not in a Microsoft environment at all. I don't think I have any Microsoft products installed on my computers, maybe Skype. We set it up with our CRM. We'll have Facebook Lead Ads ping Slack whenever there's a new sale.

A new conversation goes off into Google Sheets. We can set up some stuff in Airtable in Slack for project management. We're used to having it, so we get a Slack notification every time a base camp task is updated. We've set it up so that there are KPIs inside ad managers that will ping a Slack notification.

There are lots of different ways to work. There are lots of different ways to work on that moving forward. Now, let's see if we go to some of the other methods.

Anyway, your marketing automation agency will know all of this stuff. They will learn to trigger things that will move somebody through your prospect's scenario and pipeline. That's just what marketing automation does.

Benefits of Marketing Automation

1. The first is you're going to sell more.

You're going to sell more because people are in front of you or your brand is in front of them, I should say. You're going to generate more revenue in the long-term from that.

2. Your brand will be remembered better.

You will also, and perhaps more importantly, you will be remembered better. If somebody is seeing your ads, emails, text messages, or whatever for months and years to come, they're much more likely to buy. I can't tell you how many times we ended up getting somebody. They come in, and the first time they ever bought anything, a book or maybe a video course or whatever. Then, all of a sudden, they're our best customers. They've been on the list for six years.

They're our best customers because it just took a long time to warm up to us enough or to be ready to buy something. But once they do, they're committed because they're getting results. They know our process, and they know us without working directly with us. It ends up working out that much better for them. Marketing automation makes that possible.

Our marketing and marketing automation agencies work to set it and forget it.

It's a big question. We get asked all the time, and the answer is not. Marketing automation will make you money long-term, but there are always rules and things that break.

I mean, marketing automation is very much you're looking at Zapier. I just got one yesterday. My Instagram Zap broke between Instagram and Google Drive. I have no idea why. I haven't investigated. But it shows that even though something has been working for years, sometimes it breaks. Sometimes, there's a coding issue. Sometimes, a lot of these integrations have three parties.

They have your ad account. You have two sides. Let's say Instagram and Google Drive, and then you have Zapier in the middle. You have three coding teams who are all trying to work together technically. They're building the frameworks for everything to coincide. Sometimes, it doesn't work out all that well. Sometimes, something will break for a few days, and then it will magically get re-enabled. There are just some things to look at there. Here are some things to take note of.

You are always going to think of ways to do things better. You're going to say, "Oh man, I should've sent lead ads to Slack rather than to a spreadsheet." As I'm talking about it, I think that because we go into a spreadsheet for our clients. Like, "Well, why don't we set them up with a Slack account?" There are always ways to do things better. You have to keep your mind open to it.

As I said earlier in the week, if you're researching and thinking, some of my best, most transparent marketing automation "gotchas" happen when I'm mowing the lawn. I don't know why. I'm just driving around, riding on a lawnmower, but then I'm like, "Oh, damn, I shouldn't do this. Or I should do that."

Some of my most significant kind of aha moments come from when I'm driving, which my wife pointed out. In the middle of this pandemic, she's like, "Yeah, we don't drive anywhere." She's like, "So you don't have any processing time." And it's right. She's absolutely 100% right, as always. And I don't. That's always what I did when I drove. I'd process things that happened during the week because we don't go anywhere, as you can tell by being in this office. However, we will start shooting some on-location live streams, which I'm excited about, at a co-working place in town.

Marketing Automation Tips

You want to email, SMS, significant, big marketing automation components—any alert, triggers, or anything important to your business is also essential. Suppose you need your sales rep to know immediately when something comes in the door. In that case, you can set up a marketing automation trigger, put it in Slack, send it to a text message, put it in a spreadsheet, whatever the motivation, or some other bell or whistle. There are all kinds of exciting things to do. You can download an app called If This, Then That: I-F-T-T-T, IFTTT.com. If This, Then That, it's on iPad, probably Android too. But it's kind of like Zapier, only it's mobile, and you can trigger all sorts of cool things. When a sale comes in, it can ding. You can change the lights in your room, and all kinds of fun stuff there.

Advantages of Marketing Automation

Now, one of the most significant advantages of marketing automation is it creates a customized personal; it just customizes your marketing message for your end-user. You can do so much to customize the way they're marketed. If you have a survey and there are four answers on a survey, and depending on how they pick one of those answers, you enter them into an email sequence. That's one way to do it. You can send them down different paths based on a link they click in an email or a page they visit.

They go to a particular page, like a Facebook traffic page or how to make a garden table out of two by fours pages, then you can send them three or four two-by-four emails. You can think about all kinds of really cool stuff if you just sit back and think, "What do they want from me? What can I give them to help them grow or help them transform their lives or help them do something better?" That's all marketing automation is.

For Questions and Guide

With that, if there's anything we can do to help, we're happy to. Go to doneforyou.com/start, fill out the little form, and book a time on our calendar. We will dig in and figure out where in your business, what in your business can be automated, where we can find traffic, and what kind of automated processes and sales systems we can set up so that everything scales well and fast and as mechanical as possible inside the framework that you're already working in. That ends marketing automation week.

The post How to Choose the Right Marketing Automation Agency for Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

This is marketing automation week and at the end of the day, everything we’ve been talking about is how to automate your marketing. We are going to talk about Facebook advertising or Facebook ad. In most cases, this marketing automation involves CRMs. It involves email and email automation. Outbound email, outbound SMS. Somebody comes in, something triggers, something happens, and then all of a sudden, they get an email. Or they get a notification is sent, or whatever.

What we’re going to talk about today is what I like to call two-stage remarketing. Basically, on a Facebook ad, we can segment down. When somebody hits a website, or somebody watches a video or whatever, including these live videos, what we can do is we can start a timer. That timer counts down until they move to the next phase of retargeting. If somebody visits your website today, then you’re going to show them one ad. But then if they do not reengage with that ad, with that website, you’re going to show them a different ad in six days.

It’s ninja stuff, and part of the reason we started doing this, and part of the reason why we started kind of thinking out of the box when it came to this kind of setup was really that so many of our clients have multiple offers. They might have a report, like a book offer, so they’ll sell a $27 book, and we want to remark it though. Everybody who comes to their website gets axed, can seize the ad for their book.

But then they also have an automated webinar, so how do you advertise two different offers to the same group? The same group being the people who are already engaged with your brand. I mean, it’s not hard when you have 20, 30, 50, a hundred thousand people inside of a retargeting audience. But when you have a very small number, let’s say 5,000 or 2,000 or 1,000 when you’re just kind of getting started, then this multiple-stage retargeting is important.

It kind of adopts some of that same methodology of when you’re like an exclusion. When somebody buys your thing, you want to exclude them from seeing future advertising. If somebody comes in, they hit your website and then they register for your webinar. Well, you don’t want them to then continue seeing the webinar registration ad. You want them to move to the next evolution of advertising, which is going to be promoting the offer that they were pitched on the webinar. Really, important to identify and address the ways people are engaging with your ads, your website, and all that stuff, and playing it all out through remarketing.

What I’m going to do, I’ve tried describing this to clients in a bunch of different ways, and it’s always kind of fell short, or at least it seems like it falls short. What we’re going to do is we’re going to draw it out inside of just Google drawing. Then, I’m going to show you how to set it up. We’re going to flip over to the share screen.

For those of you who don’t know who I am, because every day we’re meeting new people from these live streams. For those of you who don’t know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn, creator of doneforyou.com. We specialize in three things, creating offers, building sales funnels, and setting up marketing automation. That’s really where our skills and disciplines live.

Two Primary Things To Track for Retargeting

What we’re going to do is, we’re going to just go to go through and just draw out what this multistage. This two-stage remark retargeting is.

1. visits your website
2. watching more than 15minutes video

I mean, there’s more, if they like a page, if they add something to a cart, if they, whatever. But those are the kind of the two primary things that we’re going to be tracking. What we do is we’re just going to move. We’re going to bump these down a little bit. Then up above, we’re going to, just going to add a little text box, and this is going to be five days out. This is it’s going to be less than five days.

2-Stage Retargeting Set-up

We’re going to say more than five days. This is going to be a multistage, two-stage retargeting setup.

1. What we’re going to do is, everybody who comes in, we’re going to use this shape. If they watch, if they visit the website or watch more than 15 seconds, they see the lead magnet, or we’re going to say book offer.

2. If they watch for more than 15 seconds or visit the website, and it’s been more than five days, we’re going to show a webinar registration.

Now, we’re going to draw a couple of arrows. We’re going to do lines pink, and then there.

Audiences for your Retargeting

What this gives us, is it gives us two audiences. We have our primary retargeting audience.

1. If all you’re doing is retargeting, then basically you’re just kind of lumping all of these people into the same audience. The same audience is everybody who’s been on my website or everybody who’s watched more than 15 seconds of a video in the last 180 days. Last six months.

2. Your warm audience is going to be everybody who watches a video or has been to the website in the last 30 days. This is going to end up being six to 30 days. After 30 days, they’ve kind of forgotten about you, so it’s probably not worth reaching back out to them. Their time has passed. They’ve probably already moved on. If they didn’t choose you, they chose someone else. The problem was that dire and they needed a solution, or they were just tire kickers.

Again, if they’re still around after 30 days, then you’re engaging with them through email and whatever, but it’s not. It doesn’t make sense to kind of go back after them or spend significant dollars, ad dollars going back out after them from a retargeting standpoint. It’s just simpler just to cut everybody after 30 days. If they come back awesome, and if they don’t awesome, but still that gives you 30 days of branding. They see your Facebook ad all over the place, which is awesome.

Now, what we do is split. This is our primary retargeted audience, website watched more than 15 seconds. Now we’re just going to do a segment of who has done those things in the last five days.

1. If you’ve been to a website, or if you have watched a video in the last 5 days
2. If you’ve been to a website, or if you have watched a video in the last six to 30 days

When we separate the groups, we’re able to put a different Facebook ad up, so we can show we’re just going to do this. We have our Facebook ad for the book offer, and we have our ads for the webinar registration. They’re not the same. They’re not advertising to the same person. What’s happening is, is you’re getting the best of both worlds. They are seeing an offer switch up, live, in front of them. They see your book offer for five days. And then they see, after six and on, you see your webinar registration offer. They don’t know that it changed. All they know is that it changed. They don’t know what triggered the change. It might just be that you took the book offer off. But in this way, you can daisy chain different offers to a retargeted audience, so you can go far out.

A caveat on this 2-stage retargeting set-up…

When you do this, you always want this offer to be the most pressing, because if they are day 60, or if they are six plus. Let’s say they’re day seven. They’re seeing your webinar registration. They go to the webinar registration, but they don’t opt-in. This method, what it does is it bounces them back to the book offer because they were active on your website in less than five days.

What you want to do, is you want to make sure that this is always your prevalent offer. This is the main focus, the primary offer in your marketing funnel is this first offer. Then, this offer is in terms of priority is less. Obviously, like last week we talked you can only have one priority, but in terms of priority, from a marketing standpoint, this is of lesser priority, your second offer, than your first. It only makes sense, because people are the warmer they are, the more recently they watched a video, and the more recently they were on your website, it means the warmer they are. Your best offer should always be your first offer, your primary offer. Then, you can drip them to the next lesser priority offer.

You can continue down that path. They don’t opt-in for that, they’re going to bounce back to the book, and then they’re just going to go right back through the same sequence, which isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t need to be your priority.

Facebook Ads Manager

The magic of this is all done inside of your Facebook ad manager. Inside the ad manager, we’re going to go to our audiences. If you open up your business tools, you’re going to go to audiences. Now in audiences, you see that I have two different groups here. I have video views, 15 seconds for five days. Now, if you look at the drawing here, in less than five days, we’re going to be promoting a book offer. Right here, video views, anybody who has watched more than 15 seconds of a video view, and these are the videos that we have so far, there are 13, 14, 17 total videos in here.

In the past five days, and then we give them an audience name. Now, we’re going to have, that is going to be a special ad inside of the ad segment itself. The ad’s set, we’re going to specifically target that audience, the five, the 15 seconds, five days audience, and then also the website traffic five days audience now. Now, and then, that’s the only people we’re going to target. If they’ve been to the website and watched a video in the last 15 seconds, then they are going to see that first ad.

Now, if you look down here a little bit, we have another. We have website visitors, 30 days. And then, we have video views, 15 seconds. These are our two groups of folks who are plus six days. If we look back at our little sequence, here we go. If we look back here, those two audiences are our website traffic that is plus six days. And our 15 seconds of video that is plus six days.

Now, once you have those audiences set up, and like I said, when you have small audiences, it makes all the difference in the world. But if we go into, we’re going to go back here, and then I’m going to show you how this is all set up. We’re going to go into the book offer. All right. Okay, here we go. Five to 30 days, we got a webinar registration. Zero to five days, we got ebook traffic. Check this out.

If we open up the ad set, we’re going to go in here and look at how this is set up. We have a warm, zero to five days, ebook sales, traffic. And this is a dynamic creative audience for both males and females. Now, if you scroll down, you see that the website traffic, the only custom audiences that we’re marketing to, we have website traffic five days, and video views, 15 seconds, five days. Those are the only two segments that this ad is going to. And then, everything else is pretty well open. Age 25 to 54, because that’s the market, both genders, and then, we have the United States. Demographics, this is all retargeted. If they’ve been to the website or watched more than 15 seconds of a video in the last five days, then they see the ebook offer.

Now, where it gets tricky. Not even tricky, but just the one little hack. The one little hack is here. If we open up this warm on this warm, not five days, we have warm five to 30 days, webinar registration, and this is a conversion campaign. This is a not five days, creative, dynamic, creative ad. What we’re doing is, we’re including website visitors who are more than six days. Six days. We’re including all website visitors. If you’ve been to the website in the last 180 days, or if you’ve been to the website in the last 30 days, or if you have watched 15 seconds or more of a Facebook video, then you see these Facebook ads. But we’re excluding. Excluding. This is the big gotcha. We’re excluding website traffic five days, and video views, 15 seconds, five days.

We’re taking everybody who’s been to the website, and then we’re cutting off the five-day people. Only six-plus days are seeing this webinar ad. It ends up working out, really, really nice. It’s dropped the conversion cost because when you retarget two offers, two different Facebook ad to the same group of people, then the ads compete with each other. Because of Facebook ad, the algorithm is always trying to figure out how to make the most money using the parameters that you set for the people in your audience.

If you have two different ad campaigns that are going to the same audience, it’s going to default to the one that makes it more money.

In this case, we were doing a conversion campaign and a clicks campaign. It was defaulting to the clicks campaign, which meant that we needed to split up the audiences, and to do that, to split up those audiences from just a very easy way of doing it was to then drop days in.

Five days, or six-plus days, we can always do it again. We could do, if you’ve been to the websites, in the last 10 days, then you see the webinar. Or, if you’ve been plus 11, then maybe you see a different offer. Maybe you see a coaching call or something. There are lots of other, really, really creative ways that we can get into doing this staged Facebook ad retargeting.

I just really wanted to go through all of this stuff, talk through it in a better way, I think. One of the reasons I do these videos is so I can kind of point down the road.  Say, “Yeah, this video explains it better than I just did.” And I’m kind of hoping that this video did it. I’ve tried explaining this to probably four or five clients in the last four or five months, and we’ve been doing it a long time, and every single time, it’s like, well, I kind of get it, but I don’t. This, I think, is a little bit better way to describe it.

For Questions and Guide

For those of you who have any questions about this, or you would like to go through, put together some Facebook ad, put together an action plan for your ads, for your funnel, for your marketing automation, just go ahead and go to doneforyou.com/start, and fill out the little application. It’s going to direct you to a calendar that you can set up a call with my team and me, and if you have any questions at all, just drop them in the comments below this. I always take a look at them, so I’m keeping track as we go. Tomorrow, we’re going to finish up marketing automation week.

This was kind of a big little big hack. That didn’t quite email, wasn’t quite a text. But this will get you results, especially if you have small budgets and small audiences.

The post Ways In Setting Up 2-Stage Facebook Ads appeared first on Done For You.

Automated, sequential email messages are a great way to describe drip campaigns in plain English.

Often referred to as drip campaigns but also known by other names – automated email campaigns, drip marketing automation, email automation, lifecycle emails, autoresponders, and sometimes marketing automation – the idea is the same…

Drip campaigns are a sequence of marketing email messages that are sent out automatically on a preset schedule.

Picture this – one email will be sent out as soon as a new subscriber joins your list, another will go out two days later featuring your services, and one more will go out four days later asking people what they’re struggling with. That would be a time-based sequence.

The emails in the drip campaign can be triggered by actions the subscriber has performed or some behavior they have demonstrated on your website. For example, an effort is when a link in your email is clicked; A behavioral trigger can be a visit to a particular web page or a purchase.

NOTE: If you'd like to forgo the rest of this guide and skip right to the fun part of getting it set up, make sure to set up an Action Plan call with us through the Done For You Email Marketing page...  We'll get you dialed in quickly :0)

Table of contents

In this complete guide to drip campaigns and email automation, we're going to discuss the following:

Chapter 1: Why Your Marketing Needs Drip Campaigns
Chapter 2: Infographic: Drip campaign basics
Chapter 3: How is email marketing different from drip campaigns?
Chapter 4: When should you use a drip campaign? Drip use cases.
Chapter 5: Who runs drip email campaigns?
Chapter 6: How to create effective email drip campaigns
Chapter 7: Best drip campaign examples
Chapter 8: 7 Lessons Learned from high-performance Drip Campaigns
Chapter 9: Where drip campaigns go off the rails
Chapter 10: The tools you need for drip marketing
Chapter 11: How to measure drip campaign results
Video Transcript: Quick Strategies For Drip Marketing Automation

Why you need drip marketing automation campaigns

Combining marketing automation with drip campaigns can generate 20% more sales opportunities.

Every organization needs to run drip campaigns to reap the following benefits:

Be relevant with timely communication

With drip campaigns, you can deliver relevant information precisely when your users need it.

The information delivered through drip email sequences is activated by how a user engages with your brand and web assets and where they reside in the sales cycle.

Nurture leads until they are sales-ready

Drip marketing nurtures warm leads until they are sales-ready.

Drip campaigns can provide your business development team with an ongoing supply of prospects ready to close, making the most of marketing and sales effectiveness.

Work smarter with marketing automation.

Drip campaigns allow you to put tedious parts of the sales process on auto-pilot. Drip campaigns inform and nurture your business leads without you lifting a finger. This way, you can spend less time pitching your services and more time closing clients.

Infographic: Drip campaign basics

Want a closer look at drip marketing automation? Pardot has put together the infographic below to present the basics of what you can do with automated email campaigns. Click on the drip campaign infographic to zoom in.

Back to the table of contents.

How is email marketing different from drip campaigns?

You might be wondering how email marketing is different from drip email campaigns. Watch the video below, which explains where the two terms intersect and how they follow different paths.

When should you use drip campaign automation and drip campaign software?

Drip marketing is an umbrella that covers several different marketing techniques. But the end goal remains the same: keep users immersed in your product.

Let's look at a few use cases where creating an automated drip campaign may help you deliver better information to targeted viewers and convert them into paying customers. You might want to try some of these drip marketing examples with your subscribers, or perhaps these use cases will spark your imagination for other approaches to marketing your products using drip campaigns.

Nurture leads

You can't take every user by the hand through their buyer's journey, but drip email campaigns can do that difficult task for you. You can use welcome, onboarding, or abandoned cart autoresponder sequences to nurture your leads and prepare them to become paying customers.

Welcome

You could use a welcome email sequence to automatically send a new list of subscribers some of your most popular blog posts. Or, if you get a new free trial signup for your SaaS product, you could try a drip showcasing an example of how other customers use your product features.

Onboarding

Pageviews and free trial users are good, but ultimately, you need your users to purchase something from your business. That's where an onboarding drip campaign would come in handy: combined with welcome campaigns and newsletters, onboarding emails provide targeted messages to the customer, which are small wins for your business.

Abandoned carts

You designed compelling newsletters, offered flash sales, and tempted your user to click the "add to cart" button. But then, the user leaves empty-handed. Shopping cart abandonment can be a plague for an e-shop. But with a drip campaign to recover abandoned carts, you can reengage those customers and drive them back to complete the purchase.

Renewals

Whether your user renewed their membership or the subscription is about to end, you can leverage drip campaigns to captivate subscribers. For automatic renewals, you might use an autoresponder that sends users a notification that their account is about to be charged.

However, you need to test the effectiveness of this because, in some cases, it might result in people canceling their account before their subscription is extended.

If your subscriptions don't auto-renew, create your drip campaign with a clear CTA, asking users to commit to your service for another term or year.

Engagement

The math is quite simple: the more often someone interacts with your website, the more likely they are to become a paying customer.

Engagement email sequences are a drip campaign that encourages the recipient to return to your site and browse, triggered either by some on-page activity or complete inactivity.

Social networks are a fantastic example of using activity-based triggers for drip campaigns. If somebody on Twitter mentions you in their tweet, Twitter can send an alert-style email, motivating you to visit Twitter, see the tweet, and respond.

Courses

Putting together a drip campaign to deliver a multi-part online course is a way to repackage old content or promote new content, and it helps you attract more targeted subscribers. Plus, once the user receives the last email, they know your product and are ready to move deeper into your funnel.

Back to the table of contents.

Who runs drip email campaigns?

Bloggers

Promote a new freebie (ebook, checklist, or free course), automatically share your recent blog posts, and engage your audience in pre-launch campaigns.

Course sellers

Grow your list by dripping free email courses to new signups, segmenting your subscribers into interest groups, and send highly personalized emails to increase course sales. Build a referral program, so every student can refer their friends and earn a gift.

SaaS businesses

Warm up your leads and nurture them until they leave their free trial and become paying customers. Create an onboarding sequence to showcase your product features to new users. Reduce churn by timely managing subscription renewals.

Realtors

Stay ahead of the competition and follow up on your prospects effectively. Drip campaigns can do the work for you, as well as take care of most recurring tasks. The sky's the limit. Drip campaigns can nurture your real estate leads.

Insurance brokers

Any solopreneur or freelancer can deploy drip marketing campaigns and automation to their benefit. Take insurance brokers, for example. They need to constantly be in touch with different segments of their audience, i.e., cold leads, warm leads, customers, health plan customers home insurance customers, and so on.

Fashion industry

Set up drip campaigns to send out flash sales offers, happy birthday emails, customer satisfaction surveys, abandoned cart drip campaigns... you name it!

Beauty professionals

Track and automatically reward your most loyal buyers, use upsell and cross-sell to increase your revenue, or send personalized product recommendations based on behavioral patterns or the location of your customers.

Ecommerce

Cart abandonment drip campaigns, product replenishment drips, VIP customer reward campaigns, and upselling/cross-selling sequences are the most typical drip email examples in eCommerce.

Online entrepreneurs/affiliate marketers

There are unlimited ways to use drip marketing automation to grow your business. With drip campaigns, you can achieve any of the goals mentioned here, plus create any customized campaign, like promoting an affiliate program to grow your business even further.

If you are an affiliate marketer, you'll be interested to read this post about high-conversion affiliate marketing email sequences.

Back to the table of contents.

How to create successful drip campaigns

1. Determine your goal

If you have no idea what you intend to achieve, how can you even accomplish it? You have to choose whether to warm up your leads, get them to purchase, or take other action that serves your marketing goals. When describing your plan, you need to be specific if you want to be able to measure it.

2. Optimize your messages

Simply having a drip campaign in place won't bring you much. The information in these emails must be excellent. If you send poor content, the outcome will be lousy. If your drip campaign doesn't add value to the email recipients, it can harm your marketing because people will unsubscribe or even report you for spam.

Keep the emails short (up to 250 words), or your list won't bother to read them. Know that most of your customers are not exactly reading your newsletter instead, they are scanning through the content, so make your emails scannable.

3. Focus on your CTAs

When you start developing content for the drip campaign, think about this: What is it that my leads need to make a decision or take action? For example, suppose your objective is to activate more users of your SaaS. In that case, you might want to create an email drip campaign that describes the best functionality of your drip campaign software and shows success stories of how other people used it and got results.

On the other hand, you should aim to enhance people's confidence in your brand by building credibility - that is, if your objective is to sell them your products and services. You should be able to do this by educating them, addressing their concerns (i.e., removing friction), and presenting proof of how your product helps them materialize their aspirations.

4. Set frequency and timing

When it comes to the optimal email sending times, check your email marketing platform stats to see if any particular times of day generated more opens. About frequency, there is no one-size-fits-all guideline here. Typically, you should send emails more often when someone is new to your list and slow down as they go further down your funnel. You could start with sending emails once a day, then every couple of days, then once a week, and finally once every two weeks or so.

Of course, there are exceptions. Someone might be on your list for a long time, but suddenly, they express their purchase intent by visiting your e-shop and by abandoning a product in their cart. In this case, it makes sense to email them daily to recover the cart while the user is still warm.

Or you might segment old subscribers by having them sign up for a new ebook or whitepaper. Then, you could also email them frequently to educate them more on the particular subject and entice them to opt-in for one of your relevant offers.

5. Segment your lists

So, a way to optimize your drip campaigns, especially if your list has more than 600-700 subscribers, is to create segments. With segmenting, you can send different parallel campaigns but tailor them to specific groups of subscribers.

For example, you can design two separate landing pages for two different list segments. Now, when people subscribe to your list on one of those two pages, you'll be able to know what interests them more and add them to the better-suited email drip campaign.

6. Always measure performance

This goes for all your marketing efforts. You must measure the results to find and fix bottlenecks and optimize your marketing spend. With email marketing come basic KPIs like open rate and click-through rate. Besides those, we suggest that you measure the revenue your campaigns generate. The impact on your bottom line is all that matters. Set up UTM links within your drip campaign emails so you can track the complete funnel and identify the source of a sale.

Now, let’s move on to some drip campaign examples so you can get inspiration and ideas for your next drip campaign.

Back to the table of contents.

Best drip campaign examples

1. Example of an onboarding drip campaign

When someone turns into a buyer, you can schedule a series of email messages to encourage them to use your product and be satisfied. Here is an example of an email drip campaign for customer onboarding:

Email 1: Encourage customers to finish setting up their new accounts. Take them through the basic steps they need to take to start using your product. If the account is fully set up automatically, use the first onboarding email to welcome new customers and let them know you are available for a demo.

Email 2: Show them your training material and user guides. Give them links to resources, videos, your knowledge base, community forums, or FAQs. Encourage them to contact support if they need extra help.

Email 3: Point new customers to your blog, ebooks, or relevant beginner resources. Educate them, show them best practices, and anything else that will help them move forward and succeed. Show them that their success is your success.

2. Welcome email drip

The most basic drip that you need to have is the welcome email sequence. This is the first sequence activated after a new subscriber has joined your list. This is often the first impression people will get from your brand.

So, the welcome email is super important. Welcome email drips also serve to increase your bottom line. According to Experian, they generate 3x more revenue than other types of emails.

Have a look at this illustration of a welcome email from Yoga Pod. It offers a brief greeting, a vibrant video with real customers, links to explore the class schedule, and details about the business location.

SmartrMail also did a comprehensive review of the welcome drip series from Barnes & Noble. This drip campaign consists of an initial welcome message, then an email with a 15% off coupon, then recommended products, followed by an email summarizing the value of Barnes & Noble, and finally, an email informing customers about their mobile app. After this email series come the regular newsletters.

The value of this complete drip campaign example is that it gives users a thorough look at the Barnes & Noble brand and highlights the brick-and-mortar locations of the stores.

3. Retain current customers' drip example

There's a perfect chance that you will want to return the favor when somebody does something nice for you or gives you something. This natural urge to even the scales is called the reciprocity effect. Reciprocity can have a significant impact on customer advocacy, loyalty, and retention.

For instance, one of the top ways to keep current clients is to help them obtain more value from their investment in your product. You can deploy an automated drip campaign to share helpful content about market trends influencing their situation, inspiration, ideas and ways to use your product, and other practical resources to keep them engaged with your product and brand.

Look at this use case: After closing the sale, Contently's business development team sends customers regular emails sharing popular blog posts that bring practical value.

4. Drip campaign example to acquire referrals

About 83% of happy customers are more than willing to transform into your advocates.

The Yesware sales team sends out automated email campaigns to follow up with active customers two months after they join. When your team makes sure customers are satisfied and are seeing the value of the product and your support, it becomes easier to get upsell and referral opportunities.

In this example, the dripped sequence of messages looks like this:

Forty-five days post-close: The sales team sends the buyer a reminder email to confirm that they are satisfied and doing well. Then, they schedule a two-part email campaign to send to the client, with the first of the two emails going out that day.

Sixty days post-close: Email #2 is automatically delivered, wishing the client a happy two months. Yesware is asking if they know of any other organizations that would potentially benefit from Yesware's products.

5. Offer and promotion drips

Anything like offers, sales, promotions, other in-store campaigns, or seasonal campaigns can be added to a dripped series to automate the workflow. Such a drip campaign could include promo codes, discounts, limited-time offers, freebies, VIP access, or anything else you may use to drive a purchase.

You've got a 24-hour coupon! Claim this offer before it expires! These are great drip campaign examples of the subject lines of a promo email.

Moreover, customer milestones make fantastic reasons to present a one-time offer to your clients. Plus, contacting them as they progress lets you make your communication more personal. Email drip campaign ideas are when you send them a birthday email or celebrate their anniversary of becoming a customer.

Here's how Nike makes the most out of email drip campaigns to put birthday emails on auto-pilot:

So, instead of sending a primary "happy birthday" email, Nike rewards customers with a unique coupon code for a 25% discount on a product. It makes sense that you need to provide value, not just wish your customers happy birthday for the sake of it.

Back to the table of contents.

Lessons learned from high-performance drip campaigns

Neil Patel has published a fascinating blog post on seven lessons learned from top-performing drip email campaigns.

He studied seven branded drips that achieved their goals and presented the results in this article. In brief, here's what the best practices are:

1. Highlight the next step

Most free trials (~50%) don’t turn into paying users. People need guidance on what to do next, especially if they haven’t seen that ‘first win’ yet.

Neil gives the example of how Time Etc., a virtual assistant service, sends an early task or feature highlight to new free trials to activate them. The goal is to prompt people with a specific next step.

2. Use psychology and personalization

Neil uses drip email examples from different brands to demonstrate how psychological triggers (like urgency and scarcity) and personalization elements (e.g., location-based email campaigns) can generate more sales.

The lesson learned is that more sophisticated drips can increase your bottom line.

3. Reduce cart abandonment

While as many as 67% of potential e-shop customers might abandon a loaded cart, 81% of people looking to book a hotel or trip might also bounce.

In that article, there’s an example of how Expedia sends behavioral, event-based emails shortly after the user abandons the search for hotels in specific locations.

The moral of the story is that you can build a winning drip campaign when aligning what a web visitor was doing on your site with the email subject line. This aligns with what they were thinking about and will get their attention.

4. Start slow and escalate

Neil also teaches, when he brings up the example of one of Ramit Sethi’s campaigns, that you can fork a drip campaign to segment users according to their behavior (e.g., clicks) and use these segments to transition seamlessly from mentioning pain points to offering a solution.

5. Reduce churn proactively

A churn rate of 5-7% might be typical and acceptable, but anything more excellent can quickly send you out of business.

To cater to that proactively, you can utilize email drips that will be triggered at some points where you sense or predict churn. You can avoid churn by proactively responding to it.

6. Set up personalized notifications

Another drip campaign lesson is learned when Neil mentions how Mint uses email notifications to help its users recognize and understand their difficult situation and then explains how Mint can help.

One example of how Mint does that is by tracking personalized historical averages and then sending notifications or alerts when aberrations appear.

7. Timely and stylish communication

Finally, a lesson learned from op performing drip email campaigns is that contacting new user within a short time after they’ve signed up can help to activate them. The communication style and content, as well as personalization elements, are essential to keep your users coming back to your site and keep them engaged with your brand.

There’s a pattern among all drip campaigns that have a significant impact on their success. Personalization. Keep in mind that the more you can personalize your drip campaigns (using name, location, job title, stage of the customer journey, or anything like that), the better results you will get.

Back to the table of contents.

Where drip campaigns go off the rails

For every effective drip campaign, dozens crash and burn. But what makes a campaign go off the rails? These are some of the most frequent missteps with drip marketing:

Don't: Send too much email

A subscriber's level of engagement and stage of their journey can give you a hint about the ideal frequency of your emails. As we discussed, it's normal to contact the new lead every day soon after they've subscribed to your brand's mailing list. But when the user is mature, maybe once a week or every two weeks is best.

Don't: Email your list more than once a day.

Some marketers would say that mailing more than once a day can increase engagement. According to our experience, that's not true. It's a bad idea. It can come off as too salesy or aggressive, even intrusive, if you mail people more than once a day. They might think you are too desperate to get their attention - and that's not good.

As time goes by, you can look at your drip campaign stats and see what time of the day brings the highest open rates. That's the best way to do it, instead of sending a lot of emails to make sure the subscriber opens at least once.

Don't Resend old content.

Repurposing content for publishing on different media is a good content marketing strategy. But sending the same old content repeatedly to the same people will not go unnoticed.

Your audience will soon realize they are part of a robotic drip campaign that has lost the human touch. They will also think that your company has nothing new to say to them.
Make sure your drip email content is delivered once to every customer or lead, or else it will have the opposite effect.

Don't: Leave your sales staff in the dark.

In most companies, there is a gap to bridge between marketing and sales. What you need to do is use account-based marketing (ABM). ABM will help your business align sales and marketing efforts so that you derive the maximum benefit. If your marketing team launches a drip campaign but neglects to loop in your sales team, then prospects will wind up receiving both a drip campaign and a direct call the same day. This wouldn't be the end of the world, but can be confusing to receive mixed messages.

Establish regular sales and marketing meetings to discuss outbound strategies and campaigns.

Back to the table of contents.

Email Drip Campaign Software

Axis One: Convert customers with email marketing and automation

Axis One helps you contact and convert more customers by building email marketing campaigns that work. From sending broadcast messages to deploying triggered autoresponder sequences, all is done for you in Axis.

With this tool, you can achieve the ultimate goal of every business: get as many conversions as possible from the prospects that visit your website.

Watch the video below to learn how simple it is to use Axis and how it stacks up against competitive email marketing tools.

Some of the benefits you can reap from Axis include:

• Grow your email marketing list the simple way
• Send one-off broadcasts, i.e., email blasts
• Automate new subscriber onboarding with autoresponder sequences
• Create triggered email sequences that will automate your communications
• Effortlessly stay in touch with your past customers
• Reengage your list and convert more subscribers into customers.

All these reasons make it a worthy investment for your business. After all, you need to do email marketing if you want to grow your business. There is nothing quite like reaching your customers’ inbox when we talk about conversions!

Other Drip Email Software

There are dozens of tools available for managing your emails and crafting an effective drip campaign -- Drip, MailChimp, and Active Campaign are some of the most popular ones. But each of those marketing automation tools has a different set of features, limitations, and price points, so you'll want to review them thoroughly before committing.

Scripting: Autoresponder engine with email swipes and DFY scripts

Scriptly provides professionally written scripts that you can use as they are or customize to suit your business better. These scripts or email swipes will help you write high-converting sales copy immediately, even if you’ve never written a line of sales copy before.

As a Scriptly user, you’ll get instant access to:

• Autoresponder engine – This is a set of dozens of email sequences that are completely done for you. Anything from affiliate autoresponder sequences to webinar sequences is there.
• Page builder – Create any customizable landing page. All templates are tested and proven to convert to paid traffic.
• Customer avatars – There is no need for a separate tool to define different customer avatars to customize your marketing material to address other target groups. We have it all covered in Scriptly.
• VSL creator – Video sales letters can be easily created using Scriptly’s well-structured templates. For every part of the sales letter script, you can choose the sales copy that resonates with your audience.
• Webinar creator – Create your next webinar in minutes, not hours, with this unique fill-in-the-blank formula. The webinar creator is a handy tool that will help you get past writer’s block instantly.

Statly: Understand marketing data to improve sales performance.

If you want to succeed in drip marketing automation, you must be able to track and analyze data. See, you may be successful at attracting tons of targeted website traffic. But what if only 2% of those visitors convert, while the rest remain anonymous? Don’t you want a way to identify who they are, track their behavior, and keep them coming back? Of course you do.

How are users acting when they visit your website? In today’s competitive times, obtaining meaningful data is an integral part of a successful marketing plan.

This is where Statly comes into the picture. As the complete tool that helps you in real-time tracking of users leveraging the sales funnel strategy, it can immensely help your chances of converting traffic into sales. Statly enables you to obtain meaningful data to make the right business decisions.

But how does Statly work? Statly gives you a comprehensive idea of how your sales funnels are converting. It helps you spot opportunities and the parts of your funnels that need to be improved. Watch this video to learn more about what our patent-pending tool can do for your business.

Here are some of the salient features of the tool:

• Real-time website analytics
• Conversion tracking through sales funnels
• Tracking conversion opportunities
• Tracking sales and user behavior on the website

If WordPress powers your site, then all you need to do is install the latest version of our plugin to get started with Statly’s advanced analytics and sales funnel tracking. Click here to sign up for a free Statly trial!

With Statly in your arsenal, you can better optimize your automated marketing campaigns and the buyer’s journey so you entice more web visitors to convert into paying customers. Sitting in front of a load of data wouldn’t do any good, would it? But with Statly by your side, all these previously intimidating numbers will finally make sense.

Back to the table of contents.

How to measure drip campaign results

As with all business endeavors, establishing a set of metrics you will use to track the success of your drip campaigns is crucial to making the right decisions. So, what's the best way to keep track of how users are engaging with your content?

One of the best strategies to accurately track sources of traffic (and the funnel that follows) involves UTM codes (alternatively called URL parameters) -- small text strings that come at the end of a URL. UTM codes don't affect the destination. They add tags to the URL so you know where the visitor came from.

UTM

UTMs track web browsing via cookies in Google Analytics and other analytics suites. Using UTM tags, Google Analytics can show you exactly where a user has been before they visited your site and whether or not they've been to your website before, amongst other information.

When you use UTMs in your drip campaigns, you can track visitors coming from each email message that is part of your drip.

Google has built a custom URL builder that you can use to create custom UTMs.

The beginning of a UTM code is a question mark. At the end of a URL. Here's an example:

https://doneforyou.com/?utm_source=dfyblog&utm_medium=drip-campaigns-post

Whether you use the part after the question mark or not, the user will land on the same page. But if the URL is tagged, you'll know where that user came from.

A lot of the time, if you're using an app to manage your drip campaigns, the app will automatically tag URLs. So, you need to set up the tagging pattern once, and your app will do the rest for every newsletter you send.

Now, here are some vital drip campaign metrics or KPIs you need to measure regularly.

Depending on the sort of drip campaign software you are using, you should be able to find most of these metrics on your dashboard. For the rest, simple calculations would give you what you need.

1. Open Rate

Open rate shows the percentage of your email recipients who opened your message. This is an essential metric to evaluate because your email drips won't do much unless your list subscribers are clicking to open your emails. Opening an email means reading it in most cases.

How to calculate open rate: Total Opens / Total Emails Delivered

2. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of your emails that weren't delivered to your subscribers' inbox. There might be a lot of reasons for bounces, but the most common one is that the email address does not exist.

How to calculate bounce rate: Total Bounces / Total Emails Sent

3. Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate is the percentage of clicks on a link inside your email over the total number of emails delivered. Typically, getting your list members to click on a link within your email message will be the main objective of your drip campaign because clicking a link is equal to taking action.

How to calculate click-through rate: Total Clicks / Total Emails Delivered

4. Unsubscribe Rate

The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of people who unsubscribe following an email blast. If you send 1,000 emails and ten people click on the "unsubscribe" link inside your email, then the unsubscribe rate is 1%.

How to calculate unsubscribe rate: Total Unsubscribes / Total Emails Delivered

5. Conversion Rate

It's all about conversions. So, the conversion rate is the percentage of the people on your list who completed an action (e.g. filling out a form or purchasing a product) after receiving your email.

As explained before, you will need to have UTM links in place to track the whole funnel from click to purchase. Click the link to read more about how to keep track of the complete customer journey.

How to calculate conversion rate: Total Conversions / Total Emails Delivered

6. Drip Campaign ROI

Your campaign's Return On Investment is the overall return on your money spent on the email drip campaign.

How to calculate drip campaign ROI: ($ Sales-- $ Invested)/ $ Invested

7. List Growth Rate

This is a generic measure of how good you are doing growing your email list. List growth rate is the rate at which the number of people on your list has grown over a specified period of time.

How to calculate list growth rate: New Subscribes-(Unsubscribes + Complaints) / Total Subscribers (over a period of time, e.g. the last month).

So, that was it! The Complete Guide To Drip Campaigns And Email Automation.

We hope we did a good job explaining what drip campaigns are and how marketing automation works towards optimizing your processes and increasing your revenue.

Email drips or email automation or marketing automation, whatever you call it, is here to stay; jump on the bandwagon to reap the benefits of automated lead generation, lead nurturing on auto-pilot and sales conversion 24/7 using email drips. Click here to go back to the top of the article.

Video Transcript: Quick Strategies For Drip Marketing Automation

Today we're going to be talking about drip marketing automation.

This is going to date me a little bit but back when I first got into internet marketing 14 years ago, but I remember listening to an audio program from this guy named Eben Pagan and Frank Kern. They were talking about the miracle of email marketing in building your email list, and this thing called an email autoresponder.

The magic of an email autoresponder

This email autoresponder, basically somebody will go to a landing page, they'd fill in an opt in form for a lead magnet or a freebie of some kind, a bribe, and this autoresponder would send them email, after email, after email, after email. Day one it would send an email, day two it would send an email, day three it would send an email. So, that was this autoresponder. The big company back then was a company called AWeber, and they're still around. They're still actually a great drip campaign software. They're also in Pennsylvania here, but AWeber created this autoresponder so that an assistant, or you, or whoever wouldn't have to actually email your list every single day based on when somebody signed up. So day one, the email goes out. Day two, the email goes out. Day three, the email goes out.

So, everybody is happy and everybody is being marketing to automatically. It's the beauty and the magic of technology. Now fast forward to today, and that autoresponder has since been renamed a drip email sequence or drip marketing.

The evolution: drip marketing automation

So, drip marketing is same thing as an autoresponder. Email one goes out, email two drips out the next day. Third email drips out the next day. Fourth email drips out the next day. Your membership content is dripped out week, after week, after week. So, this drip is now basically what the terminology is calling automation or autoresponders. Now, when we get to drip marketing automation really, the automation piece just adds another layer on top of it. So, the automation piece adds a trigger. So, now you have this email, this drip marketing sequence that is set to go out. Email one, two, three, four. It's set to go out.

Now the automation piece adds in a trigger, and the trigger might be a tag is added to a contact record. This person visited a landing page. This form was filled out. This webinar was attended. This survey result was submitted. So, there's lots of triggers that will fire that drip marketing automation, and that's where the magic all comes together. So, it's the trigger. When we build sales funnels for our clients, we will go in and we will set up a bunch of drip marketing already because we already know how people are going to be moving through the sales funnel.

Ideas for drip email examples

Some of them, the biggest, most common drip email examples are we will set up a lead magnet fulfillment sequence. So when somebody downloads a lead magnet, then they go into this fulfillment sequence. The fulfillment sequence drips out, day one, drips out the link, the download link that they can get the report. Day two, maybe it drips out the social media profiles for our client. Day three, what we're trying to do is we're trying to bond them. It's called an indoctrination sequence. So day two it might be social media profiles, day three, "Hey, this is what we do." Day four might be the about page of day five is, "This is why we do what we do." So, it's basically telling the story of our client.

Webinar Promo Campaign

Another example of a drip marketing automation campaign that we have, that we put together for our clients, would be a webinar promo campaign. It's a four email sequence that promotes a webinar, or a webinar replay sequence, which is a six email sequence that we use to promote the webinar replay. Or, a strategy session promo sequence. So, these we already have all loaded up inside whatever CRM our client is going to be using, because we know that these emails are going to be used.

We're going to be increasing website traffic fast through a sales funnel. Now we have to figure out what triggers.

1. automation piece of the drip marketing automation
2. triggers are going to fire
3. forms are going to be figured out
4. pages are going to be visited
5. webinars are going to be attended
6. if that person signs up for the webinar and doesn't attend, what happens?

All of those triggers then put people in different drip marketing campaigns.

It layers all of that complexity in on top of itself. So, that's some great drip marketing examples. Ways that you can engage your folks through your sales funnel. Another thing is an affiliate sequence, so finding three, or four, or five, or eight affiliate products in your space that you can promote and get paid commission. Another drip marketing example would be looking at all of your blog posts over the last six months and then taking your best ones, putting it all together into an autoresponder, and then letting your prospects go through it on autopilot. So that they're bonding with you and engaging with your company without you actually having to do something.

Deploying the best drip campaigns now in terms of the best drip campaigns, there are so many examples.

Many different ones to use. My absolute favorite are Axis One, Infusionsoft, Ontraport, and ActiveCampaign. We have clients using all of them. Infusionsoft, a little bit bulky. It's Keap now but like I said, I've been doing this a long time. So, it will always be Infusionsoft to me. Ontraport is one that we use personally for our stuff. We use Axis One personally for our stuff, and then we also use ActiveCampaign for a bunch of clients. ActiveCampaign, brilliantly awesome drip campaign software however, it doesn't let you do much from a sales pipeline standpoint. It doesn't let you do much from an API tie in standpoint, so it's one of the reasons why we choose the other three unless our client is just looking for drip marketing automation, that's it.

What is an excellent open rate in an email marketing drip campaign?

That's an interesting question because when somebody is brand new to you, your open rate is going to be high. So if somebody signs up for a lead magnet, then that first email that they're going to get is going to be an open rate of 50%, 60%, 70%, even if it's not double opt-in. Then from there, it's going to go down. It might go down to 20%, 30% for the next couple of emails. Once you get to two weeks, three weeks, four weeks out then your open rate is going to be probably between 16% and 20% unless they purchased something.

If it's actually a buyer's list, then your open rate is going to be high for a really, really long time because these are buyers. As long as you didn't sell them some shit product, then they are going to love you for a while. Especially because you're emailing them. So, that is one of the biggest reasons why your buyer's list, the metric is at 16% more profitable than your prospect list, and that is why. So if you are looking for drip marketing automation software, then check out AxisOne.io. If you would like to talk about setting up marketing automation for your business, setting up your products, setting up services, and figuring out how best to use drip marketing automation for you or for your clients even, then go to DoneForYou.com/Start.

GSDdaily 078

This is episode number 78, how to set up drip campaigns and email automation. This week is marketing automation week. It was so funny, I actually talked to a guy yesterday named Clint who literally geeks out on marketing automation the same way that I do, which is, I mean, it's this magical thing, really.

When you have one piece of software that can talk to another piece of software and you can send all kinds of interesting things back and forth and really is, it's magical, because you can set the few things up so that if somebody hits a website, then you get a ping and slack. Nuts, right? You're able to literally see the life of your website, the life of your sales funnel, who is coming to your sales funnel, what their phone numbers are, what their email address is. Then you just pick up the phone if you want, if you want to be that aggressive from a business development standpoint.

It's pretty cool the way marketing automation or marketing technology or martech or adtech or whatever kind of fun little synonym you want to put into play. I mean, it's funny how all of those things come together to just give us something us marketing nerds can geek out on. That is pretty cool when you can reach out and have an impact in somebody's life, help them make some transformation, help them on their journey without having to do it personally, without having to do it one-on-one. That's the fun part.

How to Set Up Drip Campaigns and Email Automation

For those of you who don't know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn, the creator of doneforyou.com. We specialize in three things, setting up offers, helping build offers, helping build sales funnels, and then also setting up marketing automation and traffic. That is where we live. It's the thing that I have spent the last 14 years of my life perfecting. It's what my team does every single day.

This is called The Complete Guide To Drip Campaigns And Email Automation. We're going to talk through it. I'm going to show you some cool stuff.

Now for those of you, if you have marketing automation set up in your business, just say, "Yes," because marketing automation really is super, super important.

It started back a little while ago. I don't even know how long ago, 16 years ago, 14 years ago maybe. It started as just an email autoresponder. The simplest form of that is in Gmail. When you set up your vacation message, that is an autoresponder. When you get an email, then a vacation message triggers out, so it alerts the person that you were on vacation and you will not be getting back to them, and here's the number to call if you have an urgent problem. That's the simplest form of an autoresponder.

Sequence of Autoresponders

Now the next level higher is actually just a sequence of autoresponders. It's an autoresponder that's set up and sends multiple emails or multiple text messages or whatever. What this lets you do is it lets you predefine how people, what copy is going to be going out for somebody to read. You get to write five, seven, 10 emails once, and then on day one, that email goes out and somebody gets it. On day two, the next email goes out and somebody gets it. On day three, the next email goes out and somebody gets it.

It's powerful in simplicity because when you have a sales call, you can literally just put somebody on that list, and then they get the next 30 days' worth of email from you. You aren't writing any of it. You're not sending it one-on-one. It doesn't even enter your consciousness. The software just sends it and the person receiving it, usually knows it's an email autoresponder at this point, but they didn't use it. But even now seeing your name pop up in the inbox, seeing your image, your logo, the copy, the content, all of that stuff, it helps them know, like, and trust you. That is what good marketing automation does. That's what drip campaigns do.

Now drip campaigns, there is a sequence of marketing email messages that are sent out automatically on a preset schedule. That preset schedule can be daily, it can be every other day, it can be every three days, it can be at 7:00 a.m. every morning, it can be at 11:00 p.m. We try to send them out first thing in the morning. We try to make sure that they are going out a first thing or as first thing as possible.

Why you need drip marketing automation campaigns?

1. You want to be relevant with timely communication.

You don't ever want somebody to forget about you. Never, ever do you want them to forget about who you are, what you do, what you stand for. You want them to remember you, to remember your brands, remember doing business with you, to remember getting value from you. That is one of the biggest things, one of the biggest reasons why email automation is so important.

2. You want to nurture leads until they are sales-ready.

Not everybody who comes to your website is going to be ready to pull the trigger and buy something right now. You want to help them get there. That might mean a month's worth of warming up to you. It might mean days or hours worth of warming up to you. It might mean years of warming up to you. Marketing automation buys you that time so that you are able to market to that person without it involving considerable mind share from you.

If you have a list of 70,000 people, you might only actively be doing business from maybe a consulting standpoint, with 150 of them and at any time. But that also means that how many tens of thousands of them are engaged with you ready to become your next customer. It's all because of marketing automation.

It also lets you work smarter. It lets you work smarter with marketing automation. Think about it hard once and then you put it together and then you dial it in forever.

Infographic On Some Drip Campaign Basics

Now here's a little infographic on some drip campaign basics. I will let you explore that, some other little videos and stuff. Just some very simple sequences that you want to have in place when you start. You want to nurture your leads. That might involve podcasts and blog posts, other pieces of content that you create. You want to welcome them onto your list so that they are seeing what you do. They're being onboarded correctly. You want to make sure to send abandonment cart emails. Those abandonment cart emails, it's a marketing automation thing. If somebody hits your order form but then doesn't buy within an hour, you want to send them emails and say, "Hey, you really should go back and buy. Your discount is expiring. Your whatever is expiring," and hit them with a couple of emails there. That's marketing automation.

Anytime there's a renewal, so whether it's a monthly subscription renewal or an annual subscription renewal or whatever, and they're almost at their end. The subscription renewal is every 30 days usually. On day 27, day 28, you should email them a report or email them something nice.

Reengage them in your brand so that they feel value a couple of days before it's time for them to renew.

This encourages them to stick around longer. It's a very simple trigger. It's like if they sign up now, that first one goes out on day 27, the next one goes out 30 days after that, so it's day 57. The next one goes out 30 days after that, day 87. Let the software track it, let the software handle it. All you got to do is think about it. Just think about it hard for an hour and put a couple of blog posts together, put a couple of leads together, whatever, figure out what you're going to do for that person, and then let the software handle it.

Engagement is another one. If somebody needs to be reengaged, if they haven't done anything, you haven't seen them, heard from them, they haven't been to your website, they haven't opened an email in 90 days or more than you want to try to reengage them. If they don't reengage, you cut them from your email list because you want your sender score to stay high.

Drip Your Course Through Email

One of the cool things about drip automation is you can actually drip your course material out through email. Rather than go through the hard work of protecting your membership website, doing the login and the password and all that other stuff and protecting the pages and then worrying about some folks not being able to login or some password reset reminders or all of the customer support that goes with membership, which there is a lot, you can literally just automate in an email. They buy a course on day one, they get the first email. In that email, they get access to all the videos. On day eight, or seven, whatever, they get access to the next lesson, the next module, and that's all the videos.

You don't have to worry about a login. There are benefits to log in, of course, but there's also a lot of drawbacks to forcing a login. It just depends on how committed you are, if you have a support team. If your mind getting support reminders about passwords and stuff, it might be simpler just to kind of let it publicly available, but not have that URL show publicly, like in Google so you can have them de-index it.

Who runs drip email campaigns?

Bloggers, core sellers, SAS businesses, realtors, insurance brokers, fashion industry, beauty professionals, eCommerce online. Basically, if you have a business, you should be running email, you should be running marketing automation. That's really all there is to it.

Now we talked a lot about this yesterday, but basically, there's a couple of different things. Every marketing automation lives in this triggered category right up here, so in the center in the white there. Every automation has a trigger. That trigger activates the content. It activates the dripping material that's going out, it also activates any nurture sequences, but everything has a trigger. The automation doesn't start until the trigger fires. That trigger might be a URL visit, it might be a form fill out. It might be somebody logging into a CRM and manually adding a tag. Everything has to trigger in order for it to go out.

Determine your goals for your marketing automation

You want to make sure to determine your goals when it comes to marketing automation. That is a very kind of macro question. What do you want your prospects to do? If your goal is to have your prospects sign up for a strategy session with you, then everything, all roads lead to Rome. All roads need to end at that strategy session. It might be a call to action in your blog posts, it's going to be a PS, and all of your up on emails, all your webinars are going to pitch that strategy session. All marketing automation needs to be constructed around that idea of your goal is X so all automation is pointing to that one area.

That lets you optimize your marketing messages. It lets you know what your language is going to be like. It lets you focus on your CTS so that your calls to action there. All of that stuff, super, super important.

Frequency and Timing

Then your frequency and timing. We talked about this on Monday, but how often do you mail? How often do you set it up so that somebody gets something from you? Personally, we do usually daily. Daily emails go out and if somebody doesn't want an email, they just delete it. But most of our folks open and they at least open and read. Then there are the people who are engaged, click, go over and watch the live stream, go watch a video, go read a blog post, whatever.

Very little of what we do is a direct link to a sales video. Most of it is content-based, and that's by design. The people who want to buy something, end up buying something down the road. But a lot of that is based on the segments. Who are our more engaged buyers, who are the folks who just signed up, who signed up through a webinar, and maybe they're going through a replay sequence, or did they just find us by visiting the website and opting in for something?

Those segments tell us a lot about their intention. Inside your CRM, you want to set up groups. The group might be a tag, it might be a sequence, it might be a thing. But then that group is how you trigger the marketing automation itself.

Make sure to measure performance

Then you will always want to make sure to measure performance. What are your clicks, opens, or 90-day engaged numbers? How many people did you sign up for your list yesterday? How many emails did you send? All of that stuff is you can just set up a good dashboard for it. Most good CRMs have dashboards like that, how many emails were sent, how many people are on your list, all that stuff.

Onboarding Drip Campaign

Now, some campaign examples. There's an onboarding drip campaign. Email one might encourage customers to finish setting up their new accounts. Then email two shows them around your training material, maybe user guides give them some demo videos and stuff. Email three is going to point customers to a blog, maybe some updates, maybe some ways to keep track of what is new and exciting in your world.

That's an example of a nice onboarding campaign. A lot of these you can just kind of click-through. There's a welcome email drip sequence that we talk through a little bit. You can retain a customer or current customers. There is a drip campaign example to acquire referrals. That one I think is going to be really good for a lot of you. Email example, email two examples.

Offer and Promotion Drips

Then we have the offer and promotion drips. When we are trying to get somebody to buy or when we maybe do a flash sale or send out a discount code, then that stuff would be in there too.

Let's see. Use psychology and personalization, reduce cart abandonment where drip campaigns go off the rail. That's a funny picture. I didn't take that. That's funny, but it looks like something Sebastian would do. Let's see, resend old content. Don't leave your sales staff. Drip automation software and so on and so forth.

Marketing automation is something that you need to have set up in your business.

If you haven't already addressed marketing automation and you don't have a plan for it, you don't have the emails that are supposed to go out or even an idea of how those need to go, then definitely by all means set up an action plan call with us. Over at doneforyou.com/start, you can book a call with my team and me.

What we're going to do is we're going to look at the sales funnel because the sales funnel is really kind of the big piece. I mean, it's the big visual component of your process. You have your lead magnets, you have your webinar registration page, you have your webinar replay page. You have all of that stuff up live in public, but then you have this underlying piece, which is marketing automation.

Sales funnels don't work without marketing automation.

A sales funnel that is just pages is very simply just pages. It is a collection of pages that do certain things, but without marketing automation, none of the rest of it works. When somebody signs up for your lead magnet, then they will get no emails telling them what to do next. If somebody signs up for your webinar that is going live in 15 minutes, they will get no replay emails without marketing automation. If somebody goes to your webinar and books a sales call without marketing automation, nobody would get the reminders for that sales call. Marketing automation is the glue that really brings all of this together.

It's something you need to address in your business, whether the sales funnel is built, or whether you're thinking about building a sales funnel, all of it needs to be addressed through this lens of marketing automation. Click funnels are great. The lead pages are fine. Optimizepress is fine. So many of these page funnel-building software is completely awesome, but they're page builders. They don't have this underlying kind of marketing automation component. Click funnels to have something. Does it do what you need it to do? Maybe it's a great scenario, maybe it's not. You just need to know what you're looking for and what that end result is and then what the capabilities of the software are going to be in order to really put everything together.

For Questions and Guide

We will be happy to explore that with you, all the way from a done-for-you sales funnel, all the way to sending traffic to marketing automation. Just go to doneforyou.com/start, book, fill out the little form, book your call and we will get started there. If you have any questions at all about getting all of this stuff set up, just comment below and I'll make sure to kind of backfill on any comments and answers and we'll go from there.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I will see you tomorrow. I think tomorrow we're going to talk about SMS maybe. We're going to talk about different marketing automation. I think it's going to be SMS. Show you a couple of cool examples. And then Friday, we're going to wrap up the marketing automation week and I will talk to you soon. All right. Thanks. Bye.

The post How To Set-up Drip Campaigns And Email Automation appeared first on Done For You.

Introduction: Why You Need Marketing Automation Workflows

You're missing out on significant revenue opportunities if you're not leveraging marketing automation workflows to nurture leads and drive them down your sales funnel. With the integration of marketing automation in popular email marketing platforms like MailChimp, there's no excuse for letting your contacts sit idle.

Neethere'sting Automation Help? Click Here!

What Are Marketing Automation Workflows?

Understanding the Basics

Marketing automation workflows are the backbone of a revenue-generating strategy. They allow you to automate marketing tasks in a structured and systematic manner. For instance, when someone visits your website to fill out a form or seek more information, a marketing automation workflow ensures they receive timely and relevant emails.

The Role of Email Sequences

Upon capturing an email address through an opt-in form, the first step is usually to send a welcome email sequence. This sequence introduces your business, explaining who you are, what you do, and why the prospect should consider working with you.

Setting Up Your Marketing Automation Workflow

The Importance of Automated Welcome Emails

The key to a triumphant welcome email sequence is to introduce your business and set the stage for future interactions. With a well-designed marketing automation workflow, you don't have to send these emails manually; software like Adon'tRM can handle it.

Behind-the-Scenes Automation

The beauty of marketing automation is that it operates behind the scenes. All your marketing activities, including emails, text messages, and other tasks, are automatically triggered without you lifting a finger. This automation lets you focus on warming up your leads for future business.

Segmenting Leads in Your CRM

Why Segmentation Matters

Effective marketing automation workflows rely on segmentation. Depending on your prospects' actions—whether they fill out a survey, download a report, or engage with your emails—you can categorize them into different segments. This ensures they receive content most relevant to their interests and stage in the buyer's journey.

Sales Automation and Workflows

When running buyers ' campaigns, your marketing automation workflows must be tuned. For example, if you're promoting a Memorial Day sale, your entire market should be on that. You don't want to confuse your audience by sending unrelated don'ts during the promotion.

Nurturing Leads Through Automation

The Art of Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is another critical aspect of a robust marketing automation workflow. Through emails, you can introduce your team, showcase case studies, and explain why the prospect should do business with you.

Upsells and Cross-Sells in Marketing Automation

Maximizing Revenue Opportunities

Your marketing automation workflow should also include strategies for upsells and cross-sells. Automated emails can encourage customers to complete the purchase if they buy an E-book but skip the upsell for a video course.

Re-Engaging Your Email List

The Last Chance Offer

If a contact hasn't engaged with your content for 60 days or more, your meeting automation workflow should automatically send them a re-engagement email. This could be a special offer or a free report to recapture their interest.

Onboarding New Customers

Creating a Seamless Experience

The customer journey doesn't end with a purchase; it's just the beginning. Mardoesn'tautomation workflows can help you onboard new customers effectively. Automated emails can guide them through the following steps: scheduling a call, logging into a course, or watching video.

Conclusion: The Future is Automated

Marketing automation workflows are not just a 'nice-to-have'; they are essential for any business looking to scale. from sending welcome emails to segmenting your audience and nurturing leads, automation can handle it all, so if you haven't yet implemented a marketing automation workflow, haven't time to start.

The Power of Marketing Automation Workflows

Marketing automation workflows are the unsung heroes of modern digital marketing. They allow you to automate complex tasks and nurture your leads in a personalized way. In this guide, we'll explore seven essential types of marketing automating workflows that can transform your email marketing strategy.

1. The Welcome Email Sequence: Your First Impression

What is a Welcome Email Sequence?

The welcome email sequence is your first interaction with new email subscribers. It's a one-time workflow designed to introduce your brand. It's set the stage for future communications.

Why is it Important?

A well-crafted welcome email sequence ensures your new contacts don't forget about you shortly after signing up. It provides a brief orientation about your brand and can deepen the relationship immediately.

How Many Emails Should It Include?

Generally, a welcome email sequence doesn't need to be extensive. Three to four emails are insufficient to make a lasting impression.

2. Segmentation and Engagement: The Backbone of Marketing Automation Workflows

What is Segmentation?

Segmentation is one of the most crucial types of marketing automation workflows. It involves dividing your email list into smaller groups based on specific criteria like interests, behavior, or demographics.

Why is Segmentation Important?

You can send highly targeted content and promotions by segmenting your audience and increasing engagement and conversion rates.

Criteria for Segmentation

You can segment people based on various factors, such as:

• The lead magnet they've downloaded
• The landing page they visited
• The automated webinar that they attended
• Their engagement with your campaigns

Note: Surveys can also be a powerful tool for segmentation.

3. Sales Automation Workflow: Converting Leads into Customers

What is a Sales Automation Workflow?

This workflow is designed to convert your leads into paying customers. It's essentially a series of promotional emails aimed at instigating a purchase.

Targeting the Right Audience

The effectiveness of your sales automation workflow depends on how well you've segmented your list. It's best to send this workflow to highly engaged prospects, and It's a segmented list for maximum impact.

Triggering the Sales Sequence

The sales sequence is often triggered when a new subscriber shows interest in a particular type of content or lead magnet. Depending on their engagement, you can present them with various offers until they make a purchase.

4. Lead Nurturing: Building Trust and Credibility

What is Lead Nurturing?

Lead nurturing is a marketing automation workflow designed to move subscribers further down your sales funnel by providing valuable content over time.

Why is it Important?

Lead nurturing builds trust and credibility, making it easier to convert subscribers into customers when the time is right.

Crafting the Lead Nurturing Sequence

The sequence should be tailored to the stage of the buyer's journey your leads are in. By addressing their buyer's concerns and demonstrating the value of your offer, you increase the likelihood of conversion.

5. Cross-Sell/Up-Sell Workflow: Maximizing Customer Value

What is a Cross-Sell/Up-Sell Workflow?

Once a subscriber makes a purchase, this marketing automation workflow encourages them to buy more through cross-sells or up-sells.

Why is it Important?

Since the customer has already shown trust in your brand by purchasing, this is the perfect opportunity to increase their lifetime value.

How Does it Work?

This sequence targets only those who have made a previous purchase, offering additional products or services that complement their initial buy.

6. Re-Engagement Workflow: Winning Back Lost Subscribers

What is a Re-Engagement Workflow?

As your list grows, some subscribers will inevitably become disengaged. This workflow aims to rekindle their interest and get them to interact with your brand again.

Why is it Necessary?

Inactive subscribers can harm your email deliverability. A re-engagement workflow helps win them back or identify those who should be removed from your list.

Strategies for Re-Engagement

The workflow should include catchy and compelling offers to encourage subscribers to open your emails and engage with your content.

7. Onboarding Workflow: Ensuring Customer Success

What is an Onboarding Workflow?

Onboarding workflows are designed to help new customers get the most out of your product or service. They are especially crucial for SaaS, mobile apps, and subscription-based businesses.

Why is it Important?

Proper onboarding ensures customer satisfaction and increases the likelihood of retention.

Onboarding Best Practices

The onboarding emails should highlight critical features of your product and guide the customer through the initial stages of using it. This can be coupled with in-app prompts for a more comprehensive onboarding experience.

Work faster with marketing automation templates.

The thing with marketing automation workflows is that they’re set and forget. Take these ideas we’ve outlined here, set them up in MailChimp or any other service, and rest assured that they’ll be working for you 24/7.

Most email marketing companies provide their subscribers with marketing automation templates. And some of them are also free. For example, MailChimp's automation workflows are accessible and templated for its 2,000 subscribers.

Automation templates will make your life easier, as the essential workflows, triggers, and actions are already in place. You only need to customize them to your liking and, of course, add the email content.

The post How to Optimize Your Marketing Automation Workflows for Higher Conversions appeared first on Done For You.

Are you looking for a complete guide to marketing automation? Also, are you ready to implement marketing automation or find a marketing automation agency to grow your business? Are you curious about what tools you can use to automate your online marketing? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, you will learn:

• Benefits of marketing automation
• Why it is important
• The definition of marketing automation
• How to integrate automation into your business
• Common mistakes that are associated with marketing automation
• Impactful automation workflows
• Links to tools and resources to help you get started right away.

Let’s dive right in.

Benefits of marketing automation

This article will reveal everything you need to know about bringing automation and marketing together. But first, let’s look at some of the benefits of automation.

Μarketing automation is growing at a rapid pace. And the reason is obvious: it helps deliver more leads, better conversions, and increased sales, and all of that happens on autopilot.

On average, 51% of companies are already using marketing automation, while over 58% of B2B companies are on the verge of adopting the technology. Businesses that harness the potential that technology has to offer have witnessed significant growth in leads and sales. Additionally, they have increased productivity by 14% while reducing marketing overheads by 12%.

For businesses, automation offers a remarkable opportunity to improve efficiency, minimize costs, and deliver a better customer experience. However, embarking on the journey of marketing automation may seem challenging, but with expert advice, it may be simpler than you think.

Why is marketing automation important?

Here are some quick facts about why you should opt for marketing automation:

• By the end of 2019, the marketing automation software market is estimated to be worth $5.5 billion.
• B2B marketers report the #1 advantage of marketing automation is that it helps generate higher and better-quality leads.
• On average, 30% of B2B marketers said that automation helps them save time, while 25% stated it helps in big data analysis.
• Investment in marketing automation tools shows a steep rise and is projected to reach $25.1 billion by 2023 from $11.4 billion in 2017.

The image below shows the Global Marketing Automation Technology Forecast, 2017 to 2023.

Source: Emailmonday.com

In this regard, John McTigue, EVP of Kuno Creative, said:

Without marketing automation, you are just guessing – just hoping that people will take the bait and be ready to buy your products. Statistics show that buyers don’t do that. They want to learn at their own pace and be reached when they need more information or are ready to buy. A well-constructed marketing automation strategy makes that a reality.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is about the software and the processes that allow businesses to execute their online marketing actions automatically. Automation helps to adopt a relationship-oriented and real-time approach to marketing campaigns, improving productivity, efficiency, lead generation, and revenue.

As defined by Marketo,

Marketing automation is a category of software that streamlines, automates, and measures marketing tasks and workflows so that companies like yours can increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster.

Another definition by SearchCRM goes like this, “Marketing automation is the use of software to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation, customer data integration, and campaign management. The use of marketing automation makes processes that would have otherwise been performed manually much more efficient and makes new processes possible. Marketing automation is an integral component of customer relationship management.”

Having understood why marketing automation is crucial to your business, let’s explore how you can automate your marketing campaigns to drive quality leads and increase your revenue.

How to integrate automation into your marketing strategy

Here’s how you can put your marketing processes on autopilot to boost efficiency and increase your revenue:

Step 1: Identify the right tasks to automate

What are your marketing team’s most cumbersome and repetitive tasks? That’s where marketing automation can help free up time, which can be utilized on tasks that need the expertise of your salesperson, such as client interaction or building a strategy.

Automation can be effective for lead nurturing, customer communications, social media management, content scheduling, analytics, and market research – typically any task that does not require active human engagement. Say, for example, response emails. Automating your emails can dramatically minimize the burden on your marketing team. Similarly, identify all your marketing campaigns that are time-consuming and can be automated. This will help improve workforce productivity and efficiency considerably.

Step 2: Automate your email drip campaigns

Emails are still one of the most significant driving forces behind increased sales. However, managing email marketing campaigns is complex, especially when they aren’t just about one or two emails, but 20 or even more.

It isn’t simple to handle that campaign volume manually as it involves everything from building a mailing list, creating a compelling email body, adding personalized welcome messages, sending emails in bulk, following up, etc.

These eat up much of your marketing team’s time, affecting their efficiency.

Axis: A powerful, yet simple-to-use, marketing automation tool

It is time to break free from the conventional approach of setting up email marketing campaigns and adopt advanced tools such as Axis Marketing Automation. It takes email autoresponders to another level, thanks to its numerous features.

Here’s how you can automate your email campaigns with the help of the Axis powerful suite:

• The tool helps build your email list, and manage traffic and lead generation campaigns by writing the ad copy, effective targeting, and nurturing the leads through dedicated email marketing campaigns.
• Its powerful email autoresponder aids in writing all your email copies for internal and external promotions.
• Done For You Email Marketing and Automation tool will deploy excellent-quality landing pages with high conversion potential. This ensures a high percentage of sales funnel conversions.
• The tool is tailor-made to suit any email marketing platform your business is built in.
• The email automation tool is 100% system-based, which means it continues to work even when you are not. All features of the software are set to target the prospects and drive leads, any time of the day or night.

By automating emails, businesses can boost productivity in a significant manner, while targeting the right set of audiences with a compelling message that inspires them to convert into potential leads.

Step 3: Choose the right automation software

When you plan to take the “marketing automation” jump, you must select the appropriate tool that assists you in the process without overburdening your budget.

There are many automation tools available today; so make sure you choose one that best suits your requirements. It should be easy to use and meets your budget. Do your research well, seek recommendations, or opt for a free trial before you enter into long-term commitments.

For example, Axis is a powerful software suite that makes automation and email marketing a breeze even if you are a non-techie. It is one of the most useful tools for marketers struggling to find the right tool for their email campaigns. Additionally, its advanced drag-and-drop campaign builder makes marketing automation simple, effective, and hassle-free. So choose wisely and streamline your marketing campaigns while improving efficiency.

Step 4: Nurture your leads with automated follow-up

Automated workflows are a great way to follow-up with your customers in a personalized manner. Through these workflows, you encourage them to take definitive action and finish what they started. Lead nurturing through follow-up is effective in driving more conversions. Automated follow-ups help bring leads back to your website, and enable you to build strong relationships.

Only 20% of the total leads are ready to buy when they first visit your website. This shows marketers need a dedicated process known as lead nurturing to build qualified leads and continue till the time they are sales-ready. When done strategically, lead nurturing can help increase sales leads by 50% while reducing the cost per lead by 33%.

Moreover, your marketing team doesn’t need to spend their valuable time in this as everything is being automated while adding a personalized touch.

Check out the example below to see how HubSpot Academy uses automated, personalized follow-up emails to bring back prospects and inspire them to take action.

Step 5: Personalized email autoresponders

Who doesn’t love receiving warm wishes and surprise gifts on special occasions! Your customers love it too.

Sending automated emails to wish them on occasions like birthdays or anniversaries can help build strong relationships. Your customers will develop brand loyalty, which can go a long way in converting them into sales. Email autoresponders are most effective in sending personalized messages while keeping the efforts of the marketing team to a minimum.

See the example below:

Source:Knowledgebase.constantcontact.com

Step 6: Manage your social media accounts on autopilot

Integrating marketing automation into your social media campaigns is another good way to maximize conversions while reducing costs and improving efficiency.

There are two ways you can run your social media on autopilot. First, you can automate the post-distribution process, as you’d do with emails. Second, you can set part of your growth strategy on autopilot.

Automate social media content distribution

Regarding social media content distribution, do you send the same status update or post on five different platforms manually? Not only it is annoying for you, but for your followers too – coming across the same update on different channels. However, with marketing automation, you can handle the challenge efficiently.

Some tools help you connect to five social media accounts from different platforms. You can then set unique messages for different channels and also schedule when you want the posts to be updated on social media. This is an effective way of connecting to your audience on various social media platforms but in a less cumbersome way.

Automate audience growth

To automate your social media growth, you can use tools that let you see who your followers are; who you follow; or who are your followers, but you do not follow them back, etc. Based on data, you can run autopilot to take specific actions.

Common mistakes to look out for

Implementing marketing automation? Avoid these common mistakes:

Automation is a powerful tool for business management and growth. As a result, it is prone to misuse.

It is easy to implement a solution on a large scale, larger than you can manage effectively. Then, you might just lose control of what’s happening.

Also, it is possible that, charmed by what marketing automation can do, you might deploy spammy tactics that will put your business on a blacklist. So, be sure to send only relevant emails to your target audience at the right time.

Automation can be pointless if you don’t have the right processes and design in place to convert leads into customers, or, generally, maximize the result of your efforts.

Moreover, when you are aimless, the process may seem to be too expensive with a not-so-promising result. So, set your goals right, be specific, and take the correct approach. Track and measure results.

Automation is no panacea for all online marketing ills. As with every tool, its goal is to help you optimize what you previously did manually. If the process is wrong, automation tools won’t save the day.

Learn more about how you can avoid common mistakes in the process of automating your business.

Done-for-you automation solution

Sometimes, no matter how simple it may be, you need someone else to take on your project because you just want to focus on your projects. As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you might be falling into the trap of becoming a jack of all trades. But think again; You know it is not possible to do everything – and do it all right! A wise business owner focuses on what he or she does best, and leaves the rest to his or her team, or simply outsources processes.

Impactful automation workflows

There are 7 main types of email automation workflows. Each of these categories can have a lot of variations, depending on the industry and business goals, but here are the basic email autoresponder sequences.

1. Welcome email sequence
2. Segmentation / Engagement sequence
3. Sales automation workflow
4. Lead nurturing sequence
5. Cross-sell / Up-sell sequence
6. Re-engagement email workflow
7. Onboarding automation

Read more about these 7 impactful marketing automation workflows and get instant access to autoresponder templates.

The thing with marketing automation workflows is that they’re set and forget. Take these ideas that we’ve outlined here set them up in MailChimp or any other email service and rest assured that they’ll be working for you 24/7.

Online business automation tools and resources

There are A LOT of tools that can help you automate your online marketing. It’s easy to get lost in software reviews and comparisons while wondering if you’ll ever be able to deploy tools and processes painlessly, and also manage everything optimally.

In this article, we have touched on why Axis, our own robust automation suite, might be the right tool for you. If you want to learn more and see firsthand how Axis can help you automate your customer communication, lead generation, and campaign management, book a free demo and consultation.

It’s time you stopped missing out on opportunities, forgetting things, and doing email communication manually! Today, there are tools for automating repetitive tasks and processes that can take a lot of weight off your shoulders. Learn more about how you can escape the rat race and lean on marketing automation to manage your business 24/7.

To learn how to get your email marketing done for you, click here!

GSDdaily Episode 76

In today's GSDdaily, we are going to kick off marketing automation and doing marketing automation to convert more traffic into sales, which is why we're here, which is why we do what we do. At the end of the day, we try so hard to get customers and prospects and folks signed up for email lists and leads fully qualified and otherwise that a lot of times we forget about some of the backend automation that is going to make that lead purchase or increase conversions at a very significant rate. That's what this week is all about. It's about converting more of your prospects into sales and using marketing automation to do it, so you don't necessarily need to have a person, a body who is pressing the keys and clicking the mouse and picking up the phone call. It's trying to automate as much of that as possible.

I love systems, processes, and building stuff that works again and again. One of the coolest parts about marketing and sales is you can automate 80 or 90% of it, to the point where if somebody enters your funnel. They come in. They come into your funnel. See a Facebook video, they see a Facebook ad, whatever.

They come in and they opt-in for something, they watch a webinar or whatever, but then it might be that it takes them three hours to make it through your funnel where they sign up for a sales call with you, or it might be that it takes three years for them to sign up for a sales call with you. But when you have marketing automation in place, then you are always marketing to them between the three hours and the three years and everywhere in between, because they're seeing your ads, they are receiving emails from you. Things are happening when they interact with your website, things are happening when they watch a video from you.

Marketing Automation

There are lots of ways to cut up marketing automation. But at the end of the day, it is all based around this idea of triggers. These triggers flip a switch and say, "If this person does this, then this happens," or, "If this person does that, when that happens," you know what I mean? That's what this week is going to be all about.

I have a marketing automation guide here for you that we're going to kick through.

One of the benefits of marketing automation, by and large, it lets you sell more stuff.

At the end of the day, only so many people who come to your website are going to buy anything, half a percent, 1%, 2%, 5%.

There are very few people who are going to purchase. That's just how it is. If you have 100 visitors, you might have two sales. Also, with 100 visitors, you might have five sales. If you put 100 people on a webinar, you might have 12 sales. It just depends on the price and the marketing and all that other stuff.

But the benefit of marketing automation is that even though they don't necessarily buy right away, they're still receiving marketing from you. It might be the email or SMS text message that goes out. It might be the email sequence that fires after somebody goes to an add-to-cart page or an order form. There are lots of ways that marketing automation is going to trigger, but that is the primary benefit. You sell more stuff without necessarily increasing payroll, without increasing human capital, without increasing mind share in your office. You set it up once and it just goes for you. It might be a retargeting campaign. It might be emailed. There are lots of different kinds of marketing automation, but at the end of the day, it's all designed to increase sales.

Why is marketing automation important?

By the end of 2019, last year, the marketing automation software market is estimated to be worth $5.5 billion, which is ridiculous. I mean, from an automation standpoint, that includes companies like Zapier, which includes companies like Salesforce or other CRMs. Salesforce., The report that I heard or read at the beginning of 2020 was that Salesforce, which is the largest CRM in the world, had $13 billion worth of contracts already signed for the next three years. They could not sell another thing and they're still going to make $13 billion. It's just crazy for software.

On average, 30% of B2B marketers said that automation helps them save time, while 25% stated that it helps big data analysts. And the big data piece is interesting because I mean, I... We're growing fast, so some of what I was doing last week was putting together reports of all the people who hit certain sales pages so that we could automate some of that marketing from an email, outbound phone call, text message standpoint.

I ran a report that said, "Who are all the people who are in our CRM who hit this page in the last six months? And then of those people, how many do we have email addresses for? How many do we have phone numbers for?" When you have marketing automation set up, you can run all kinds of really crazy, really detailed, specific queries like that and get real data and say, "All these people, they're subscribed to the website. They've opened an email in the last three days. They were on the website and the page," so on and so forth, "Call that person." Do you know what I mean?

We have Slack set up to do all kinds of really crazy marketing automation stuff, but we even have Slack so that if somebody goes to a sales page, like the sales funnel development page, if you land on it if you go to that page right now and actually in our CRM, then it will start dinging who is on that page. It will give us a Slack notification, "Mark is on, Bob is on, Sandra, is on," whatever, and we will see who was actually on the page and if we have the phone number, we have their phone number too.

If you guys want to run a little example, so let's see ... If you want to go to that page ... This is kind of going to be fun. If you are in our CRM and you go to this page, I will be able to see who was there in realtime. It was 9:54. There was a Sean there. That was a little bit before we started. There was an R. Saunders, a Brian Wright, there was a Gerardo who was there a little bit earlier. If you go to that page right now and you're in our CRM, then it will ding and say who's there. Just an interesting little test.

But anyway, so the importance of marketing automation. What is marketing automation? How do you integrate marketing automation into your marketing? The first thing to think about when it comes to marketing automation is what do you need it to do? There are so many different ways that marketing automation can benefit your business. But what can it do? What will it do? And how does it aid your process?

I talk to people all the time, and especially businesses who are doing half a million, a million, three million, $5 million a year, you already have your internal processes. There's a workflow. Even if it's not well-defined, there's still a workflow in your business for turning prospects into customers and then fulfilling and onboarding those customers. So there is something specific to that process, and marketing automation needs to add to that. It needs to automate some of that process.

The goal of marketing automation is not to make things more complex. It's to make them run better and also give you some better insight into the prospects and customers that are coming through without introducing a whole lot of new weird bottlenecks.

For instance, sales. If you have an outbound sales guy and they are paid to cold call dial, 100 calls a day or whatever, then a better alternative and a better solution for their time might be setting up an automated webinar funnel or a Zoom presentation funnel, where he gets people onto this presentation, onto the sales call, this one to any kind of presentation multiple times a day, so he might have four people or 10 people or 12 or 100 people on this presentation and then he's just basically pitching everybody and then having them go schedule a call on his calendar afterward.

Completely doable. It changes his dynamic. Rather than cold calling a bunch of people, getting a bunch of nos, maybe getting through the gatekeeper a couple of times and reaching the decision-maker at some point, now he's got 25, 30, 50 people a day who are sitting in his presentations and then the interested people are booking calls in his calendar. It flips the dynamic.

When that is true, you can employ all kinds of marketing automation, like if they scheduled a call, they get a couple of emails. If they didn't schedule a call, they get a couple of emails. You can send outbound text messages. You can send confirmation emails. Still, in that particular scenario, you can automate a lot of it, but what I always tell our clients is to make sure that as soon as somebody schedules a call, you send one personal email and that personal email is supposed to connect with them.

You show just a genuine interest in what they're doing, their business, their whatever, whatever it is you're selling, show a genuine interest in them, and then close that email with a question, so it's a personal one-on-one thing. And oftentimes you'll find that when somebody replies and engages in a conversation, your strategy session is going to go incredibly well. It's just a change in dynamics. There's a lot of things you can automate, but there are some things that you shouldn't.

One of the things, probably the easiest thing to automate is your drip email campaigns, your email sequences. If somebody comes in, they download the lead magnet, then they get these 20 emails. That's why we built our email copy app because at the end of the day, running email sucks. Writing blog posts sucks, too. Writing, in general, is just not a whole lot of fun, but you need to do it because that's how Google sends you traffic and that's how people engage with you. You got to have content. Email is one of the easiest things to automate. That's why we built to access, and that's what triggers our CRM.

Now, email, the triggers are anything and everything you can think of. If somebody downloads a report, they get this sequence. For visitors on the page, they get that sequence. If somebody goes to the order form and doesn't buy, they get this sequence. There are lots of ways that you can cut up email and email automation based on lots and lots of different triggers. It's the easiest one to automate.

The second easiest to automate is SMS. You can do a lot of text message marketing in a very automated way when you understand that somebody's text messages are sacred almost. I mean, so we don't do a lot of broadcast text messages, meaning we don't just drop text messages and think that we're going to be pushing traffic the same way we push traffic through email. Text messages are very timely. They're very time-based notifications. If you send a text message, you want the person receiving the text message, you want to convey urgency. It might be a live event that is about to go live in 15 minutes. It might be a discount code that is about to expire.

That's really about it. Anything more than that and it's going to seem like you're just crying wolf. If you send daily text message reminders about some random fucking promo, then you're just going to get unsubscribed and piss off people. My wife, there was a ... Who was it? There was some retailer that was sending text messages the same way they would send emails. And I mean, the first one was like, "Maybe somebody made a mistake," and the second one was like, "Delete." That's just how text messages go. It's a very personal method of communication so you just want to consider that before automating your SMS.

One of the places we've seen it work well is events, live events where the host, the event owner wants to communicate throughout the event with live guests, and that has worked out well, like, "Hey, remember to do your homework for tomorrow," that kind of thing. But now who knows when we're going to be able to do live events again. Well, some people are doing live events again, but the way we used to do them, at least.

You also want to make sure to nurture your leads. Not every email automation should be sales-based. You don't want every email going out, every notification, every whatever to be sales-related. Also, you want to give a lot of content, so you want to bond with your audience. You want to send them to blog posts. Blog posts are a big one.

Here's a little story. Four or five years ago, before I purchased DoneForYou.com, we were doing a lot of sales funnels and all that stuff, and I was promoting a lot of affiliate products and I would promote the affiliate products, not every day, but pretty often. And I remember sitting out on the back deck shortly after we moved into this house and I was like, "My list doesn't even know who I am because all I'm doing is I'm basically giving them a lead magnet and then sending affiliate offer, affiliate offer, affiliate offer."

And we were making great money doing it. But I wondered, "What am I sacrificing because of it? What is the opportunity cost of making the affiliate money?" And I realized that it was just much, much more valuable to not promote any affiliate products and then do videos, do blog posts, and at the time we were writing a blog post a week or whatever. So I would mail the blog post and then I might mail a lead magnet and then I might mail a promo video or something for one of our software offers or whatever. But I felt that people were learning more about me, and they were engaging more with me and that has just kind of been the MO ever since then.

Now we don't ever mail affiliate products. We might do a favor for a client or if we think that somebody has something cool that you guys would love, then we'll promote it whether it's a video or we'll mail it out, but we don't take a commission for it. That has been nice, because now it's like, when we create the content, we mail it out, like these live streams. We mail these live streams out every once in a while.

We're going to start doing it more, just because people are like, "Oh, I didn't know you were going live." We go live every day at 10:00, every single day, Monday through Friday. This is episode 76. We've done it 75 previous times. Wherever you're on YouTube or Facebook, this is where our show is. Every day, 10:00 AM Eastern, this is where we go live. I've been thinking about pushing it to noon or one though, just so our west coast friends can jump in rather than have to watch the replay later. But I don't know. You can comment on that. If you would like to see these things a little bit later in the day, then just let me know. We might push to one or two or noon or something.

But yeah, you want to blog, you want to live stream, you want to podcast. You create the content that you're most suited to create and then use that content in your emails and your marketing automation. One of the things that I used to do and still do, when we write a blog post, let's say about sales funnels, then what I do is I mail that sales funnel post out to the list and then I just literally drag it up into my automation for sales funnels. I mail it out to the list.

You get the content. And then now everybody who comes in later, they see that blog post later, or if it's about email marketing, I'll mail it out to the list and then I'll drag that thing over into the email marketing sequence. What I'm doing is I'm only adding our best content to our automated email sequences, and now those automated email sequences sometimes are 80 and 90 emails long because I write it once, then I use it in multiple ways.

You want to nurture your content, nurture your leads through your automated follow-up. You also want to personalize remodel responders. I'm up on the fence on this one. I like the idea of graphical HTML newsletters. I don't know that they work any better. What they do is they do let you do a couple of things in the same email, which is nice. This email that you're looking at, literally is, "Happy birthday to you," so happy birthday. There's a message in there. Then we have, "Enjoy 50% off," a nice graphical coupon. And then down below, we're inviting them to connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube, and we're also doing a little bit of branding.

This one graphical newsletter is doing a couple of things as opposed to a plain white text-based email that is copy and then a link and then that's it. You can only promote one thing. You can ask for one action inside of a text-based email. With HTML, you can ask for two, three, four actions. The conversion on that email is going to go down because you're asking for more things. It's just one of those things. If you, really, really care that they convert into one offer, just make one offer in an email. However, if you want to give somebody your main offer and then down below, you might want to promote a book, like some of the stuff that we do.

Every once in a while, I mean, most people are to do that top thing. They're going to go through and do the thing you want them to do. However, every once in awhile, I mean, not every once in a while. I mean, we sent out an email, we'll sell eight or 10 books and the bottom banner block underneath all the text and all the other stuff we told them to do, and we'll sell some books if that's where they want to go next.

For me, the way I see it and the way I'm viewing it in my mind at least is that we're presenting people with more options. If they want to go watch a video, that's awesome. But I would rather just go buy a book just because that's how I enjoy learning is through the written word as opposed to having to wait through a video. And even in waiting through a video, I usually do two times speed or two and a half times the speed just to get through faster, just to get the meat, you know what I mean? That's how I listen to audiobooks is two times, two and a half times, whatever. It's up to you. Marketing automation, use HTML newsletters, don't use them. It's up to you. Test them.

You also want to manage your social media accounts on autopilot. I use Hootsuite for all of our management, Hootsuite. Two Os. I use Hootsuite for our social media management. I just have the professional version, although I think we're going to start doing a little more so I'm going to upgrade to the team, basically every morning what I'll do is I will log in and just post a bunch of articles. We're going to start doing some small, condensed social videos, Gary V style, which I'm pretty excited about, so you're going to start seeing those a lot more.

In social media, that's always your outermost arm. You have your social media profiles and posts and all that stuff. You have your videos and you have your posts and you have your live streams and all that stuff. And then they come into your inner circle, which is all your landing pages, your landing pages, your sales videos, all that stuff. I should draw this out. Your landing pages, your sales videos. Then you have your innermost circle, which are your buyers. In terms of engagement and commitment, automation is going to take them through all of those.

But you have your outer ring, which is all your outer channels, I should say. That's a pretty cool graphic. I'm going to draw that. That's cool. See? Sometimes when you're put on the spot for a live stream like this, you have no idea what you're going to say. And sometimes it's pretty good ideas like that, where I'm like, "Oh, that's a great lead magnet. Okay, cool. So we'll just do that."

Now, some common mistakes for marketing automation. First of all, you got to set it up, you got to activate it. I can't tell you how many times I'm mowing the lawn and I am like, "Wow, I didn't even think this particular trigger could be triggered in this way, which would throw the whole automation off," and here's what I mean. Let's say you have a couple of email sequences that are all set up. somebody comes in, they downloaded the report, they get a bonding sequence. Then they buy something else and they get some other sequence, then they buy whatever.

Sometimes the way you set up the marketing automation can break when certain things happen. Like if somebody does this and then goes to this page. Then it cancels that automation and goes to another one, whatever. The only way to deploy this stuff is to hit go and watch it. I can't tell you how many times I'm mowing the lawn. I'm thinking, maybe not even consciously, but my subconscious is still working on this automation and I'm like, "Holy shit. I didn't even realize that that particular action that somebody could take would then all of a sudden put them into some buyer sequence or whatever," and then I end up coming in from mowing the lawn and fixing this thing because all hell would have broken those if somebody did that specific scenario of things.

You wouldn't believe how many times that happens. People, take the path that you want them to take often, but that doesn't mean that everybody does. I mean, some people going off in different ways through your marketing automation and sometimes it breaks. So you just want to make sure that you think through the scenarios. I mean, quiet place, quiet room, quiet office, kids aren't running around, sit down for 30 minutes. Plan out all the ways that this thing could get fucked up because it probably will. That's just how marketing automation is. I mean, people take their path through it, and sometimes software goes weird and wonky or whatever.

At the end of the day, your marketing automation workflows. There's a couple of email automation we're going to talk about it a little later this week. One of them is a welcome sequence. Another is an engagement sequence. If somebody comes in, we want to engage them in the sequence. But then also there's re-engagement, which is if somebody doesn't do anything for 60 days or more. We want to reengage them through an email workflow. There's onboarding. There are upsells, which is a big one.

Now, so many sales funnels have gone from really high tickets. High ticket still works great from a sales funnel standpoint, but a lot of order forms start low and then go up, so your order form at 4.95, like a 4.95 book, then it goes to $37, then $97, and then 297, that might be the upsell path. Well, what you want to do is you want to have email automation that if they don't take those upsells, you want to email them into those upsells. Make sure to set-up the Ascension Sequence.

Sales automation, lead nurturing, all of it important. We're going to talk about this week, some of the more engaging workflows that you want to think about. How to write the email copy for them, and all that stuff. That's kind of an intro to marketing automation. At the end of the day, super important for engaging with your prospects. Qualifying the people that haven't purchased yet and who want to purchase. They just don't know it yet, or bonding with your prospects as they move through your sales funnel so that they're more comfortable about purchasing with you. That is what marketing automation does.

For Questions and Guide

For those of you who are interested in talking about some marketing automation, go to DoneForYou.com/start. You can fill out the little form on our site. From there, we'll get on the phone with you. We'll talk through the specifics of marketing automation, sales funnels, traffic, and all that stuff. If there's anything you would like me to cover this week specifically, comment underneath these live streams. They will all come to me and that's probably the better way. Then I'll just pick it up in the next couple of days. We're going to be talking about marketing automation all week, so I will talk to you soon.

The post Marketing Automation That Will Increase Your Potential Leads appeared first on Done For You.

Video Transcript:

Aaron Parkinson:
I'll tell you the story behind my Facebook shirt.

Jason Drohn:
What's up? This is Jason Drohn. Welcome to Sales Systems Experts, episode number seven, where we talk about marketing automation tips and buyer journeys. And I am joined by Aaron Parkinson. So how are you, good sir?

Aaron Parkinson:
Well, I'm double barreling today because I've got the Hulk.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
And I've got the shirt.

Jason Drohn:
Nice. There you go.

Aaron Parkinson:
And this shirt is directly from Facebook headquarters. You cannot get them anywhere else. I've never worn it. Think I had it for like two years.

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
And I thought, today I'll break it out for our show.

Jason Drohn:
Very nice.

Aaron Parkinson:
It's my very fancy special Facebook shirt.

Jason Drohn:
So is there like a merchandise counter at Facebook where you go? Or do they just give them out for free?

Aaron Parkinson:
Well, this one was given to me. But they do have a merch store there, but it's their very specific blue, their very specific font. So you can only get it at Facebook headquarters, and-

Jason Drohn:
And they're copyright protected or trademarked.

Aaron Parkinson:
I'm sure. It's probably listening to me right now talking. Probably collecting data. Probably analyzing my BMI and all sorts of things, but I don't even know. Probably a microchip in the collar. But yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
So we're talking today about marketing automation tips and follow-ups. Really kind of go hand in hand. So maybe, you or I can do it, is sort of giving people the lay of the land of when you're creating an offer... And I want to talk a little bit about this today too, what the difference between the brand and the offer is. But when you're creating an offer, there's a certain baseline of conversions to a sale. If you're in e-commerce, it's how many people visit the site? How many buy the product? How many buy the upsell, the downsell? What do they add to their cart? What is their lifetime value? Or what is their average order value?

Aaron Parkinson:
And then there is all these marketing automation tips that can be put into play that then traditionally from our experience, and I'll use e-commerce as the example today, can boost the average order value or the return on your paid media by as much as 40%. And if you don't have that 40% in play, then it's almost like running a race with one leg. It's very, very difficult to get to the amount of revenue you need, to justify the costs of paid media. And we specialize in paid media, so. It's all about getting the ROI on that dollar invested.

Aaron Parkinson:
So for me, when we take on an e-commerce client, we look at what their baseline conversion is through their product offering. And then we look at five different sectors of where they can increase their return on their ad spend. And so I'm talking about it from an e-commerce standpoint. You can probably talk to it even more in-depth from an info marketing standpoint. But maybe I'll give you my hit list of e-commerce stuff when we deal with a store. These are the things that we check right away.

Aaron Parkinson:
So the first thing that we check is, do they have their email set up appropriately? And when we're talking about email, your order confirmation email. Your abandoned cart email. Your onboarding series for your email, some people call that a nurturing email series. And then your promotional calendar. So we got four different sectors there.

Aaron Parkinson:
Number one, your confirmation email. So many people undervalue their confirmation email because they just think it's supposed to be that thing that says, "Here's your receipt." But it's the one that people open the most.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
Right? So offering some type of call to action inside of there is super, super valuable. Just a really simple thing you can do is say, "Thank you so much for your order. Here's your confirmation receipt. Here's a special promo code that you can use," right, "To get an additional 20% off of anything, if you use it in the next 24 hours," right. "Use the promo, click here, go back to the store." And people like, "Oh, I get a bonus if I use it today." You'll have a certain percentage of people that'll take that. Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
Your abandoned cart email series. Right. I mean, our abandoned cart email series was responsible for almost 2% of our revenue in our store. So somebody gets to a cart, they don't finish their order, they get an email series that says, "Hey, you left this in your cart. Do you want to continue? Do you want to buy it? Time's ticking down," kind of thing. You can pick up another automated chunk of money right there.

Aaron Parkinson:
Then in your onboarding and nurturing series, so, "Thank you so much for buying with us. Over the next couple of days, you're going to learn more about our company and what we do and why we launched it, what makes us tick," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, traditional nurturing series. Inside of that, there can always be subtle or aggressive links and calls to action back to your store, where ultimately people are going to shop some more.

Aaron Parkinson:
And Ezra Firestone is a friend of mine who owns BOOM by Cindy Joseph. He was showing something the other day were on his About Us page, so the story of the business of the brand, the people who go to that page and click on the link, he has a call to action on his About Us page to visit the store, are the highest converting people of any place that he possibly has.

Jason Drohn:
It's interesting.

Aaron Parkinson:
Because they're reading the heart and the soul of the brand. And if they resonated with it, they almost want to be like, "Yeah. This is what I'm all about. I'm going to click here." And again, that's just another automated place. And I never really thought about it to be honest with you until he told me that. I've never put a call to action to shop the store on an About Us page. But he's like, "These are the most valuable customers we have." So that's another automated entry point that can pick it up.

Aaron Parkinson:
And then last but not least, a promotional calendar. Right? So if you're like, "Hey, I'm going to launch a new product," or, "I'm going to feature a new product," or whatever, "and I'm going to do it on these three days a month," you can set that up way ahead of time. Emails go out, countdowns go down to when the sale ends, or the promo ends. And then you'll pick up...

Aaron Parkinson:
And email for us in our e-commerce store accounted for over 10% of our monthly revenue. And I know that in the info-marketing world, this is like breathing. Everybody... I've been teaching info-marketing since the mid-2000s. And if you didn't have a follow-up email series and a promotional series and all, you're a moron. But in e-commerce, I think a lot of people undervalue it. And it was 10% of our revenue. And more importantly, it's not the same revenue. Because there's no advertising cost associated with it.

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
So where you might spend 50% of your advertising dollars acquiring a customer, you're spending no money in the email to sell to that customer. So the profit margin on those sales is exponentially more value, increasing the revenue of the business by 10%, but it might only cost you-

Jason Drohn:
Nothing.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. It's as much as whatever the email autoresponder costs you per month. So it's free marketing. It's automated and it's free. And so many people just undervalue it.

Jason Drohn:
Don't do anything with it.

Aaron Parkinson:
So just don't do it. And we would email every single day.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah. Totally.

Aaron Parkinson:
And a lot of people will say, "Oh, that's too aggressive." But I'm, we did it. And it ended accounted for... Every time we sent an email we made $1,400. And it didn't even have to be good. I mean, it's better if it's good, but.

Jason Drohn:
Right. I have a friend, e-comm friend who, he sends two emails a day, every day, morning and afternoon. Morning is an offer, the afternoon is bonding and content. So every day, two emails.

Aaron Parkinson:
And I'd be interested to see what his number or her number is.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah. So he's got 350,000 people on his email list. So he's, yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. We had 1.4 million on that list. And the open rates when you're emailing all the time, they go down and they go down.

Jason Drohn:
Oh yeah, yeah. Totally.

Aaron Parkinson:
So we'd have to scrape them and clean it up and do all that kind of stuff. But, it didn't matter. We'd send an email, we'd make $1,400. And for 20 minutes of your time. Because it's usually a template or something. And you can set it up completely automated for 30 days. Just let it do its thing, right.

Jason Drohn:
Just go through. Yeah. Totally.

Aaron Parkinson:
Absolutely. How do you see that apply to the more info marketing side?

Jason Drohn:
So the same thing. You have your transactional emails. So the transactional email would be you downloaded a report, you bought something, the invoice gets sent out and all that stuff. So of course that needs to be set up. In the info-marketing, in the coaching space, it's important to realize that it's not, you turn on the traffic and you get sales. Like with e-comm in a lot of situations, physical products just generally have a higher conversion on the sales page than a digital product because it's not tangible. So physical product, you might have 6%, 8%, 10% conversions. If it's on Amazon, it might be 16%. Whereas digital product, half a percent, 1%, 2%, 3% is what you're a little bit more accustomed to seeing.

Jason Drohn:
So the buyer journey typically takes a little bit longer. There's a more knowledgeable, like, and trust factor that needs to be built up because it isn't a physical product. You're not receiving anything. You're receiving something digital, so. So the thing that I try to impress upon clients is, it isn't they click an ad, they go buy something. Oftentimes it's they click an ad. Then they watch a video. Then they read down the page. Then they click another page. Then it goes through an order form. Then they have to go find their credit card. There are lots of little microtransactions that have to transpire to get them to purchase.

Jason Drohn:
And in the marketing automation tips game, each of those little microtransactions, oftentimes you can trigger an email that goes out. So somebody hits... For us, for instance, if somebody hits one of our sales pages, and we have their email address, they get automatically added into a sequence that fires out and says, "Hey, we noticed you were on this page. So now let's send you six emails in a day because I know you're hyper-aware of this thing right now."

Jason Drohn:
So then they come to the page and then they click the Add to Cart button. Then they go to the order form. Well now that puts them in a different email sequence and that's the cart abandonment sequence. So in that, if the order isn't processed in 30 minutes, they get an email from us that says, "Hey, your, shopping cart is still full. You still got those special savings," or whatever, "That is in your shopping cart."

Jason Drohn:
Then once they buy, they get that order confirmation. And then we tell them, "Here's your thing. Within the next couple of days, we're going to be emailing you a free webinar or a free video," or whatever. "So make sure you read this thing, because it's important for your growth, your future success," whatever. And then, "Look forward to the next few things that we're going to be emailing you."

Jason Drohn:
And that's if there's no upsells. If there is an upsell in the process, then we send them what is called an ascension email sequence. So they bought the front end thing, but not the upsell. So we then send them a bunch of emails to try to get them to buy that upsell. And if they bought that, but not this, we send them a bunch of emails to try to get them to buy that. So we step them up through the process. And if they don't buy anything, we send them a couple of other front end offers sideways. So they didn't buy this thing, so we want them to buy this thing. And then this thing. So that's how-

Aaron Parkinson:
Something that might be in alignment with what we were trying to sell them, but just wasn't the right fit.

Jason Drohn:
Right. So, and if you have multiple products, you can sell multiple products sideways like that. Or you can sell affiliate offers, which is what a lot of our clients do that don't have multiple offers. So just because somebody didn't buy from you doesn't mean they don't like you. Or it doesn't mean they don't like the thing, the product, whatever. It might be that you didn't resonate with them. Or your page didn't catch their attention. Or it was, people just don't buy for men or women or the age was wrong or whatever. So maybe there's an affiliate offer that you can mail them too. You're still capturing some revenue, so generating some cash flow. But it's not necessarily selling your thing. Does that make sense?

Aaron Parkinson:
It makes perfect sense to me. It may not make any sense to anybody looking at the video.

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
But it makes perfect sense to me. The second marketing automation tips that I want to talk about is retargeting. And from an e-commerce standpoint, so I wore the Facebook shirt today, there's a whole bunch of statistics thrown all over the place. Like a customer needs to see your offer seven times before they convert or 14 or 21, or just depends on who you talk to. Right? So for us, anytime somebody watches a video or anytime somebody clicks on our page or anytime somebody engages with our social media, that's the first interaction.

Aaron Parkinson:
A lot of people think the first interaction is the first time they go to your site or they give you an email or they buy, and it's not. It's the first time they engage with anything you do. It could just be watching 10 seconds of a video. It could be liking your fan page. It could be Googling your stuff and ending up on one of your blog posts or whatever. Right. So the whole idea is if we're targeting the United States and there are 400 X million people, and all of a sudden 20 million of them take some action somewhere, then you don't want to be marketing to the 400 million anymore. Because that's expensive and it's the shotgun approach and scattered. You want to market to the 20 million who already put their hands up and said, "I have some interest in what's going on here."

Aaron Parkinson:
And that's where you can start to set up automated retargeting campaigns based on different events inside of Facebook, inside of Instagram, inside of Google, inside of YouTube. Wherever you're pulling data in, you can structure them. You can send them content about your company. You can send them case studies about your product. You can send them testimonials from people unboxing it. You can send them promotional material.

Aaron Parkinson:
The longer they're on without buying, you can just send them promotional stuff that's accelerating in aggression, where, "You've seen my stuff for 30 days, but you haven't bought. Well, I'm going to offer you a 10% discount today. 60 days, I'm going to offer you a 30% discount. 90 days of seeing my stuff and you're still not buying, I'm putting the hammer down to get you in." Because once we get them to be a buyer, then that's like the holy grail. It might be a 50% discount in 90 days or whatever. Right?

Aaron Parkinson:
And so we structure all of that media retargeting up as part of our campaigns automatically. And then a lot of cases we'll use outside services as well, like AdRoll right? And AdRoll is just basically an automated way to get your banner advertisement. Which, I see doneforyou.com everywhere I go, for example. And it's just an automated way to get your banner up across all of the inventory of banners that are available everywhere. And if you've ever clicked on something and then you see their ads in banners on every site you visit forever, you can do that through Google. Or you can just do it through a simple service like AdRoll.

Aaron Parkinson:
And typically for us, if we add AdRoll into a client's account, it will attribute somewhere between 5 to 10% of their sales, automatically add a return on ad spend that's seven to 10 one. Because it's all retargeting base. The people already know the product. They already know the customer, or they already know the business. It's not fresh. It's retargeting. They already know about it. So you offer them a little discount or something to get them off their butt. You don't even have to offer them a discount. It's just the fact that they're seeing it everywhere-

Jason Drohn:
Everywhere.

Aaron Parkinson:
And following them. Setting up those types of retargeting marketing automation tips. When we have our campaign structured, we'll see what we call the warm audience, the retargeting audience, we'll see that convert at somewhere between a five to an eight times return on ad spend. Whereas a cold audience might be a two. Right. So the whole goal is to blend them all to get ultimately the average that you want out. And much of it, there's lots of creative testing that goes on to improve it. But just putting it in and automating it will increase your revenue and cut down on your cost per acquisitions tremendously.

Jason Drohn:
Totally.

Aaron Parkinson:
So. I don't know if you have anything genius to add to that.

Jason Drohn:
Well, two things. So AdRoll has an email marketing functionality now. So if AdRoll can find the email address for somebody who visits your website, then it will send out templated emails to them. And you can segment it like a sequence, so. Which is super sweet. I just turned it on last week. So you're probably going to be getting some email from me. Not from me, but AdRoll.

Aaron Parkinson:
Awesome.

Jason Drohn:
So, which is cool. Also in the whole buyer journey, it's important to realize in setting up the retargeting campaigns, that people are either getting warmer to your offer or colder from your offer. And Aaron mentioned it in giving bigger discounts as people are leaving or they're cooling off from your offer. One thing is, how you would set it up inside Facebook is you create audiences. So the audience might be, if they've been to my website within 30 days, then they see this ad. If they've been to my website in 30 to 60 days, they see this ad. And then you step it out.

Jason Drohn:
We oftentimes have done it as small windows, as small as seven days. So basically we treat the seven-day windows like little mini autoresponder sequences, where we're throwing a different offer, a different lead magnet, a different thing in front of them, so. Because they are cooling off. And if they cool off enough, then you might need to pivot them into a different offer or a different lead magnet or a different thing because they've maybe already found a solution that wasn't you. So it's just an interesting thing to think about.

Aaron Parkinson:
Absolutely. When you start to see that type of retargeting being set up, you know that the person knows what they're doing. Because most people won't go that. We talk about retargeting buyers. That's the funny thing. Lots of people won't set up retargeting post the buy. Once they got the buy they're like, "I won."

Jason Drohn:
Yeah, right. No, there are six more offers.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. Why are we not retargeting with more stuff that we have, and selling those things? They're your best leads. Let's sell them more stuff.

Aaron Parkinson:
So we see a lot of people stop that retargeting process at that point. And they leave a lot of money on the table. From an e-commerce standpoint, one of the hot things, but it's been nerve-wracking, is SMS. And with SMS, with text advertising, the open rate is-

Jason Drohn:
It's crazy.

Aaron Parkinson:
... or email, 17% on average or whatever. Where SMS is 90 something percent. Even if they don't open it, they see it and it goes ding on your phone. And it's super, super effective and super simple to set up those automated SMS. And you can use that for all the same things as email autoresponders. Like, "Hey, your order's on the way," or, "Hey, here's a special discount or, "Hey, here's our promotional calendar."

Aaron Parkinson:
And some of the e-comm guys that I work with, SMS especially around Black Friday, Cyber Monday, played an unbelievably massive role in their revenue and their sales.

Jason Drohn:
Interesting.

Aaron Parkinson:
But on the same side, the laws are so strict on text marketing that you have to dot your I's and cross your T's. You're going to text somebody, on your order page it has to be very clear. There's the very specific legal language you have to use around it. Like, "Hey, I check this box and I agreed to receive shipping notifications, promotional emails," or promotional texts.

Aaron Parkinson:
When you're doing outbound texts, there has to be an indication of where they can click to stop. It's a very, very specific ruleset. And if you break those rule sets, there are lawyers all over America that will opt-in in different places looking to trap you and looking to settle with you for a big lump sum.

Aaron Parkinson:
Because I think the law says, for every text you send out illegally to somebody, it's something like, I don't know, it was like a $10 per text fine. Enormous. And I remember being at an event a year and a half ago where a guy, very successful guy, eight-figure e-commerce guy, came into the room at the event we were at in full-blown tears. And he's like, "We just got hit with a $180 million SMS lawsuit."

Jason Drohn:
Oh wow.

Aaron Parkinson:
It goes big, fast. It's egregious the fines for it. So it's effective, but you just have to make sure that you just follow the letter of the law to a T. And if you do, you have nothing to be concerned about. But you got to make sure you don't slip up. Or you'll be in trouble, so.

Aaron Parkinson:
I don't know. How much SMS do you layer into your stuff?

Jason Drohn:
We do SMS here and there. Whenever it's event-based. So we have a couple of live streams, a live stream client working right now. So we send out SMS to his people. They have opted in for SMS notifications because it was basically to send a reminder about the live stream. So they are good. Other than that, we try not to be invasive with SMS, just in general as a rule.

Jason Drohn:
Sometimes I appreciate them. I just put in an embroidered t-shirt order. So I got an SMS that said, "Your stuff is hitting the assembly line," or the printing line or whatever. Which was super cool. It was like, "Oh, all right, got it. So it'll be here in like four or five days." But otherwise, some of them are like, "10% discount." And it's like, "You could've just emailed it to me."

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. It sort of like this story I read the other day and I was laughing. If you think back to the 1950s, right, if somebody showed up to your door and knocked, it was this major event. Like, "Oh my goodness. Sally's here! Let's get out fine China and let's get some cake and some coffee. Everybody, Sally's here!" And everyone's, "Oh! Somebody showed up to visit us." And everyone was so excited. And now if somebody shows up unknown and knocks on my door, I'm losing my mind. "What is happening here?" I am so offended and so angry that somebody is knocking on my door without telling me they're coming.

Aaron Parkinson:
And it's sort of the same thing with email, right. Everybody gets emails. They expect to get emailed. They're like, "Hm." But SMS is a level up. Like, "What are you doing texting my phone?" Right. And then a phone call now. When somebody calls my phone, even if it's one of my friends, they're just randomly... I'm like, "What are you doing? No prep text? No preface of what we're... What, do you think I got all the time in the world?" Right. It's funny how we've evolved as a species, and what irritates us. And SMS is a level up from email and then outbound phone calls is another level up from SMS. So you got to be cautious about when and where you use them and use them wisely so that you get the most impact out of it.

Aaron Parkinson:
As far as the next marketing automation tips for us, and again, I think a lot of people overlook it and we've talked about it before, is just the upsell and downsell paths. Right? We pick up an average, again, of another 10% of revenue through upsells and downsell paths. And people, they know they should do it, but they don't for whatever reason. And even if they do, usually they'll throw in one and they won't test it.

Aaron Parkinson:
And upsells and downsell paths and e-comm are reasonably easy. You can just offer more of the same thing at a discount. Or you can offer something that matches, where you can say, "Hey, get one as a gift for a friend." There are a few that are pretty standard. And then your downsell is just a better deal on the upsell. But putting one, in my mind, is mandatory. Putting three is ideal. There is no too much. People like, "Oh, I get offended when there's 8,000 upsells." Well, then don't buy them.

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
I'm more concerned about the cart value than the fact that you didn't like seeing all the upsells. It's expensive to buy media, so. And the things can be set up, tested for a month, find an optimal number, and then you just leave them. And they're just checking along. And in e-commerce, I feel like more people overlook it. Whereas in info-marketing it's the business model. It's mandatory.

Aaron Parkinson:
And I had a great conversation yesterday, and I'm sure you can give some insight on it, with a guy that wrote the book on gaining followers on social media. He consults huge brands and artists and musicians and all this stuff. And only this month did he have an upsell into a higher-priced product-

Jason Drohn:
Thing.

Aaron Parkinson:
... in his funnel. And it's not even correct. I went through it and went, "This is all wrong." This guy is spending $90,000 a month on paid ads and grossing $130,000. And I'm like, "Should be a million." Especially with the credibility, this guy has. And so in the info-marketing space, there's a very specific science to your upsells and your downsells in your model that make the whole thing profitable.

Jason Drohn:
Worth it. Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
And if you don't have them, you don't have a business. Which is why you don't see anybody out selling books, physical books. Or they just sell the book and then they go to a thank you page. And they're like, "Oh, thanks for buying my book." Because it would cost a hundred dollars to make a book sale. And they'd be underwater immediately.

Jason Drohn:
Well, even like the funnel factor textbook that I sent you. So I'm getting a proof next week. That book, the cost to print that book, is $24. Because it's full color, 274 pages, and it's a full 8.5 By 11. And so-

Aaron Parkinson:
And then?

Jason Drohn:
I don't know yet. It's going to be expensive.

Aaron Parkinson:
Let's call it $7. So your $30 cost, right?

Jason Drohn:
Good. Because it's not medium mail. Yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
Right. Your $30 cost. And then there's the actual cost per acquisition of the marketing. And if you're going to charge... If we sell a book for free plus shipping, so just pay the shipping cost, $7, on a really good book it's going to cost us about $30 to make that sale.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah. Totally.

Aaron Parkinson:
So it cost us $30. Right. They paid $7. So we're in for $23. Then the actual book costs $24. Right. So $23 plus $24, we're in the hole $47.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah. And before breaking a sweat. Right? And then, yeah. Then thank you, confirmation.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. Congratulations. You made a sale. We lost $47. Right. If you don't have that upsell path behind it, you can kiss your savings goodbye. You could go out and say, "Well, I'm going to become a bestseller. I'm going to sell a hundred thousand books in my first six months." Awesome. It's going to cost you $4.6 million.

Jason Drohn:
Which is how a lot of people do it. I'm sure you've met the professional New York Times bestselling people. And their guarantee is, "I will make you a best seller." It's going to cost a million dollars to do it. And $900,000 of that is buying your book.

Aaron Parkinson:
Right. It's insane. Or you could create a business model that made that whole thing profitable and become a best seller.

Jason Drohn:
Right. Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
I don't know which road you want to take.

Jason Drohn:
I'm thinking of the latter. Yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. Thinking the latter. And I'll wrap it up with this. When I was talking to this guy yesterday who I like a lot and is extremely successful, his skill set lies in the brand building awareness, social media, paid social media. But going viral, I just call it branding, right. It's a branding and awareness side of the business. And the reality is, is he wants to create a money machine to offset his consulting fees. Because consulting fees are very intensive. But with all of his marketing wizardry and knowledge, he doesn't know how to do direct response marketing.

Aaron Parkinson:
He doesn't know how to create the angle and the hook and the funnel and the ascension and the marketing automation tips and everything else to make it work. In the same way that I don't know how to run social media. I don't. It's not my jam. I know enough about it to be dangerous, but not good. Right. And he was sort of the same. He knew the terms and he knew the... But he didn't know the art side-

Jason Drohn:
Of it. Totally.

Aaron Parkinson:
... of it. Not enough time in the trenches. And my daughter, this morning I was talking to her about him and she was all excited because I dropped some big names that he's working with or whatever. And she's like, "Why does he need to hire you?"

Jason Drohn:
Right.

Aaron Parkinson:
And I had to explain to her the difference between branding and direct response and that one's not better than the other. They're like completely different planets. Even though you think they're the same thing because they're both-

Jason Drohn:
In the same ecosystem. Or the same galaxy.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. But they're just not. One's like a bike and one's like a car. They're just different, so. What we talk a lot about on these calls is the direct response world, not the branding world. And the great thing is, is if you can get proof of concept with direct response marketing and prove that it will sell, then when you invest your money in the brand side of it, you win everything.

Jason Drohn:
Well, that's like Ezra and BOOM. That's what he did. He started, what four years ago, with direct response. Four or five now. And the brand is much bigger collectively than just the products that he started with.

Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. I think they're going to do somewhere around $50 million in revenue this year. And I don't know what the valuation on a company like that would be, but I probably guess it's in the neighborhood of $600 million to $800 million.

Jason Drohn:
Something like that. Yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
Right.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah.

Aaron Parkinson:
I think we can wrap it up though. I know you got visitors to your office.

Jason Drohn:
Yeah. Savan, come to say, "Hi". Come here. No, you're not going to say, "Hi?"

Aaron Parkinson:
No? Shy. It's because he doesn't have a Facebook shirt.

Jason Drohn:
Right. Exactly. All right, man. You have fun. Have a great weekend.

Aaron Parkinson:
Everybody enjoy your weekends.

Jason Drohn:
And next Friday, we'll have... I don't know. Figure out something else cool to talk about.

Aaron Parkinson:
Absolutely. All right. I'll talk to you soon.

Jason Drohn:
Later.

Aaron Parkinson:
Bye.

Savan:
Who was that?

The post Marketing Automation Tips From DFY Sales System Experts appeared first on Done For You.

Today I want to share a little bit about email marketing campaigns, including the strategy behind setting up effective drip campaigns and some tips on getting every last ounce of conversion out of them.

In email marketing automation, there are triggers, campaigns, and goals.

We talked a little bit about triggers in a previous video (available here). Today though, we’re gonna talk about setting up email marketing campaigns.

The most important thing about a campaign is really that you’re able to set it up the way you want to, and you’re able to set it up easily.

What Makes Up An Email Marketing Campaign?

When you set up an email marketing campaign, there are a few things you need to think about.

First of all, how is somebody going to be getting to that campaign? That’s where the trigger comes in. Are they going to fill out a web form on a landing page? Is a tag going to be applied to their customer record? Are they hitting a website and being tracked through analytics? Did they not do something? Maybe not open an email? Did they open an email? What is the trigger in that piece?

The next step is, “If they do THIS or THAT, then what happens?” What campaign do we put together for that person?

Setting Up A Successful Drip Campaign

Campaigns are largely made up of messages.

A message can take the form of an email, a text message, a phone call, or a direct mail piece.  You could also consider push notifications or other forms of outbound communication like a chatbot.

The second necessary element of an email marketing campaign is what we call a ‘delay.’  The delay makes sure that all of your messages don’t stack up on top of each other. When you send a block of emails (like an email autoresponder), you need to put a delay in between those messages so you space them out, whether it’s hours, days, or weeks.

In short, you need to predefine how often those messages are going to fire and what the content of those messages will be.  If you need a hand in planning all of this out, set up an Action Plan call and we’ll help you!

An Example Email Marketing Campaigns in the Real Estate Niche

There’s a Done For You Sales Funnel client that we just rolled out.  They’re in the real estate business and we’re working with them on getting seller leads.

What our client wants to do with those seller leads is get in touch with them as quickly as possible because they know that if they don’t – the deal will die on the vine quickly.

So, when somebody signs up as a lead on their website:

1. They immediately, within five minutes, get assigned as a phone call task to one of the sales reps.  The task is added to the task management piece of the drip campaign.
2. Then five minutes after that, an email gets sent to the prospect.
3. 30 minutes after that text message gets sent to the prospect.
4. An hour after that, another task gets added to the sales reps dashboard.

This might sound a bit aggressive, and it is…  But this is a hot lead!  Someone ready to sell their house.

Basically, within the first day, this person is receiving one email, one text, and up to three phone calls.

Drip Campaign Phases

All good email marketing campaigns are broken down into phases, or stages, that help the prospect move through the buying cycle.  This is all part of why you need a sales funnel.

If any of the drip campaign messages above land, they connect with the seller, and the seller schedules a site visit or a home visit.  That campaign is then officially completed – it’s considered satisfied.

That, my friend, is a goal.  (And goals are the topic of our next video!)

Oftentimes, goals are identified when a tag is added or an action is taken inside the contact record.  Perhaps someone buys something or schedules an appointment…  The goal is fired and that that moves the prospect out of one email marketing campaign into the next.

Webinar Email Marketing Campaigns

We’ve also set drip campaigns up when somebody signs up for an automated webinar (or live webinar for that matter).  After the webinar is done, the prospect would receive an email from the Webinar Replay Sequence four hours later.  That email automation campaign would contain the link to the webinar replay. If the prospect doesn’t buy, then 20 hours after that they get the next email. Then a day after that they get the next email.

… And you can marry text messages and phone calls up with that campaign if you want!  After all, it’s just another type of message.

Now there’s some cool stuff you can do in campaigns. You have your messages and you have your delays. Those are the two big pieces.

You can also add logic.

Email Marketing Logic

With logic, you can take action on a yes or no answer.

If your prospect does THIS, add a tag.  If they do THAT, add a different tag.  And in adding a tag, you can fire off the next email marketing campaign!

A great example is from an ad management manufacturing client of ours. He calls this email marketing campaign a “Proposal Feedback Loop.”  Basically what he had us build into Axis was the ability to send a proposal to his customers that either gets accepted or rejected.

His customers get an email every day, on autopilot, with the link to the proposal in it.  The copy in the email is written to get to one of two answers – yes or no.

• If they hit the YES button, then route the lead to the sales rep.
• If they hit the NO button, send them to a survey asking them why they didn’t like the proposal. Was it 20% too high, 30% too high, 50% too high, whatever…  Then, our client has a better idea of what they can do in their future to service this particular customer.

Email Marketing Campaigns That Get Results

Lots of really cool stuff you can do in campaigns as they’re built. Messages, delays, task management, logic.

We’re constantly adding stuff into Axis as we see it work for clients and as we’re asked to build custom.

If you want to talk about email campaign structure, what your outbound marketing play is, or if you just want us to dive in and build a campaign for your business…  Fill out this short form and book an action plan call with us.

We’re happy to brainstorm and put together an action plan for you!

GSDdaily Episode 24

Today, we are going to talk about email marketing campaigns. It was funny, my son is watching TV right out there and he was like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “Working.” “What are you doing?” I’m like, “I’m going to talk to my computer.” It’s what I do every morning at 10 o’clock, I talk to my computer. All right, so this session is email marketing campaigns, sequencing, and automation that converts. This is email marketing week and basically what we’ve been doing… Shut my door there. [inaudible 00:00:49] Sebastian decides he wants to bang stuff around.

Basically, this week has been entirely about email marketing. On Monday, we talked about email, basically working with email lists, the software for email lists, CRMs, marketing automation, the whole deal. And then we talked about list building and lead magnets on Tuesday. And then… Water? Is right there, yeah. You can take it out there. Okay. And then Wednesday, we talked about email copy and today we’re going to talk about sequencing. Email copy and sequencing kind of go hand in hand. Email copy is really about sending emails that get opens, that get clicks, the whole deal. When you send an email, you want that email to do something.

You want somebody, the reader, to do something. Click go over to a blog post, to watch a video, buy something, sign up for a webinar, the whole deal. Now, an email marketing campaign, when you think about it, is a collection of emails. Oftentimes one email isn’t enough to get somebody to do the thing you want them to do. You need to send two emails or three emails or four emails. And right now, there is more people opening and reading email than there was a month ago. Open rates and we send a lot of email inside of our CRM and then also for clients on behalf of clients and for ourselves, and we’ve seen 7, 8, 9% better open rate across the board with all of our clients’ email marketing campaigns and with all of our campaigns.

The nice thing about right now is people are engaging with email more, which means email is more effective. It also means that business owners who have an email list are able to pivot faster. They’re able to pivot better in launching new products and launching new services because they have distribution, they have an email list. Today what we’re going to talk about, we’re going to go through email marketing campaigns and I have a number of blog posts that I wrote quite a while ago. We’re going to kind of dig through those a little bit. And then I also have a little presentation. I have created a lot of content around email marketing over the years because of our CRM, because of the software that we’ve generated and created.

What we’re going to do is I’m going to go through a short little presentation that talks about the buyer journey and how people end up moving through your sequences, how they move through your campaigns and how all of that should be automated. And then we’re going to go through some examples of these email marketing campaigns and we’re going to go that way. Let me switch. I’m going to share a different screen. We’re going to go here. All right. And there we go. All right. Email marketing campaigns, sequencing, and automation that converts. By automating email marketing campaigns, what you’re doing is you’re influencing the buyer life cycle. Now it isn’t necessarily just somebody who comes to your website and they either buy or they don’t.

Now what we’re doing is we’re able to send emails based on their visit sometimes using email retargeting. You can do even some retargeting through postcards. You have that additional kind of automated marketing campaign. And then, of course, you have the retargeting ads, but what you’re doing is you’re reaching out to all the people who leave and trying to influence them into your products and services. Email marketing campaigns also let you engage with the buyer after they are opt-in.

I’ve said this many, many, many times. A prospect is never ever, ever, ever more engaged than the second they opt-in. The second after they are opt-in. They opt-in on your landing page. They flip over to that confirmation page, whatever you put there as an offer is going to double in terms of conversion because people are just super engaged the second after they opt-in for something.

They’re waiting, they’re expecting something to be there for them to consume. It might be the PDF that they opted in, but ideally what you want to do is you want to email that PDF to their email inbox and use that opportunity to move them into a webinar, to move them into an offer, to do some sort of a low-end kind of tripwire thing. But the person, the prospect has never more engaged than they are in that second. Email marketing also lets you bond more effectively with your prospects. And this part is super, super important because people don’t… A good conversion rate on a sales page, 2%, 3%, depending. That means 98%, 97% of the people who hit your website, hit your sales pages, they’re not going to buy from you the first time out.

If you can get them onto an email list and then market to them over time, then they’re going to know and trust you. You’re going to be able to bond with them. And email marketing campaigns let you do that because you’re sending them blog posts, you’re sending them videos, you’re sending them live streams, you’re sending them all of the material that you’re creating to grow your business, grow your brand, the whole thing. But you’re also using it to bond with them. And they’re growing in that relationship as they go. Email marketing campaigns help in that manner and it can all be automated, and so it can trigger based on if they open this email, they get this email. It’s really nice in terms of just giving them exactly what they want.

The fourth point is, you can promote the right product at the right time. So last week, we talked about the survey segmentation last Friday. In our Livestream, we talked about survey segmentation, putting people in buckets and then sending them an email. This is kind of a continuation of that because the email that goes out based on how they answer a survey is going to be predetermined by the things they’re interested in. If somebody comes through your marketing funnel and they are interested in, let’s say, HIIT workouts, so they’re interested in HITT workouts and then for the next two weeks you can send them HIIT workouts, high-intensity interval training type of workouts.

And you know that they’re going to be into it because they told you they were into it, but all of that can be automated in the email marketing campaign. It ends up being a super nice way of just automating processes. You can also work with abandonments. The cart abandonment on an order form is typically like 70, 80%, which means you can reclaim up to 70 or 80% of your sales or of your possible sales by putting email marketing campaigns in place. And then you can also re-engage death leads. People who haven’t opened an email in 30 days or 60 days or whatever, typically you can send them through a re-engagement campaign and then pull them back into your process.

In understanding the buyer life cycle, there are five different buckets before they actually buy something from you. The first is they’re brand new to you. They’re brand new, they’re just becoming aware of you, they just signed up for your lead magnet. They’re just learning about you. The second kind of stage is they’re on your email list, but they’re still not really sure what you do or whether your stuff is worthwhile or not. They kind of know that you know what the hell you’re talking about, but they’re not in it yet. They haven’t decided but they’re loosely interested. Then the third step is they’ve opened a few emails, they kind of feel like they’re getting to know you, they like you, they trust you, and now they just kind of need to see some offers.

And they need to see what you’re working on. Is it a product, is a service, whatever. The fourth stage, they’ve watched the sales video and they’ve left without buying for whatever reason. Now, they’re getting warm, so they’re approaching a deal. Then the fifth stage is they’ve clicked an add to cart button and they didn’t complete the order. They hit the button, they went to the order form, they didn’t have their credit, whatever, and they didn’t end up processing the order. They either buy or they don’t. And really this is were most kind of marketers and business owners leave it. They kind of front-load everything so that everything is based around this inbound marketing piece.

But then once it gets to the rubber meets the road, this person is on the fence and they’re just waiting for you or somebody to push them over the edge and buy something, and then they’re going to be a hyper buyer with you. This is really where most marketers and business owners just kind of sit back and let it play out. They assume that if somebody didn’t buy, it’s because they didn’t want the product, they didn’t want the service. When they aren’t right for the offer, they didn’t want the product bad enough to pull out their wallet or the sales copy didn’t quite do enough to sell it or they need to add bonuses, or they need to redesign the page or whatever. When what really happened was the new prospect doesn’t know you or your company well enough to place an order.

They haven’t bonded with you that well yet, or they didn’t have time to go through the whole sales video or to try to understand the offer. This is kind of where the price and complexity thing comes in play. The higher the price, the higher complexity, the more the different things you need to do in order to work through the sales funnel. A low ticket, low complexity offer, it’s going to be great for a sales video. An upper ticket or higher ticket, higher complexity offer is going to need a sales to call like an automated webinar or a sales call. It’s all part of this automation piece. Or they didn’t have their credit card on them. I mean, maybe the credit card was at home or at the office or whatever.

Or they wanted to think about it or sleep on it and see if it really was a good idea. I mean, there are lots of reasons why people don’t buy it. Now, I mean my son just walked in here three times while we started this thing and it’s like, okay. It’s always jarring. If you’re just taken out of your element now, especially with the pandemic, it’s like everybody’s just kind of in a funk. There’s some of that at play.

A notification comes in or they feel like they needed to be checking the news or whatever. There’s a lot of external factors that come into the purchase or non-purchase decision that you have no control over. Now, let’s kind of put this thinking into action. We talked about buyer stages, talked about pieces of the buyer journey and as they relate to email and how you can kind of correspond with some email marketing campaigns for it.

Now, after you get the new lead you, you want to deliver that lead magnet through email, then you want to present an offer of some kind and you want to pay attention to what they’re doing. We use a piece of software called Inspectlet for this, I-N-S-P-E-C-T-L-E-T.com. You can read it on the screen. But basically it records the screen of somebody who is going through your funnel. Another one is Hotjar, a great piece of software. And if they escalate, they go through the buying process and then they can go through your upsells, you want to track them through the process. If they buy or sign up, then you’ve accomplished your mission. You have a new buyer in your mix.

Now, here’s kind of the steps as they play out. We don’t really do a lot of image ads anymore. This is kind of how we ended up putting stuff like this together. Step one is you want to build trust. And how we build trust is we don’t go over directly. Usually, we have a couple of email marketing campaigns that are running really cheap cold traffic leads right now. But typically, you want to send them to a blog post or an advertorial or video or some piece of content that is going to give value without necessarily detracting from value. And I think next week we’re going to do a full week on Facebook ads for this so we can put this together, learn how to do Facebook videos, the whole deal.

Step One: Build Trust

Step one is you want to build trust and this is just an image ad with just an ad. And then that image ad goes to this blog post. Notice we have the same images, so the same images in both scenarios. They go to this page and then there’s a blog post. And the blog post has sub-headlines, there’s a couple of calls to action in there with links and you know what else. Banner on the upper right-hand side, more posts. It is an engagement piece, something that they can just read. They don’t have to do anything, they don’t have to take any action. They can back up, go back to Facebook and whatever. The point is that our email marketing campaigns have already started because now they’re on our retargeting list.

Now whether it’s with AdRoll, whether it’s on Facebook, whatever, we’ve placed the pics where we’re able to get back in front of them with our second ad, which is this, there it is.

Step Two: Get the Lead

In this process is we want to get the lead. They know who we are, what the offer is. They don’t and they don’t know what the offer is, but they know in general what we do. They’ve seen a blog post and now we’re trying to get them back to an opt-in form, a lead magnet form so that they can give us their email address, and that’s what this is doing. This is a free workshop, or it can be a free report or lead magnet or whatever, all the stuff we talked about on Tuesday.

It takes them to a landing page, this landing page. You’ve seen it before because it is one of our best converting landing page styles. We’ve got a text on the left, an image button on the rights, two-step opt-in. They enter their email address here and then we’ve got their email. At this point, we can start bonding and promoting products to them so we can start moving them through some of our processes. We send them the lead magnet fulfillment email, which is, hey, thanks so much for downloading this. Here’s the link to your thing. And then pay attention to your email over the next couple of days.

Goal number one is to get them the lead magnet, the thing they just downloaded. We can also pre-frame the rest of what we need them to do, which is there’s a webinar here, there’s a sales video here, there’s a product, there are blog posts. But you don’t want to jump into deep too earlier so else you can scare them off. It’s like you can’t walk up to a girl and propose to her and then hope that she’s going to say yes. It’s just not going to work that way, but you want to warm up. Do you know what I mean? My wife’s probably watching this laughing right now because it took us 13 years to get married. It was fucking funny.

Step Three: Present an Offer

All right, so step number three is we want to present an offer. After they are opt-in, they get the lead magnet and then step three is we present an offer. The offer itself, we’ve got a headline, we’ve got the video and then an add to cart button below it. Chelsea just laughed, this is my wife. We want to present an offer in step number three. Now here, basically what we’re doing is whether it’s a sales video, whether it’s a full-motion sales video, we want to get that first purchase. In this particular case, it’s a free trial, free 14-day trial for a piece of software. In other cases, it’s a free plus shipping offer for a book, or a $37 digital product, or a 495 digital product, or whatever.

But this is all kind of low-end stuff and what we’re doing is we’re trying to pick off sales at this point, pick off buyers. And once that happens, then we can March them through an upsell path. And if they don’t buy this, which most people don’t, I mean 95, 96% of people don’t buy this offer. Then what we want to do is we want to send them emails to bring them back here. That’s where the email marketing campaigns come in. That’s where the automation comes in and the sequencing comes in because we want to bring them back to this point, have them click the add to cart button, and then move them into the next space. At this point, they either continue signing up or they don’t. They’re at the sales page and they either hit the button or they don’t.

If they don’t, they get product promo emails. If they do, they hit the add to cart. They leave, they get the shopping cart abandonment sequence and they’re removed from the product emails. Basically, send them product emails until they add them to the cart. Then once they add to the cart, we remove them from the promo emails, and then we send them a shopping cart abandonment sequence. We’re stepping them up through the email marketing campaigns to get them into what we need them to at the time we need them to do it. Once they get the shopping cart abandonment sequences and they pull the trigger, they are a new member, then we remove them from all prospect lists unless there’s something else that they’re going to be ascending to. Unless there’s something that they’re going to move to.

And you can also mail them upsell offers. For this campaign, there are some services on the backside. Some of those services and stuff can play out. That’s what email marketing campaigns are really meant to move you through, move a prospect through the buyer journey, understanding that they are going to drop off at some point.

That’s what the email marketing campaigns are 100% all about. Let’s talk about some jumping-off points here. For folks who didn’t buy, you want to make sure that you send them a download link, you want to make sure that they’ve got a way to get back to the sales page. Confirmation pages, a lot of times are hidden so what we’ll do is we’ll end up kind of lopping off the front side of that sales video, which is, hey, thanks so much for downloading the report.

We’ll take the first 30, 45 seconds off and then it just becomes a standalone sales page that you can throw anywhere in your site. That works out nice. You want to make sure to include language on bonuses or discounts if you’re going to offer those. And then you really want to promote that first offer for three or four days. Don’t assume that one email is going to be enough. Most people don’t open their first email. That’s accurate actually. 50, 55, 60% of people open that first lead magnet download email. The other 40% won’t, even though they just opted in for it, they just won’t. Sometimes it’s 70%. Literally, you want to engage them as quickly as possible on that page. I mean, full pattern or up style, you know what I mean.

But after that, you promote the offer for three or four days, if they pull the trigger, awesome, they are in the rest of your sequence. If they don’t, send them bonding emails and eventually try to pull them back into that. That’s how you would end up working email marketing campaigns from that front. If you have any questions on this presentation stuff, we’re going to kick through some blog posts and kind of talk about how it all plays out from a sequencing standpoint too. All right, we good? All right, cool. I’m going to stop sharing that presentation. That presentation has literally been waiting in the wings for four years. I wrote that and performed that a really long time ago. I can’t believe I remembered having it.

This page we’re streaming live on right now, so I’m not going to hit play. For all your content marketing junkies out there. Basically what I did was, I found this old blog post that was already optimized for the keyword phrase, email marketing campaigns and I dropped my new GSD Daily on this page. I’m going to grab the transcript and then I’m going to paste it all the way down here at the bottom of this content. This is broke, whatever. As I said, it’s old, which is going to add about 4,500 words with the keyword phrase, email marketing campaigns all through it. We’re going to be ranking like crazy for this keyword phrase to these old blog posts.

We talked about what makes up an email marketing campaign, setting up a successful drip campaign. We kind of covered on Monday, but just as a quick recap, what you want to do is you want to use a piece of software like Convert or Drip or ActiveCampaign or Hours, which is the access you want to basically drip these emails out based on what somebody does on your website. So what they buy, what they opt-in for, and all of those are triggered. If somebody opts in for a lead magnet, like what we talked about, if they opt-in for a lead magnet, then they’re able to receive the emails, getting them their lead magnet and then moving through the product promotional sequence.

Drip campaign phases, we talked about. Webinar email marketing campaigns and email marketing logic. I talked a little bit about logic. If you have a prospect, like how we do it in an active campaign, they go to this URL. If they go to the shopping cart abandonment page, that URL, then what we do is we turn on in the shopping cart abandonment sequence and we turn off our product promo sequences. That’s the logic that I’ve referred to here. If they go through and they hit a blog post with a certain phrase in the URL, then they’re added into that bucket.

As for us, how we use it is if you go to a blog post that has the phrase, email in it, then you’re put into an email bucket. Your marketing messages are going to be weighted more heavily towards email stuff. Whereas if it goes funnel, it’s going to be weighted more heavily to funnel stuff. That’s how the logic and the triggers end up working out. Some powerful email sequences you can’t afford not to have, so we talked about these. There’s a lot of different ways to kind of cut-up email. You have your email marketing sequences, which is basically anything that’s pre-populated. We always plan for the first 30 days of every client’s. Somebody comes in and we plan the first 30 days worth of client inbound marketing materials.

Usually involves three to four emails on promoting a webinar, six emails on promoting a webinar replay, three to four emails promoting sales videos. They step through those email sequences as they go. That is all pre-populated and that is all written from scratch and custom. They’re RSS email sequences. Every blog has an RSS feed unless you actively turn it off. Every time you publish a blog post, the RSS feed publishes its submits. And then the email marketing camp or the email marketing software will actually take that and send an email out with all of those blog posts in it.

It’s a way of automating your blog posts. The ones that are being sent, which is nice and it works, but you have to be able to format it well in order for it to work. And oftentimes, you’re going to find that not all blog posts are relevant to all people. You might send one to one group and another one to another group, and that’s where the bonding and the nurturing come in, in the play. Then you have your regular broadcasts. Yhat’s like every time I email these live streams out, it’s a broadcast email because I have to create new graphics, I got to create new links and there’s nothing I can pre-populate. I email them as broadcasts every morning.

I pick the audience that those people are going to be mailed to and I write the email, hit send, it’s mailed out as a broadcast. It’s a one-shot deal. I don’t automate it. I will automate the replays of these and throw them into sequences because those links never change. The broadcast is for all the one-off stuff. Transactional emails are anything transactional in nature. So things like order confirmations is a transactional email. Things like password reset emails. They’re usually things you have no control over unless you’re actually building software. So member onboarding emails when somebody signs up for a membership. So there’s lots of this kind of little transactional emails that it’s just important to note that they’re important because they usually get only fire when something good happens.

Well, I guess password changes aren’t really good or bad, but… So there’s that kind of email too. Those you’re going to need to kind of think about and personalize in your marketing mix. And then there are email sequences that are important to just think about and engage with, and when you’re putting together your product promo sequences, there’s a couple in here that I just wanted to highlight. The first is a product sales sequence. Whenever you’re promoting a product, whether it’s a physical product or a digital product, it should usually have three or four emails. They are sent to go out like, email one is day one, email two a day two, and then the last day, send two emails. Always come up with a reason to email them, whether it’s a flash sale or a discount or whatever.

Inside our access CRM, there is a product sales sequence that you can plug into, answer a couple of questions and it will create the emails for you. I think I might need the HTTPS, I’m just throwing it over here in the comments. That’s where the software is. But the email copy, Apple actually copy for you. The ascension sequence is when somebody buys your front end offer and they don’t buy your upsells. When they don’t buy your upsells, you want to bring them back to purchase your upsells and the ascension sequence is going to help you do that.

But basically, if they hit the shopping cart but don’t buy within 30 minutes, then they get three emails. And these are patterned after Amazon. The first email goes out 30 minutes after they don’t buy, the second email is 24 hours after that, the third email is 24 hours after that. What we’re trying to do is to get them to take action on something urgently, like you’re missing out on the discount, maybe that kind of thing. We always use flash sale sequences all the time for a lot of our clients. Basically, if somebody doesn’t buy something the first time out, somebody doesn’t buy your digital course the first time out, then you send them a three email or four email sequence.

And then tomorrow, you send them an email. This is this kind of 80%, buy it in 24 hours. Or buy it at 12 o’clock tonight or whatever. What we’re doing is a timed flash sale countdown and there’s lots of little urgency kind of buying triggers in there that we capitalize on for the flash sale. What this does is it spikes your front-end sales so that you have more people running through the upsell process.

It works out tremendously well. Then we have webinar replay emails, which tend to be some of our best performing emails. The webinar replay emails, it’s a six email sequence. The first two emails promote the webinar replay, the third email promotes the webinar replay and also the offer.

The replay is no more. Then the webinar promotion emails, it’s a four email sequence, they get somebody on to the webinar. You can read about all these. The link for this is in the chatbox, or you can just go sign up for access at our triggers.app and jump in and you can get all these sequences for you and your business right now. That is all I got for you today. I’m going a little bit over. We’re at 10:31. These are informally kind of at 30 minutes. But if you have any questions at all, send me a Facebook message or jump into the DFY funnels group, ask in there. Want to start getting some conversation going in there and if you have anything at all, just let me know, all right? Thanks.

For Questions and Guide

If you have questions for a future episode, go to doneforyou.com/gsd. Then if you want us to go through and put together a custom funnel for you, then book an action plan called, doneforyou.com/start.

The post Sequencing And Automation Of Email Marketing Campaigns appeared first on Done For You.

As a marketer or business owner, your email list and audience are your most significant assets. It's your foundation.  The better you communicate with your audience using email marketing software and autoresponder emails, the more revenue you generate and the quicker you can scale your business.

Your list is your stability. That's why we need to know what the best autoresponder software is...

You can always communicate with your list – your buyers and your prospects.  You can mail affiliate products. You can promote your product launches. You can do surveys.  You can let people know about new offers and product updates.  You can even launch new products.

Email is a compelling medium when you understand it and use it correctly, which is what Axis's Email Copy App was born to help you do by writing email copy for you.

Your Email List Is Your Foundation

Email marketing goes in waves. Now and then, we read reports and blog posts explaining that email marketing is dead and that building a solid email list is a waste of time.  Yet, we continue to hear that email marketing is the most significant business revenue driver, generating more cash than any other form of advertising.

It doesn't matter what niche or business you're in; your email list is one of your most valuable assets. In some cases, it's your ONLY asset!

After talking to clients over the years, there is a lot of confusion over the best way to build a list, store a list, and market to a list. Today's post should help demystify a lot of that.

First, let's talk a little about what you need to have to start building a list so you have a sound system and infrastructure started.

NOTE: Having an 'email list' isn't the same as blasting out an email to 100 contacts in Gmail!  That isn't good! There's a reason why email marketing choosing the best autoresponder software is so important! :0)

Picking The Best Autoresponder Software

Email marketing software and email autoresponder solutions are the glue that makes everything work regarding email marketing.  The software itself is what stores your email list and gives you the ability to mail to them.  In short, it's how you get into their inboxes!

If you're collecting names and email addresses for marketing, you must be CAN-SPAM compliant…  Every email must have an unsubscribe link, the email addresses should be double opt-in, and many other things.

You CAN'T just collect their email addresses and mail them messages from Gmail!

I know a lot of business owners who think mass sending emails from their desktop mail app is the right thing to do, but it's not.  And really, I don't know why you would!  Email marketing software is super cheap, and it keeps you out of the doghouse in terms of being legal and compliant…

Plus, when you send an email, it gets to where it needs to go - the subscriber's email inbox!

There are LOTS of email marketing software providers out there.  Choosing the best autoresponder software is essential since it's a subset of email marketing.  Most of them are very good.  Their job is pretty simple.  They need to get your emails to where they need to go.

For email marketing and automation purposes, we want to make sure that:

• There is an autoresponder feature
• The software has the capability to grow with you
• Price-wise, it's reasonable based on the size of your business

So, here's a roundup of some of the best email marketing platforms out there…  Arranged by 'business complexity.

Getting Started

The post Don’t Miss Out: Top Tips for Choosing the Best Autoresponder Software appeared first on Done For You.

So, how do you create a strong brand? And how do you use automation to empower your brand? In this article, we’re going to talk about building a strong brand faster by using email automation.

To create a significant impression on the minds of your customers you have to represent your brand consistently across all marketing strategies, especially email marketing. Emails are one of the most effective ways to build a strong brand presence and drive sales online. It is a great customer retention tool with which you nurture your leads with personalized messages and convert them into profitable sales.

When you leverage email marketing to create a strong brand, the biggest challenge is determining which email campaigns will work for you best. Marketers often adopt the strategy of ‘email blasts,’ sending the same message to everyone on their subscriber list. When customers open the email and find the content inappropriate to what they are looking for, it can cause dissatisfaction, and they might refrain from opening your emails further.

Email personalization and marketing automation is the answer to delivering the right message to the right person, and enhancing your brand.

Successful email marketing campaigns aren’t just about one or two emails. When it comes to sending bulk email messages, each personalized as per your unique customer needs and preferences, email automation can help streamline the processes.

With email marketing automation, you can do several useful things, such as:

• Segment your audience
• Personalize campaign messages
• Track buyers’ actions
• Lead scoring.

Automated emails get 152% higher click-through rates than broadcast emails. Automation is all about catching people at the right moment when they’re ready to act. And hey, it works.

Source: Epsilon.

Here’s how email marketing automation can help you create a strong brand.

The numbers say it all…

Before you proceed to how you can use email automation to create a strong brand image, let’s check out why it matters at all.

Check out the statistics below:

5 ways you can use email automation to build a strong brand

According to stats, 90% of businesses haven’t automated their marketing efforts yet, and the 10% that do enjoy remarkable benefits.

Here are five effective email marketing automation tips you can use to create a strong brand.

1. Segment your email list

One of the biggest benefits of email automation is that you can segment your subscribers’ list to deliver personalized experiences to your customers. Sophisticated email automation software like Axis Email Marketing and Automation helps build your email list and segment it based on their demographics, buying interests and spending behavior, what emails they have read, when someone subscribed to your emails, etc.

DFY Axis email automation tool will manage your lead generation email campaigns and traffic by creating high conversion email copy, sending it to the right audience at the right time, and nurturing the leads to increase conversion. Creating customized emails based on your segmented audience makes them more relevant, while increasing click-through rates. When they know the emails have content related to what they are looking for, it will keep them out of the spam folder, and the open rates will be higher.

This can go in the long run to help build a powerful brand image and customer loyalty.

2. Create email copy that represents your brand

Whether you are a seasoned marketer or a novice, nothing can beat the importance of effective branding. Moreover, email marketing automation is a unique way you can use to showcase your brand impressively. Make sure every email you send clearly publicize your brand so that whenever someone opens your emails, they can instantly identify that it is from your company. You can use email automation software to flaunt your brand in the following ways:

• The email header should clearly display the company’s logo or brand name
• Use the same colors as in your brand and logo throughout the email copy, including headers, subheadings, and call-to-action button. This will help your audience easily associate with the brand
• Make sure you use similar fonts, hues, and designs as featured in other marketing platforms and materials

3. Create a strong brand – Personalize your emails with automation

Another fantastic way you can use email marketing automation is to personalize your emails. Customizing your email messages is much more than just having a subscriber’s name in the body of the content. How personalized, segmented, or targeted you want the emails to be, depends on your creativity and the automation software you are using.

Personalization through email automation isn’t just about making tasks simpler for you. It is about providing your target audience what is most relevant to their needs and right when they want it. It helps set up an optimum email campaign workflow that does not overload your subscribers with just any or all information about your business. Instead, serve them precisely what they are looking for, ensuring they identify the same in the first few seconds of opening the email.       

So, how you can use email marketing automation to personalize your email content? Here are some ideas for you:

• Email automation software can customize an email by placing individual customer’s name in the subject line or to address the person. For example, instead of using a generic format “Hi,” you can personalize the email with “Dear Edmond King.”
• The software can pinpoint customer’s buying interests – which products they have seen before, what are pending in the shopping cart, etc. Based on this, you can personalize the email by providing special offers or discounts on the product they have searched for earlier. This can help boost conversions.
• Send email content based on the lifestyle of the email recipient.
• Email recommendations for similar items they might like. The email automation tool can analyze a customer’s website behavior and likewise, send comparable items that might appeal them to buy.

Personalized emails are an effective tool to engage your audience with relevant content, spark excitement, and boost conversions. Moreover, email automation is the only way you can streamline the processes and create a strong brand.

4. Target abandoned carts through automated email series

Do you know the average rate of online shopping cart abandonment is 81.4%? That means as much as $4 trillion is lost from buyers who were genuinely interested in your products but did not complete the purchase due to some reasons. The good news is: smart marketers can recover 63% of the revenues lost to cart abandonment. That is why it is important to address the shopping cart abandonment with automated email campaigns.

Rather than focusing on a single reminder message, send a sequence of emails and continue nurturing the prospects to convert them into sales. Set up an email series, considering sending the first email after 24 hours of cart abandonment, the second email after 48 hours, and the third email after 72 hours. If required, send more emails to keep the campaign live and until the customers take definitive action. The email automation software will automatically trigger the emails to target the buyers at the right time and with the right content.

• 1^st Email: Remind buyers what product offerings they left behind in the cart

• 2^nd Email: Address why they are not purchasing your products

• 3^rd Email: Provide special offer, reward or incentive

When customers get the impression that you care for them, it will help build loyalty for your brand. This can go in the long run to ensure business success.

5. Let your subscribers manage their email preferences

If you want the most from email automation, then allow your subscribers to manage the preferences on their own. Choose a tool that lets your subscribers change their preferences – what kind of emails they want to have, how frequently they want the emails, etc. This will help in effective segmentation while enhancing your attrition rates based on relevancy, time management, and frequency.

Conclusion

There are umpteen ways you can use automation to drive your email campaigns, build a strong brand, and boost conversions. In this regard, you can use Axis email marketing and automation tool that helps you grow and manage your email list, and market your business in an automated and effective manner. From building your email list to creating high-conversion email copy and proven landing pages, the software ensures you leverage the potential of automation to the fullest.

The Axis email automation software is built to work on most email marketing platforms. If you do not have one yet, Done For You will guide you through the custom software we have created. What more! The email automation tool is systems-based, which means it will continue working even when you are not. This ensures your target audience is being efficiently marketed and leads will come pouring in any time of the day. It is powered by all the triggers and rules to help send personalized emails, create a strong brand image, and drive sales.

Book a demo today and get one-on-one expert coaching to help you harness the potential of email marketing automation to build a strong brand.

The post Email Automation Tips: How To Create A Strong Brand appeared first on Done For You.

Today we are going to talk about SMS text message marketing and using texts to close more deals...

Now, SMS marketing and text message marketing hit big-time like two or three years ago.  I remember thinking, "Wow, it's so terribly unfortunate that we marketers are going to be abusing this platform that is very near and dear to a lot of people's hearts." We're just going to ruin it (ie. like Pinterest, Twitter, etc...)

So, I had a lot of trepidation about SMS marketing and text message marketing just because it just seems like such an invasion of someone's privacy.  When I get a text message, I assume it's from a friend or a family member... And that it is much more urgent than an email but not quite as urgent as like a phone call.

So, it was just my expectation around text message marketing that needed to be changed - not the technology or the platform itself.

Now, the reason I bring it up now is that people are using SMS marketing and text message marketing a lot more frequently, in a lot of good ways. It actually has served to boost conversions in a lot of marketing automation workflows that we've rolled out too, when used right.

When To Use SMS Marketing

Text messages engage prospects in a different way than just email or just phone calls.

So much so, that we actually built it directly into Axis, our business growth platform, because from a marketing automation standpoint hitting people with one touch is great...  Hitting people with two different touches at about the same time is even better.

Where Text Message Marketing Works

So, here's an example.

Let's say you own a window company. You have a crew that goes out and puts windows in houses. Somebody visits your website, does a bit of research on the brand of windows you recommend, and then they fill out a form for more information. They want you to call them back at some point to schedule an estimate...

Now. put yourself in their shoes.  They've just filled out a form on their website.  Immediately they should get an email afterward, saying, "Hey, thanks so much. We will get back to you ASAP." That's normal, right?

Now, the problem is that person probably isn't checking their email at that moment. So, you may tell them that there is an email coming to their inbox, but they probably aren't going to go log in to their email at that very second.

I can't tell you how many things I've signed up for and I haven't gone and checked my email when a web page told me to. I think to myself, " The next time I'm in my email I'll just see it."

Then, I forget.

How SMS Marketing Engages More Prospects

Well, imagine taking that little customer-getting campaign one step further and sending an email AND THEN a text message right afterward!  So, somebody signs up for a sales appointment and not only do they get an email (that they may or may not check!) but they also receive a text message immediately! Their phone is probably in a pocket or it's sitting somewhere around the keyboard that they are filling in that form with.

That is the power of SMS marketing and text message marketing when it's done right.

How about appointment reminders? Or discount codes? Think about all of the little marketing things that are time sensitive and the only way that we really have to get in front of somebody is email or phone...

SMS Marketing Automation

Right now, you probably are not calling each of your customers every time you run a promotion.  You probably don't have a call center who's doing cold calling or leaving voice mails.  What you're probably doing is sending an email and that's it...  Not multiple emails - just one.  That's a shame too.

Imagine being able to send an email and a text message at the same time, reminding them that this promotion is going on right now!  Take it a step further - adding them to a marketing automation workflow that sends them an email and an SMS message once a day for the next 5 days while the promotion is on!

So, inside Axis, we took all of the headaches out of sending SMS messages and text messages to your contact list.

You can send a text message right from your customer's contact record itself...

Send An SMS Message Your Entire Contact List?

Or right from the contact dashboard, sending an SMS message to your whole list even!

Basically, you log in, select which contacts you want to receive the text message, write the text message, and hit send.  That's it.  It's out the door.  Your prospects will get it seconds after you hit send inside Axis. And not only can you send broadcast text messages, but you can also add these text messages into your marketing automation campaigns!

Combining Email Marketing And SMS Into A Single Marketing Automation Campaign

After that text message is set up inside an Axis campaign, whenever someone fills out a form on your website, gets tagged inside of Axis, or triggers a campaign... In other words, they move into a marketing automation campaign... They get email #1 and SMS message #1.  Then a day goes by and they get email #2 and SMS message #2.  A few more days go by, they get the third email and text...  And on it goes!

So, the key here is using SMS marketing or text message marketing in a way that deepens a relationship with your prospect and engages your customers on a whole different level. That is why we built it into Axis.

... And SMS Is Painless To Set Up

And the beauty is, you don't have to set up some stupid middleware plugin to make text messaging work in your marketing automation (or to send a text message for that matter).  You don't have to go set up the text message service or pay out of pocket for some plugin plus each and every text message you send.

Literally, you log in, you upload your contacts, choose who you want to text, and hit the "Send Text" button.

To make a long story short, there are lots of different ways you can use SMS marketing and text message marketing to engage your customers more deeply. Some of the things it's perfect for are appointment reminders, discount codes, and any other kind of a notification that is more urgent than just an email.

If you have any questions at all, feel free to book a strategy session with my team and I. Go to consultingsession.com and we can look at SMS messages, your marketing automation campaigns, and figure out what you can be doing better to generate more revenue from the leads that are coming in.

The post SMS Marketing – How Text Message Marketing Can Get You Sales appeared first on Done For You.

Today, we've got some email marketing tips for you...  And what we're going to get started with is how often you should be sending email blasts!

First and foremost - The term "email blast..."  These are your customers and your prospects...  Sometimes, describing an email blast as "sending an email" or "mailing to your list" is a little more palatable.  But, I've talked to hundreds of business owners who want to blast their list!

With that, we're going to dive in.

When you're setting up email marketing campaigns and drip email sequences, you want to make sure that you're emailing your prospects frequently enough without going crazy, without making them want to unsubscribe, mark you as spam, or just generally fall out of touch.

In short - send out your "email blast" frequently enough WITHOUT upsetting your subscribers.

Unfortunately, there's no magic answer to how often you should mail. I can't tell you that 4 times a week is the optimal number of times a week or a month. It 100% has to do with your niche, your audience, your offers, your tone, and your content. There are so many X factors in terms of what you mail your list and how often you can mail them.

What you have to do is get a very, very good understanding of what your list expects and actually mail it to them!  Send your email list emails and see what the open rates are, what the engagement is, what the unsubscribes are, and deliver what they want!

Email Marketing Tips: Have A 30-Day Plan

Now there are some general rules of thumb that we like to follow.

Let's say a new lead hits your website and they sign up for your landing page today, what happens?

We always plan for the first 30 days of email marketing campaigns, focused around what we're trying to get a prospect to do.   We have a plan for at least the first month. (I know that's quite a lot, but it's what our Done For You Sales Funnel Client have come to expect - largely because of the best practices we employ for them.)

Typically that plan goes like this.

• Day 0, which is the very first day, 10 minutes after they opt in, is fulfillment. In short, we deliver the ebook or the thing they requested when they opted-in.
• Day 1, which is tomorrow, ask them what they thought of the PDF or lead magnet that you sent them.  You could also include a content marketing piece, blog post or Youtube video.  Send them something that is high content, high value, that you know people like because other people commented on it already.
• Day 2, is bonding. Send an email, linking to your social profiles.  Talk about your experience in the industry, showcase a case study or testimonial.  Explain how you helped somebody do something in the world and it made the world a better place.
• Day 3.  Continue bonding (more of the ^^^)
• Day 4.  Continue bonding (more of the ^^^)
• Day 5.  Don't send anything.
• Day 6. Don't do anything.
• Day 7, do a promotion.  Send emails promoting a product or offer that you have in your repertoire. Send them an email saying, "Buy this." (write it a little better than that though!  My point, you want to kick off a promo on Day 7 and beyond.)

Email Marketing Tips: Get The Clicking

Each email you want them to open, read and click a link. You want them actionable.

You want them clicking the link in the email to go somewhere because that is training them to continue clicking the links in the emails that you send.

If they just open an email and don't ever do anything, you're never going to generate any revenue from them. You don't make money from email opens...

Email Marketing Tips: Go With The Flow In Blocks Of Three

You want to read your list.  Go with the flow.  If they respond to webinars, do some webinar marketing.  If they respond to sales videos or video sales letters, send more sales videos or video sales letters.  If they need more content and education, send more blog posts!

When you're promoting something, always do blocks of three.

If you're promoting a product through a webinar or sales video, do email blasts in blocks of three. Mail three days in a row, then give them two days off.

You also want to make sure you send multiple emails linking to the same thing.  Not everybody opens their email all the time. Send multiple emails. Track the links and the opens. Sort based on who's opening and who's clicking links.

Email Marketing Tips: On Your OFF Days

During the two "off" days, you will probably want to add some goodwill boosting content... Content marketing type stuff that people are going to like. For example, blog posts, videos, podcasts, workshops; they're all great to mail.

You don't need to send multiple emails for content either - one email's going to do it. If you write a blog post once a week then send that email, make sure to send an email out with a link to the blog post.

Email Marketing Tips: Two Promos Per Month Max

Max out at two big promos a month.  More than that, people will get upset.  Less than that and your revenue is less than it should be.

If you do, one per week, your list will be aggravated.  It'll seem a bit aggressive.

The better way is to do one big promo email blast, then send a few pieces of content, then another promo.

The content that you send out in between promos reestablishes goodwill and faith in your business!  Then, it's easier to walk into the next promo because your email list will be 'preframed' for the offer...

Email Marketing Tips: How Many Emails Per Month?

From an email frequency standpoint, you'll get pretty far with two big promos separated by bonding content.

If the frequency is too high, which sometimes happens, send fewer emails. If you have a list of people who enjoy sewing, 10 to 15 emails a month might be too much!  They might log in to look at their emails once every three or four days and they see four emails from you. They're going to say,"Meh, they send too much email.  I'm going to unsubscribe."

So just make sure to watch your numbers and you should be fine.

So if you need to lighten it up, that's awesome. And if you need email heavier, that's fine too.

I will tell you that the longer you go without emailing your list, that next email, unsubscribes are going to be through the roof. After that, it calms down. If you mail two or three days in a row, the unsubscribes and spam complaints will go down.

The simple fact is, people forget about you in four to five days. It's kind of crazy to think about, but if you have 20,000 people on your email list and haven't emailed them in 10 days...  They've already started forgetting they signed up in your email broadcast list! You will get unsubscribes.

The more often you mail, the lower total unsubscribe rate you have.

Email Marketing Tips: Unused Hotel Rooms?

I know a lot of marketers who think of the people on their email list as "unused hotel room.

They send email blasts out each and every day because for every day that they don't mail them, they're missing out on revenue. So it really just depends on the type of relationship that you want to have with your customers, with your prospects.

Personally, we treat our email list like family.  We want to send them content, videos, webinars and lots of stuff that'll make their business better.  We don't send email blasts for affiliate promotions and a bunch of random stuff.  That's us, though.  You may want to grow a list, mail the heck out of it, and let those people go sooner than later.

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If you want to talk about email marketing campaigns, frequency, campaigns, sales funnels, or any of that kind of stuff; set up an action plan call with us or click the button below.

The post Email Marketing Tips: How Frequently You Should Send Email Blasts appeared first on Done For You.

But, what exactly is marketing automation?

Marketing automation – What it is and what it is not

Marketing automation is a way of targeting customers using software that works on auto pilot after you initially set it up. Software sends automated marketing messages and notifications across multiple channels, such as emails, text messages, social networks, pop up notifications, push messages, etc.

Undoubtedly, marketing automation fuels efficiency as well as global outreach. Research shows that marketing automation increases sales productivity by 14.5% and reduces marketing overhead by 12.2%.

Automation tools and software are very effective in lead generation through chatbots across several platforms such as email marketing, webpages, social media, and SMS. Another research reveals that 4 out of 5 users increased leads by choosing marketing automation software and almost 77% experienced increased conversions.

Automation tools are effective in analyzing customer demographics, usage patterns, and behavior. Data collected can be further used for effective customer targeting and segmentation. Using Axis Advanced Analytics, users can understand marketing data better and improve sales performance.

The most effective ways to optimize marketing automation is to map customer experience and use dynamic and personalized content.

Brief history of marketing automation

When IBM launched Unica automation software back in 1992, it was one of its kind. Presently, the same Unica products power the omnichannel marketing as well as real-time automation solutions of the company. When Unica was launched, most businesses did not even think of having an online interface. In fact, the internet was in its infancy.

With the penetration of the internet in the mid-2000s and cloud-based marketing tools like Act-In and HubSpot development, things changed. By 2010, there were almost a billion social media users. Around the same time, Infusionsoft and HubSpot integrated social marketing tools. Webinars and mobile commerce started becoming popular, thus contributing to the development of some of the finest automated marketing tools.

According to reports released by EmailModay, in 2017 over 50% of the companies were already using marketing automation tools whereas 60% of all B2B companies planned to adopt this new technology.

Today, marketing automation is touted to be a game changer. Its benefits are inarguable. Obviously, it is a massive time as well as money saver; but there is a lot more to it. Over 90% of marketers consider these tools because of their ability to deliver uninterrupted and autonomous optimization across various channels. In addition, these tools also enable teams to analyze, review and take action on marketing data and customer in real-time.

Implementing marketing automation

Marketing plays a key role in business. As your business scales, it may be impossible to communicate with all your customers and manage your relationship at a one-to-one level. As a result, marketing automation is the only solution. It not only makes communication easier but also helps businesses operate professionally and efficiently. Most importantly, it ensures that you are punctual and prompt with communication.

Automation tools are designed to serve your purpose depending on the nature of your business. For instance, if your business is a bank, you can choose marketing automation tools to nurture your prospects, convert them into customers, help with customer relationship management, etc.

Contrary to popular beliefs, most marketing automation tools and software improve communication and give time to emphasize on the quality of messages and ad campaigns. Furthermore, it also gives importance to personal space in communication through regulated conversations.

Overall, marketing automation with all its weapons aims to improve the user experience. However, we must realize that the concept of automation is not just limited to technology or software. It is, rather, a channel and a medium used to perform crucial activities for the benefit of your business.

In order to make the most out of marketing automation, you must take some preventive measures to avoid making mistakes.

Noted below are some of the major mistakes to avoid while implementing marketing automation:

1. Start with a plan

Automation is a powerful tool. As a result, it is prone to misuse. As automation allows you to create ad campaigns and schedule email campaigns with less money, time and energy, you should not go overboard to become a spammer. Because it is easy, don’t blast email your leads, especially if your figures are good. You wouldn’t know when you cross the line to hit the spam list.

In the digital domain, you have to avoid spamming. It can hurt your business like none other. So, send only relevant emails to your target audience at the right time.

Moreover, when you are aimless, the process may seem to be too expensive with not so promising result. So, set your goals right, be specific, and take the correct approach.

2. Not having a sound inbound strategy

Wise marketers use marketing automation together with an inbound lead marketing strategy for best results. However, as most marketers rely heavily on automation, they give no importance to inbound marketing.

The traditional marketing strategy involving the sales funnel is very effective. While it takes you through a series of steps to arrive at a sale, automation is a mere way of communicating with your existing leads and converting them.

If your existing lead data is not ready, automation cannot be productive. Although both the strategies are not mutually exclusive of the other, it is difficult to use one optimally without the influence of the other.

3. Don’t be an aggressive seller

When marketers target customers and convert them, they tend to pressurize a lot. Some marketers may also become pushy and intrusive with their offers, discounts, and deals. This indicates that their leads are not engaged before pursuing with their sales pitch and communication. That’s a bad attitude.

You can only engage leads and convert them with defined and relevant content. It is crucial to carry out a sale. By engaging with your leads, you can pass on information related to your business, its principles, and factors making you stand apart from your counterparts. Using a call to action such as signups, surveys, or questionnaire, can benefit too.

4. Not segmenting your audience

You have to categorize your email list based on user behavior, demographics, location, sex, and other relevant factors. Non-segmentation might lead to fruitless exercise. This is primarily because if you deliver the same content to people of all age groups and various professions, there is a possibility that most of your audience would not be interested.

Analyzing buyer personas and segmenting them can boost your returns. It also helps you to aim at the right audience before implementing a marketing automation process. As a result, there is a higher chance of conversion. For instance, if you segment your audience into married, unmarried, and divorced individuals, you would be able to deliver content, which concerns them separately, and gets a response from a likely potential customer.

5. Don’t forget you are human, not a robot

Undoubtedly, marketing automation is wonderful. Everything works on its deal and there is no hassle of the manual process. However, though it allows you to focus on important matters, there is a slight risk of becoming organic.

As you are, your prospects are also humans. You would not want them to realize that a robot is dealing with them. It is critical to humanize the brand and add value to the user experience. Simply by adding a personal touch to messages and making communication more genuine and authentic can make a difference. Make your emails more relevant to your recipients.

6. Don’t build content without a call to action

Ensure to build content with a call to action for better engagement and returns. If you believe that automation can do it all, you may be wrong.

To bring your customers back repeatedly, engage them with sign-up forms, simple clicks, questionnaires, or surveys, and make sure it has a call to action. It would help you to have access to your audience, especially those who are interested in the content or would like to know about your products and services. Depending on the purpose of your content and the nature of the call to action, your audience may engage or disengage with you.

7. Not scheduling and running tests

Running tests is non-negotiable. It is a strategy to predict consumer behavior and learn more about them. This is the gospel of truth for any marketing strategy, including marketing automation.

Always schedule and run tests for your campaigns to maximize the advanced features of the tool or software used. For example, A/B testing allows you to compare two distinct versions of a campaign and deliver better results by emphasizing on a particular element like CTA, subject line, landing page or any other important concern.

Conclusion

Marketing automation is prepared for massive growth. There would be significant changes and technological advancements. A brilliant strategy would be to focus on customers and their needs. Collecting data through customer interaction across several channels may also help businesses to optimize their content targeting client base. To succeed, analyze data and understand the pattern of your customers, their needs, and buying behavior to influence decision making in the future.

Implement Marketing Automation now. Leverage the potential of software tools, marketing solutions and expertise we have to help you grow your business.  Schedule a call with us.

The post Implementing Marketing Automation? Avoid These Common Mistakes appeared first on Done For You.

Today, we're going to learn about CRM setup, namely how to get your email automation tools in place so your outbound marketing strategy can be automated. We'll be talking about setting up marketing automation campaigns and the two levels that you and your team need to think about when setting up your CRM.

Inside that CRM, you'll have your contact records (customers, prospects, etc), your messages (drip campaigns), your messages, and task management.

When it comes to CRM Setup, there are two different schools of thought, mostly based on who's driving the need for the CRM.

CRM Setup On The Macro Level (ie. CEO's & Managers)

The first is the macro level thought process.  Macro level CRM thinking tends to include a general explanation of how your buying sequence progresses.

Here's what I mean... When you walk into a grocery store, you usually walk in the front door, you go to the right, you go through produce, then you proceed through the outer wall of the store.  Next, you get into the aisles and then you end up at the cash registers.

That's a macro level view of grocery shopping.

CRM Setup On The Micro Level (ie. Marketers & Sales Managers)

Then you have your micro level automation.

Your micro level automation includes the things that happen in each of your email marketing campaigns. So somebody goes to your landing page, they fill in the opt-in form, they download your lead magnet.

Now what happens?

Like specifically... what happens?

What is the text of the email that they are getting sent?

What is the text of the text message that they are being sent?

Are they getting a phone call, and if they are getting a phone call, who is making it?

Are they getting a postcard if we have their physical mailing address?

How many emails are they getting before they either do something or not? And of each of those emails, what is the content of those emails?

That is the micro campaign level that you need to think about.

The Buyer Journey Understood As A 4-Year Old

So we have a four-year-old, and he loves this show on YouTube called Mighty Machines. It's really a cool show. We've learned a lot about how tractors operate, how front loaders work, and all kinds of other crazy stuff.

One of the episodes was this semi truck assembly line. (If anybody is familiar with my story, I used to drive a semi truck 14 years ago, and then I went off to start digital marketing.)

In the assembly line, way off in some distant corner of the factory, they start by building the frame of the tractor-trailer. Then, the undercarriage starts taking shape when the airbags for the suspension are added, the transmission is bolted on, and the engine is added.  It goes from stage to stage to stage, until you have this freshly-painted, polished, beautiful truck rolling off of the assembly line, ready to go to market.

Now if that frame was to skip a bunch of steps and then go right over to the paint booth, there's nothing to paint because the cab isn't put on it.

Or if it was to skip the engine loading phase, there's no engine in the semi. It can't drive off the assembly line when it's done.

Your CRM setup can't skip stages either.  Your email marketing campaigns need to have a framework applied.

CRM Setup - You Need Macro And Micro Level Automation

When a prospect comes to see you, they're all over the place. They bounce from one campaign to the next to the next, and if they drop off, your automation system moves them to some sort of a nurturing campaign.

Now we've worked with a lot of Done For You sales funnel clients over the years.  Oftentimes, when we're setting up marketing automation, we're setting up campaigns for them. What they give us is very different than what we actually need to get the job done.

Oftentimes, they explain their business processes - the buyer journey - and they say setup a CRM for us.  Now, that's usually fine because we write email copy and text messages and put all of those things in place. But with email automation tools, you need to have much more than a macro-level view of marketing to get it set up correctly.

Then you have the micro level view of email automation.  The micro level consists of these emails that go out, these text messages that go out, these tags that need to be applied, these forms that need to be filled out. That is the stuff that makes up the campaign.  That's what gets the job done in an email automation tool.

So if you have the macro level without the micro level it won't work because you have a lot of idea and strategy around the general framework without the individual components of the campaign...  The stuff that actually sells a prospect.

Without the individual components in your CRM setup (like emails, text messages, phone calls, tasks, etc), the whole thing falls apart and you aren't able to go to market with it.

Your Campaign Collateral Will Take Time

That's really what I wanted to get at in terms of building marketing automation campaigns inside your CRM.  You need to understand that there is a high-level campaign that needs to be built out with the right framework. Then, you also need to know that it's going to take a bunch of time to write the emails and the text messages and all collateral to get your email automation tools firing the right way.

Oftentimes, somebody downloads a lead magnet, they might get three or four pieces of marketing before they engage. That marketing could be emails, texts, or phone calls. So moving through those campaigns, you have a lot of different collateral that needs to be written.

When Traffic Comes In, What Happens?

In talking through this macro and micro level campaign layout, imagine you have traffic.

Traffic comes in, and a new lead gets added to your email list. What do you want them to do?  Book a sales call?  Assign a rep to actually call them?  Go through a sales sequence?

On the micro level, they'll start being sent emails, texts, calls, and other email automation-type material.  Those all need to go out. Then the next campaign would fire if they're interested in what it is you have to offer.

When they get on a sales call and say yes, you send them a proposal.

Or if they're not interested, you still want to keep them engaged, so we add them to a nurture sequence. The nurture sequence would consist a selection of blog posts or emails to keep them engaged.

If they are interested, then of course they become a buyer. They pay you money, they become a customer, and they're added to a fulfillment sequence. After they're added to the fulfillment sequence, they get a welcome call, log into their member's area, or have their materials mailed.

Each of these macro-level campaign elements, need to be backed up by the actual creative that fires with the micro level campaign content.

What setting up a CRM, how often should creative go out?

Follow-ups should to be broken down into days, because not everybody checks their email every single day.  You should think about your campaign in terms of what someone will receive from you on each day AFTER they become a lead.

For example:

• Day one, you're sending an email, text and a call.  (3 pieces of collateral that need material for).
• Day two, email, text, call.
• Day three, email, text, call.
• And so on...

If there isn't a response, you put them in the nurture sequence.

You'll be sending a LOT of campaign material from your email automation tools.  You don't want them to forget about you or what it is you're doing. All of that campaign material is really focused on getting somebody to schedule a call. Then, after they schedule the call, you need to be reminded about the call... After the reminders, we break the campaign in the CRM down into a logic switch...  Did they attend the call or didn't they attend the call?  Are they are they interested in what you're selling or are they not interested?

Need Help With Your CRM Setup?

What ends up happening is to get all this done, you need a lot of content...  Specifically, a lot of email to get your CRM setup. Plus you need the sales material, lead magnets, marketing, and all the marketing pages.

There's so much that goes into this marketing automation sales funnel, and we are happy to help work with you through it, starting with an action plan call.

Click here to sign up for an action plan call with us. We will get on, talk about your business, figure out where you're looking to go and what it is you want to build, and we will put together an action plan for that,

The post CRM Setup: Email Automation Tools And Startup Tips appeared first on Done For You.

Today, we're going to talk about marketing goals as they relate to marketing automation and smart marketing in your business.  Set up correctly, when a goal fires inside your Axis CRM, it'll end the subscriber's current campaign and kick off the next - advancing them through the buying process.

There are basically three pieces to a marketing automation campaign.

• The first is a trigger, or what happens in order to add them into a campaign?
• The second is the campaign, or the emails, texts, phone calls, and other messages that go out.  Also included in the campaign is the 'logic' and task management.
• The last piece is a goal. That what we're going to talk about today.

Goals are really pretty interesting. Goals signal the CRM to stop messaging because your prospect did what you wanted them to do.  That's what goal marketing is all about.

Let's say a smart marketing campaign has three texts and seven emails to go out all as part of the drip campaign automation.  Then, when somebody takes your desired action, the thing you want them to do, you don't want them to continue receiving those text messages and emails. That would drive them nuts, right?

So, what you do is you set up a goal.

Setting Up Marketing Goals In Your CRM

We use marketing goals all the time in our CRM.  Let's say you're doing webinar marketing by running a webinar promo sequence (ie. we're promoting a webinar, sending them to a webinar registration page!).  Then, we have a goal at the end when someone signs up for the webinar.

Obviously those emails are trying to get them to do something - we're trying to get them to sign up for a webinar. As soon as that sign up happens, then we move them into a webinar replay sequence. Whether they sign up on day one or day four, the goal in the CRM fires, and they immediately move into the replay sequence.

... Then, they continue getting the five or six emails in the replay sequence. If they purchase, the next goal fires, and they move into the buyer's sequence.

Break Down Your Buyer Journey Into Smaller Steps

That's why in smart marketing, goals are so important.  Email marketing automation doesn't work without them.  As a smart marketer, you always want your customer, your prospect, to be doing the next thing in your business.

You want them becoming a better customer and to advance along in your buying cycle.

More Complicated Goal - Shopping Cart Abandonment

Now, that goal is pretty easy. If they sign up for webinar replay, if they buy a product, they're added to a new list. That's when the goal fires.

Now, one that's not quite so easy is shopping cart abandonment.

With the shopping cart abandonment campaign, what you're doing is you're saying, "If somebody hits this page and they doesn't buy, send them an email 30 minutes later."

That's a little bit more tricky.

Then, when they purchase, then it takes them off of that shopping cart abandonment list. The same is true with a webpage visit. If somebody visits this webpage, then the goal happens.

Multi-Video Launch Sequences

For instance, let's say you're doing an evergreen multi-video launch sequence, like a Jeff Walker product-style launch promotion.  What happens there is you have:

• Three emails promoting video one
• Three emails promoting video two
• Three emails promoting video three
• Then six emails promoting the sales video or the webinar or whatever.

You have a series of emails that promote each piece.

Now, if you're accelerating that...  You want to send out all the videos as part of a marketing automation campaign or compress the promotions to 4 or 5 days...

Accelerated Launch Video Campaigns With Goals

By activating CRM goals, you can accelerate that multi-video launch process.  There's two ways you can actually fire the goal.

• Scenario One - if somebody hits the video page, then goal is satisfied. You've got that person to the page, and then they can bounce to the next sequence down.  The problem there is you don't know if they watched the video.
• Scenario Two - through an API, you track how much of the launch video they watched.  If somebody watched more than 50% or 75% of a Wistia video, then have the API add a tag in the CRM.

What you don't want is to send somebody three emails when they already watched the video!

Ideally, you want to move them to the next campaign as soon as they click over to the page.

Smart Marketing With Calendar Appointments

Another goal you can activate in your smart marketing campaigns is a calendar appointment.

If a calendar appointment is set by contact record, then this goal happens, moving them to the next campaign. Really in thinking about triggers, campaigns and goals, you're able to set up some pretty dynamic marketing automation by just imagining what's possible.  Is it a page visit? Is it for a goal or a trigger? Is it something they did? Is it something they bought? Is it something they signed up for?

Getting Marketing Goals And Automation Set Up For You

If you'd like to talk about marketing campaigns or our Axis CRM, set up an action plan call with us here.

We'll talk about your business, your marketing, and put an action plan together for you!

The post Marketing Goals: How To Automate Smart Marketing In Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

Today, we're going to talk about trigger marketing... Namely, how to drip email campaigns out based on what prospects and visitors do!

With marketing automation, there are lots of different things that you can do in terms of outbound marketing. You can send emails, text messages, fire out outbound calls... You can even send postcards and letters depending on the platform.

At the root of marketing automation, though, are three things that you need to be familiar with:

• Triggers
• Campaigns
• Goals

Look at any campaign builder, MarTech or AdTech tool, and you find that they're all based around those three fundamental components.

We'll be doing individual videos on each component.  Today we're going to talk about triggers and how they are used in trigger marketing and email automation as a whole.

What is a Trigger?

A trigger, sometimes named a rule, is any action that causes another action to happen.

Think of an if-then statement. If someone does this, then that happens.

There's a really, really popular app called IFTTT. It stands for If This Then That.  If you take a photo, then it'll automatically upload it to Facebook for you.  If a sale comes in, then it'll send a notification to your email address or send you a push notification.  It'll add a string of text to a Google Drive doc...  It's infinitely configurable and it brings two pieces of software together.

In trigger-based marketing, when the "IF" statement is fired, there's a "THEN."

What makes a Trigger fire?

Marketing automation triggers can take on a few different forms.  One of the most common is when someone fills out a form on a landing page (for, let's say, a lead magnet).  When someone opts in, it then triggers them to be added to a campaign.

Another type of trigger is a tag.  When a tag is applied to a customer record, it triggers the campaign.

A third form of trigger in marketing: if a person visits a website.  That page visit can actually be a trigger that'll send a drip email campaign.

Automatically adding someone to a email promotion sequence

One of my absolute favorite things to do with marketing automation is firing a trigger based on a page view.

Inside Axis, we have an advanced analytics tool that tracks page views.  When a page is visited AND we have the email record on file, then we add them into the promo campaign.

I've been doing this for a really long time in our software sales pages and for clients.

So, what happens is, the prospect is clicking around...  Maybe they go over to the sales page to watch the sales video...  Then a day later they get Email #1 of the Product Promo Sequence.  Two days later they get Email #2.  Three days later, they get Email #3.

We set this whole trigger marketing / drip email automatoin up with little blocks of five and six emails for all of the major sales pages...

If they added that product to a cart, but didn't buy it within 30 minutes, we would send them a shopping cart abandonment email. And then a day later, another shopping cart abandonment email.

One of the most effective things to do is think about what actions my prospect will take, and what needs to happen because of those actions.

In terms of trigger marketing, page views, opt-ins, and tags are great ways to kick off an email automation campaign.

If you want to talk a little bit more about how trigger marketing and drip email campaigns can be used in your business, make sure to book an action plan call here.  It's free, we'll dig into your business and what you need to do to optimize your sales and marketing campaigns, and give you an action plan to get it done.

The post Trigger Marketing: Drip Email Based On What Prospects Do appeared first on Done For You.

During this live presentation, you'll discover how to save more time, generate more revenue, and dial in your pipeline in a few clicks.

- What marketing automation is all about, and what it’ll do for you.
- 4 key components needed in CRM Stacks and automation software
- Why automation works, and what businesses it’s best used for.
- How to replace all of the marketing systems you currently have with one single piece of software
- Plus much more!

Click here for a free account and 1-on-1 demo!

The post LIVE PRESENTATION: Drag And Drop Marketing Automation appeared first on Done For You.

Before we move on and discuss automation and its impact on digital transformation, let us take a moment to learn a little bit about digital transformation.

What is digital transformation?

According to Wikipedia, “Digital transformation is the transformation of business by revamping the business strategy or digital strategy, models, operations, products, and marketing approach by adopting digital technologies.”

In simpler words, it is the integration of technology into each and every aspect of your business which changes the way you operate and bring value to customers. It not only improves the overall customer experience but also accelerates sales and growth of an organization in a big way.

It is important to be aware of the nine elements of digital transformation. Let’s take a look at them briefly one by one:

1. A proper understanding of customers – More and more businesses are using social media to understand their nature, target the right audience, and gain valuable insights.
2. Top-line growth – Integrating advanced technologies to innovate current methodologies and improve sale-interactions, and customer experience.
3. Customer touch points – The latest technologies like geolocation and augmented reality enhance customer-touch points.
4. Process digitization- These days many companies have already started automating their internal processes.
5. Worker enablement – With the emergence of a remote workforce, companies have embraced technology and started using various tools and technologies to communicate and collaborate.
6. Performance management – Real data is enabling companies to be more aware of products, customers and trends, and is helping them to make well-informed choices.
7. Digitally modified businesses – To drive growth, businesses are using the latest technology to give their traditional products and services a facelift.
8. New digital business – People have started to provide services and products for comparatively older services.
9. Digital globalization – Companies are merging digital tools with information to make way for better coordination and collaboration.

Impact of automation on digital transformation

Now, if we talk about the process of automation, it is one of the new-age technologies that has played a large role in encouraging digital transformation and it is going to get bigger and better in the coming years.

As per the Gartner survey, 42% of CEOs have already started the digital transformation process in their businesses while 56% have benefited by implementing automation in their work processes.

The concept of business automation has helped organizations and numerous ventures to eliminate the need for manual work in repetitive business processes and have yielded positive results. It has helped them to provide consistent and accurate results along with speeding up the work process.

Let’s take a look at the ways automation is enabling digital transformation:

1. Business process optimization

In today’s ever-changing world, the need of the hour is to optimize your processes and workflows to get an edge over your competitors. That’s the reason why many organizations have bid goodbyes to their age-old methods and are now leaning towards a digital transformation makeover.

Automation enables you to create a holistic work environment that focuses on quality and speed. If businesses and organizations start integrating automation into their current style of working, they could definitely experience high growth while making a name for themselves in the market.

2. Better IT operational efficiency

IT teams have been hugely benefited with the introduction of automation technology. IT developers now no longer have to write long codes every now and then. By automating tasks, they can effectively tweak the overall process cycle. As technology needs no coding and tasks can be moved swiftly from one stage to another, they can easily build and deploy workflows that not only make things easier for IT teams but also significantly improves the overall experience of users.

Plus, automation leaves no chance for human error and negligence – you can be 100% assured of delivering results that are fast, accurate and reliable.

3. Increased employee productivity

Oftentimes, companies are faced with the issue of lack of resources for their projects. Automation is the most reliable and cost-effective method to take care of this issue. By automating repetitive tasks, no extra resources will be utilized and you will be able to deliver work with no mistakes or human errors.

Thus, it won’t be wrong to say that automation will not only largely reduce workload but will also increase overall employee productivity, allowing for a more agile way of working while encouraging employees to take a collaborative approach.

4. New insights

With the help of automation in digital transformation, one can get easy access to a business’s analytical information. You can use this information to gain new insights and these insights could elevate the growth of your business or an organization.

Moreover, with a little manipulation, you can use the information to explore new avenues and unlock new opportunities for the future.

Why undergo a digital transformation?

It is the age of technology with digitally-native customers who are quite well-versed in the latest trends and technologies. One must understand that digital transformation has become one of the most viable strategies to accelerate business growth.

Be mindful while taking the road to digital transformation as you will first have to consider how each aspect of business can be optimized. Automation technology is going to play a significant role in the digital tech world helping businesses and organizations to optimize their existing processes and move ahead with technology.

We hope that this article helped you to understand digital transformation and how automation is enabling digital transformation. The biggest takeaway is to start investing in automation technology in order to succeed and make more revenue.

The post How Is Automation Enabling Digital Transformation? appeared first on Done For You.

Automation is known to evoke several emotions such as curiosity, confusion, and fear – everything at once. There are people who might think that marketing automation is time-consuming, a waste of time and won’t do any good to your business and then, there are people, in awe of marketing automation, will bombard you with numerous examples to prove why it is something that your business needs desperately.

With all these opinions, there are some myths associated with marketing automation as well. Before we go ahead and bust them out, let’s take a moment to learn a little bit about the marketing automation first.

What is marketing automation?

The definition of automation in layman’s terms goes something like this – “the use or introduction of automatic equipment in a manufacturing or other processor facility.”

Now, if we look at automation in marketing then it is basically to automate your marketing and sales engagement for purposes such as:

• Generating more leads
• Increase efficiency
• Grow revenue faster

In fact, it won’t be wrong to state that it is a segment of marketing that focuses on customer management system and works in the best manner to organize, categorize, and gain quality customer interaction.

Applications of marketing automation

Marketing automation is an awesome way to target people based on their behavior, preferences, and previous sales and generate new leads while converting the existing ones. Its applicable uses include social media marketing, email marketing, lead generation, metrics and analytics among others.

As we might have got a better understanding of marketing automation, it’s time to discuss the myths associated with it. Learning about these myths will help you learn better about marketing automation.

Below are the common myths associated with marketing automation. Let’s take a look at them:

Myth #1: Automation is only for email marketing

It is surprising to see that a lot of people, including many digital marketers and business owners, are of the opinion that marketing automation is relevant for just email marketing.

However, one can’t deny that email marketing is definitely a strong medium or channel for automation but you can take it to another level with the appropriate use of social media, landing pages, and lead generation.

Automation is about the engagement of prospect customers from the moment they open their email. You can gauge their behavior and personalize email communication accordingly, make changes in the content, or the way they are being directed after a submission.

 The best example of this comes in the form of the recent rise of chatbot. Chatbots have been used by marketers to:

• Sell products and services
• Make payments simpler and easier
• Gain customer insights
• Personalize marketing strategies
• Increase engagement
• Qualify Leads

So, you can see that there is a lot of automation in marketing than just plain emails. And, this is just one facet of it.

Myth #2: Marketing automation is a ‘set and forget’ approach

It is a popular myth that once you automate certain things on your marketing campaign, you can leave them just the way they are. It is obviously false because every campaign needs to be reviewed and updated from time to time.

You have to make sure that it has not deflected from your business strategy, ultimate goal and vision. One has to take care and intervene to check even the evergreen campaigns and optimize them to increase their effectiveness.

Opting for this ‘set and forget’ approach might just make your campaigns outdated. Today, we live in a world where people want unique and meaningful content. Make sure you don’t miss out on such details and think that automation will do all the work for you. That’s just not how marketing automation works!

There is no denying that just like any other field, marketing automation is also going through an evolution. And, hence it becomes imperative for marketers to forget about the once set and done approach. Rather they must focus on evolving with the ever-evolving marketing automation strategies.

For example, the recent rise of AI and predictive analysis has made it simpler for marketers to gain valuable insights about customers. However, in order to achieve the desired results, the marketers must also evolve and understand the terminology.

Myth #3: Automation is mechanical and impersonal

It is often talked about how marketing automation is kind of robotic and is not at all personal as opposed to what it should be. Now, what we often forget is that it’s not the thing that makes a difference rather it’s being used that changes the game. Likewise, the fault here is not in the process, rather how it is being carried out.

Customers are quite well-aware of their importance and value. That’s why companies don’t mind going an extra mile to allure them. Hence, they are constantly coming up with personalized messages, emails, calls, offers, ads, and various other attempts to allure them. Thus, it is an important way to supplement your content marketing strategy.

Here’s a great example of how big names like Disney are using it to great effect. Just a while back, Disney released the movie Zootopia. They took automation marketing to the next level by creating a character named Judy Hopps bot (which was also the central character in the movie) on Facebook messenger, giving the users a more personal and fun experience.

And, this is just one odd example!

Myth #4: Marketing automation is time-consuming and too expensive

Well, automation marketing does require a monetary contribution from organizations and businesses. To all those, who are debating over this topic must see this as an investment than an additional cost. This being said, the question of money and time largely depends on the size and ultimate goals of a company.

There is a myriad of reasons that speak volumes about the value and ROI marketing automation brings along with it. Just think about the number of new customers and new lead conversions from existing ones are needed for the cost to be returned, and you’ll get your answer.

Myth #5: It is only suitable for big companies

It is probably one of the weirdest misconceptions that marketing automation is only for big industries and large businesses. On the contrary, many small and medium businesses and companies are quite successfully and efficiently using marketing automation to their advantage.

Whether you have a large enterprise or a small startup, you can easily integrate marketing automation into your business and leverage its power to meet your needs. It won’t just magically fix everything but could definitely help you automate tasks and get a better hold of your work.

As a matter of fact, there is a list of amazing tools that can help you in marketing automation, even if you are a budding startup with not a lot of cash to burn.

Over to you!

These myths and misconceptions are just the tips of an iceberg as there are so many others floating out there yet to be debunked. However, with more awareness and knowledge on the internet, people are constantly updating themselves with the right information and are choosing platforms that best meet the requirements of their business.

Do your research and target the audience with the right tactics and make the most of this amazing thing called marketing automation.

By the way f you are looking for an awesome tool that can help you automate your marketing campaigns, you need to check this out!

The post 5 Common Marketing Automation Myths Debunked appeared first on Done For You.

There are plenty of ways in which businesses have managed to decrease their effort and reap great results using marketing automation software. Email automation, sales automation, process automation are only few of the changes that have occurred.

Here is a graph that reflects how things have changed over the past few years when it comes to marketing automation:

Source: EmailMonday

The graph demonstrates that the US marketing automation software industry was a $3.3B market in 2017, growing 30%+ annually.

Businesses today have adapted to the fact that marketing automation helps to win the battle over competition. That’s why more and more businesses are looking forward to automating their marketing and sales processes.

If you are still wondering how automation is going to help your business dominate the world, then here are some of the possible reasons.

Before we dive into those reasons, we’d like to stress that we’re in the business of creating completely DFY automated sales funnels that drive business growth via paid traffic and high-conversion sales tactics. Learn exactly how we do that by downloading our Funnel Factor report.

Improved customer targeting

One of the most important ways in which automation software can help a business is by helping it better target the audience.

It is virtually impossible to interact with every customer every time they come to you online. This is where marketing automation software can come to your rescue.

By serving as the initial point of interaction, such software can eventually suffice the initial need of information for the customer, moving them one step into the sales funnel.

So, you can easily target the customer better.

Want to try something new that can help you boost your business sales? If yes then you need to check out this freebie right away!

Efficient prospect identification

Knowing that a large number of customers are visiting your business is one thing but identifying the prospects out of those visitors requires a lot of effort.

But wait – all this was a thing of the past.

Thanks to the rise of technology and automation software, it has now become easier than ever to not just identify the prospects but also target them in the most efficient possible manner.

Such software provides all the required data, along with the customer behavior statistics that you can use to create winning strategies.

Better conversions

The best thing about marketing automation technology is that it eliminates the chances of any human errors in the data. Automation software will perform the basic function of identifying the prospective clients, which are ready to make an investment.

In simpler words, it will make sure that you get only the most interested clients moved down the sales funnel. This is easily going to increase the chances of conversion as the client is already interested in the product.

By sufficing the needs of the client at the first step, as mentioned above when the client comes to your website, you are actually creating a bond of trust which is further going to help you in conversion. And, that’s what matters in the end!

Isn’t it so?

All the numbers and insights

Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.

– Dan Zorella

Data is the basis of success in today’s breakneck competition. Businesses that leverage data to good effect are the only ones that manage to climb the ladder of success and beat the competition.

This is where again automation software can come to the rescue.

Automation software will supplement all the numbers related to customer behavior and all the insights on how the customer reacts when interacting with your business. All this can prove to be vital in creating future strategies.

As they say, failing to plan is like planning to fail. You need to have a marketing strategy in order to succeed in your business. Therefore, having the much-needed data and using it to good effect becomes a must.

Automation automation software can suffice these needs for you!

Build a successful business

Building a successful business is all about effective utilization of money.

Rather than focusing on getting your employees to run the mill from 9am to 6pm, you must automate processes so that they can bring their creativity out and get things done the smartest way.

Thanks to marketing automation, employees can shift their focus from gathering the numbers to making use of those numbers to creating marketing strategies that can work like magic for the business.

This is where lies the beauty of automation software.

Not only does it help you speed up the processes, but it also makes sure that employees don’t have to face the burden of getting buried under the numbers and analyses. Rather, all they need to do now i get meaningful data coming from the software and strategizing how they are going to use this data for the benefit of the business.

For the smarter creed of businesses

To sum it up, all we have to say is that marketing automation has taken the industry by storm. As per the figures mentioned at the beginning of this post, businesses have realized how important it is to streamline their processes in order to get better results.

Marketing automation works perfectly to help businesses not only streamline their processes, but also to get to know their customers, as well. With the help of software, you can eventually take advantage of building never-ending relationships with your customers.

And, this is one of the major reasons why there has been such an immense rise in the popularity of automation software lately.

If you, as a business owner, have been struggling to find a way to connect with your audience and getting results from your marketing efforts, then it is the right time to give marketing automation a try. You can easily find plenty of great options out there in the market.

Give them a try for a while, and see how effectively they transform your business!

Want to improve your marketing results? Try this amazing set of tools.

The post How Marketing Automation Can Make Your Business Smarter (And Richer) appeared first on Done For You.

The reason why you’d want to use marketing automation of some sort is because of the way things happen on the web, the way your ad campaigns run, and the fact that you (and your entire team) aren’t going to be around 24 x 7.

Meanwhile, you’ll have continuous visitors, your lead generation is on all the time, and transactions will happen on your website without any of your team members being there.

According to the DMA, email has a median ROI of 122%, which is over 4x higher than other marketing formats, including social media, direct mail and paid search.

Also, email list segmentation and personalized emailing were the most effective email strategies of 2017.

Your email marketing automation is incomplete without segmentation of your subscribers and customers. As such, marketers have witnessed an increase of 760% in email revenue from segmented campaigns, according to Campaign Monitor.

Now, let’s bring it all together.

• Email marketing is a channel you can’t afford to ignore.
• You’ll need marketing automation, even at its most basic level.
• Segmenting your subscribers and customers helps you boost your overall revenue from email marketing.
• Every single email you send out to your subscribers needs to be personalized (and not just for the sake of personalization)

Tip #1: Personalize. Every. Email

“Hey!”
“Hi there!”
“Hi customer # 24356!”

The problem with these salutations is that they are completely non-personalized, and your subscribers are smart enough to know that you just compiled an email that’s being sent to thousands of others. They don’t feel the connection. They aren’t feeling special. There’s nothing in those emails that can get their attention without their name showing.

It’s not hard to add a modifier, merge tag, or some way to ensure that each email goes out with a name (every email service provider today has a feature to allow to you to personalize).

Go back to your email autoresponder sequences and double check to see if you included a way to have your subscribers’ names show up within emails. Building new ones? Ensure that you add names to personalize now.

Don’t send out a single email without this.

Tip #2: Use some spunk

Most emails are boring. They lack character, spunk and style.

Each of your subscribers is a human and we don’t connect that well with each other if we all followed templates or if we talked “down” to others.

You don’t have to get all fancy with your emails trying to show off how well you write or your vocabulary.

Keep your emails simple. Use powerful words that are still easy to understand. Focus on what’s in it for your subscribers or customers. Be sure to write with style and let there be some personality flowing through those emails.

In fact, write that email as if you were writing to family or friends. While you are at it, keep your emails short.

Tip #3: All emails count

There are various types of marketing automation emails that you are likely to use, depending on your business.

You could have a welcome series, an autoresponder series geared for customer onboarding, a pre-set RSS-to-email campaign, reminder emails, verification emails, order confirmation emails, shopping cart abandonment emails, lead delivery emails (straight off of your funnels), and many others.

Each of these email types count. Every email you send is a message from your business to your customers. Your customers will open these emails and create impressions about you, start thinking about your products and services, and make snap decisions about whether or not they should buy, based on how these emails are written.

Make each of those emails count.

Tip #4: Deploy integrations (service provider dependent)

Your email marketing automation isn’t “automation” if you have to manually manage any part of the entire email marketing automation workflow. While you’ll test and manage some parts of your automation manually (firefighting), you’ll essentially build up to a point where your marketing automation works on its own.

To ensure that your email marketing automation works well, deploy necessary integrations with your service provider and other apps that you use for your business.

For instance, MailChimp connects with almost every other app that you might be using, including your website platform and other apps.

Consider these scenarios:

Using WooCommerce as your main ecommerce store platform and Mailchimp for marketing automation? This is how it might look, and they all connect.

Are you using Shopify with Sumo, Wistia, and other apps (with Zapier) connected to Drip Email automation software & ESP?

Regardless of the marketing stack you use, chances are that you have various ways available to integrate your apps. Make good use of the amazing world of technology, SaaS apps, and the unique marketing stack you’ll develop for your campaigns, funnels, and your complete business.

If you are looking for help with your lead generation or customizing sales funnels for your business or if you need help with your marketing strategy, please feel free to get on a strategy call with us.

The post Email Marketing Automation Tips For Profitable Lead Nurturing appeared first on Done For You.

Now, more than ever, people spend an awful amount of time on their Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat, line, and many others.

While they spend all their time on those mobile messenger platforms, it’s also a sign that times are changing.

If all those 3 billion people are spending on time messaging on Whatsapp, staying put on Instagram, and active on Facebook all the time, do chatbots work better than email marketing now?

You can’t rule out the power of email marketing with a whopping (and proven) 3,800% ROI anyway as it has its own role to play.

But as far as engagement, lead generation, lead nurturing, and content distribution go, chatbots are incredibly effective thanks to the sharp dominance of people’s preference to “message each other quickly and easily” over mobile messaging.

Here are six reasons why Chatbots will do better than email marketing (at least in a few ways):

Chatbots have high retention rates

Illker Koksal of Botanalytics wrote on Venture Beat about some of the most important chatbot metrics to track. Of the many metrics available, there’s “Chatbot retention rate” that stands out.

Entertainment bots, for instance, have the highest retention rates ever while the average retention rate of a bot is about 4%.

Email marketing has a retention rate too, with the average retention rate of 85%.

Does it mean that email marketing beats chatbots here? Not exactly. Here’s why:

Chatbot retention rate actually explains how well the chatbot is able to keep, retain, and engage users. Email retention rate isn’t a metric that explains anything of value (not the way the chatbot retention rate does). Emails stay in Inboxes and most people might not even bother if the messages stay in the “Inbox” for ever. They might not read those emails. They also don’t “Unsubscribe” just because they forget or are too lazy (explains the high retention rate, eh?)

Chatbot retention rate, however, is far more accurate in the sense that users either engage with your Chatbot or they don’t.

Chatbots are unbeatable for customer support

Customer support and customer service isn’t just for “support” or “service”. They help drive up revenue and profits too.

Customer support channels also help generate leads, enable opportunities for upsells and cross-sells, and actually close sales.

Each time you raise a support ticket or you send out a message using the regular live chat, it’s still email that helps deliver your questions or queries to the support staff on the other end. All our traditional ways of customer support (on the digital front) have email as the backbone.

Using email as the backbone for your support ticket system is a slow method. By the time you get around to write back to your customers, they are usually gone.

For these use cases, email just won’t work, but chatbots will work like a charm. See how Chatbots rule here?

Customers at their natural habitat

For most people, checking email is work. Getting on a mobile messaging app is not. It’s quite natural for people to fire up their Facebook messenger app to communicate with friends, relatives, and others in their network. You can’t say the same for email — which is mostly used for work, business, and for anything a little more “serious”.

Mobile messaging apps are a natural platform for what we all do as humans: engage with people who matter to us, be a part of a community, etc.

Using chatbots puts you all primed up to engage with your customers where they feel most comfortable. How hard is it to see and respond to an ad on Instagram while you scroll up and down to check out the latest photos of people you follow?

No latency, with quick engagement

Email marketing is effective and it’s a money maker for businesses. There’s no doubt on just how powerful a simple set of autoresponders can be or how well emails work within your sales funnel.

But there’s an issue: there’s a fair bit of latency (in delivery, in the time it takes for your prospects or leads to check emails, in open rates, and in click rates). For all the positives that email marketing has, there are still issues regarding 100% delivery, subscribers opening emails, clicking on links within emails, and actually taking action that matters to you, as a business.

While chatbots don’t guarantee clicks either, they distribute content spontaneously while having no delay in engagement.

Want to respond to your customers immediately, without delay, and be sure that they see your messages? Use chatbots.

Live, spontaneous, and immediate engagement

Consider a scenario: a visitor come through organic Google search. She checks out your website. She reads your blog, and then signs up for something free that you give away as an offer.

If she wants to write back to you, can she?

In most cases, she can’t (some email service providers allow subscribers to write back to your email marketing messages).

Now, consider this: the same visitor comes in, checks out your website, and reads your blog. Only this time, you have a facebook messenger live chat box prompt her to download the freebie. She clicks through, gets to her own Facebook messenger platform, downloads the freebie.

At this point, she can download and read it (as she might). Or she can also chat back with you. Instantly.

Chatbots allow you to have people “subscribe” to something and enable you to “deliver” lead magnets (just like email marketing would). Except that there’s an additional window of opportunity with chatbots to “chat”, “talk”, and spontaneously engage with your visitors, leads, or customers.

Chatbots certainly have the potential to help you respond to your customers faster, to enable better engagement, to let you nurture them with more relevant content, to generate leads, and more.

The post 5 Reasons Why Chatbots Will Do Better Than Email Marketing appeared first on Done For You.

A Lenskold Group report states that about 63% of companies outgrow their competition thanks only to marketing automation.

Marketing automation aims to make your business seem available 24/7. It’d make your customers feel that you are instantly available, quick to respond, and more. On the management and marketing end, automating workflows helps reduce your efforts, automate your funnels, help systemize your operations, and give you more wings to fly.

Given all the benefits that automation can have for your business, there are a few things it won’t do for you. As such, setting your expectations right and understanding the principles of marketing automation give you a good start.

Marketing automation doesn’t mean your business is now bound to get lazier; it only means your business now gets smarter.

Here’s what marketing automation won’t do for you.

Marketing automation doesn’t relieve you of work

Sales funnels need work – even our Done For You Sales Funnels. Automation of any kind needs plenty of work upfront, and continued work in the form of testing, analysis, tweaking, or even redoing from scratch.

Even for workflow setups that are successful, you’ll still have plenty of work to do. Duplicating funnels for new offers, optimizing your existing automation setup, working on integrations, deployment and testing of technology, and a lot more.

Marketing automation isn’t a way to get lazy; it’s only a way to improve efficiency.

It’s not a “set it and forget it” task

Say “marketing automation” and people tend to jump several steps ahead and think “So, I’d never have to do this manually ever again”.

Agreed that there are a lot of things marketing automation can do. For instance, there are CRM systems that eliminate the need for you to fill in gory details about every new customer you’d enter into your CRM.

There are bots powered by artificial intelligence that can chat with your potential customers who visit your website.

But marketing automation isn’t “set it and forget it”. Take the simple case of sending out an email digest with your latest blog posts to your email subscribers.

Normally, RSS-to-email campaigns work on auto-pilot. But you can’t just sit there and let it run.

You’d have to test subject lines, you’d have to stay on top of your open rates, and track whether or not your subscribers are reading your emails at all.

It won’t replace you or your team

You could bring in all the marketing automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and bots across various functions of your business, but we aren’t at the stage where all this technology will replace you or your team.

You could have an artificial intelligence powered bot to man your live chat, but if customers actually need to connect with someone real, you’ll have to show up. You could have machine learning glean insights from data, but you’ll finally have to make decisions based on that data.

Marketing automation simplifies your business, but it won’t replace you (or your team).

Marketing automation is no secret sauce

By the time you read this, almost everyone else would have hard about marketing automation too. They’d be reading all about how to make sales funnels that work by themselves leading to a powerful sales setup or they’d be learning all about building lead funnels that help businesses automate lead generation.

Marketing automation—and any resultant stack of technology used—is no longer secret sauce.

What can work in your favor is your strategy, how you intend to use marketing automation, and how committed you are when it comes to tinkering, experimenting, failing, and learning from implementing your strategy.

It’s unlikely to save you money

I’ll be upfront and honest about the state of affairs with marketing and with marketing automation: most small businesses and individuals don’t get to execute regular digital marketing the right way, let alone getting marketing automation right.

There are a lot of moving parts, testing, experimentation, and implementation when it comes to setting your marketing on auto-pilot. Business owners also have to take a leap of faith and get many things in line (including their thoughts, beliefs, and actions) just to stay on the winning path.

Because of this, workflow automation will only cost you more—in time, efforts, and resources—instead of less (which is the usual premise).

If you do get it right, however, automating your workflows easily saves you money. It’s no accident that about 68% of small businesses are using marketing automation today if it weren’t for all the benefits and significant cost savings.

Done-for-you inbound marketing automation

If you need a done-for-you inbound marketing system that with automate your lead generation, lead nurturing and sales conversion, DoneForYou.com is the place to start. Click here to schedule a call with one of our sales funnel experts to see the true value of having a team do the heavy lifting for you.

The post 5 Things Marketing Automation Won’t Do For You appeared first on Done For You.

If your answer is yes, you are well ahead of a lot of businesses already. Just by choosing to use email marketing the way you should, you are on the winning side. On that note, you’d want your email sequences and sales funnels to be anything but “salesy”.

Sales funnels are named that way but you don’t want to push too hard, sound desperate, and keep bombarding your email subscribers with autoresponders that are all about “making a sale”.

It’s called “nurturing” for a reason: you’d want to “pull”, entice, educate, teach, inspire, and educate some more with your lead nurturing. Occasionally, you’d want to include a soft pitch or two but the focus shouldn’t be on “selling”.

Chase money, and you won’t get it.
Chase sales figures, and you’ll soon alienate your subscribers.
Push too hard, and you’ll lose whatever little you now have with you.

Your funnel blueprint should aim at being holistic, strategic, and planned.

It can nurture and “sell”; it can educate but still bring in “sales”.

Learn all that you need to about funnels from our Funnel Factor Report. If webinars are your thing, check out our sales funnels webinar and get into the groove of building funnels that work.

When your email sequences, email copy and sales funnels add real value (without asking for anything), you’d gain more. Period.

While sales funnels do work as well as they should, most businesses overcomplicate their funnels and end up not doing anything at all. Strategic sales funnels are nice to have but if you don’t have a single email going out to nurture your leads or subscribers, it’s inexcusable.

There are some simple and yet powerful ways to ensure that you can keep your subscribers or leads nurtured at all times, automatically.

Here are some mandatory and yet simple email marketing sequences you should have running:

Email sequences: Pre-populated workflow autoresponders

Digital sales funnels are powerful for a very specific reason: email sequences can be planned, written, and lined up to nurture leads in a way they choose or in a way that’s very relevant to each of them.

Let’s say that you have a report on WordPress Security as a free giveaway on your website (and let’s assume that your entire business revolves around something to do with WordPress security — a plugin, a hosting service?).

When users sign up for your WordPress Security download, they are letting you know that they are keen on keeping their websites secure. Your entire lineup of emails following that download then is going to educate, teach, and inform your subscribers on security insights, tips to keep their WordPress websites secure, and more.

On and off, you could send in a freebie, an offer, or a call to action that points them to purchase your plugin, service, or tool.

If you more than one offer, you’d have dedicated email sequences or workflows for each of those offers (based on what your subscribers signed up for). These sequences are set up inside your email marketing software.

Here’s an example from Drip:

RSS-to-Email Sequences

As you keep publishing on your blog, you’d normally expect visitors to read what you just published.

But they might not. Occasionally, they’ll discover your content on their own or maybe they click-through your social updates to read your recently published content.

Most times, they just miss your recently published blog posts.

RSS-to-email updates automatically fix that problem for your business.

Most email service providers provide you with the features and templates you’d need to launch RSS-to-email sequences. An RSS-to-email sequence is a digest of your published posts in a single timeframe (like a week).

Using your blog’s RSS feed, your blog posts are auto-populated as a digest of your previously published blog posts. The email digest (with your blog posts listed) is sent out the next week on a particular day and time you’ll establish.

When you set it up right, it looks like this (credits: Campaign Monitor):

By sending out RSS-to-updates to your entire list(s) of subscribers, you achieve a few things automatically:

1. Your emails are automated and regular. This lets your subscribers know that they are valued and cared for.
2. You are able to send out email updates that aren’t all about “sales”. You won’t be pushing at all. They are only prompted to read more and gain insights.
3. You get a chance to stay in your subscribers’ inboxes without breaking their trust. By staying in their inboxes, you are able to boost your brand recall.

Regular broadcasts

Most businesses rarely send out broadcast emails.

Your subscribers have given you an opportunity to get in touch with them when you have new updates about your products or services; when you have something important to share with them; when there’s news about something worthy that they should know about; and more.

All email service providers allow you to send out broadcasts. Make good use of these features to write out personalized emails and customized email copy to send to your subscribers, users, leads, or customers.

Here’s what Landbot.io does:

Transactional Emails

By default, any action taken on your website will have a transactional email going to out to subscribers, users, leads, or customers.

Transactional emails are notifications, reminders, and other “service” emails such as registration emails, order confirmation emails, confirmation emails, surveys, reminders, etc.

Based on their actions, you’ll have transactional emails auto-triggered. According to Experian, transactional emails tend to have 8X more opens and clicks. If used well, they can generate 6X more revenue.

Most businesses don’t make use of the power of these transactional emails. You could make them more lively. You could add some personality. You can also upsell using transactional emails.

Here’s a transactional email (shopping cart abandonment email) from Birchbox that’s directly used to make sales happen.

See that? There’s that email which addresses you by first name; it’s relevant and targeted; it’s relatable and personal; and it arrives just in time.

Are you getting these basic, simple, and yet effective email sequences working for your business? If not, what’s stopping you?

If you’d like a hand in getting an email marketing campaign or a sales funnel set up, schedule a call and we can work through it!

The post Simple And Powerful Email Sequences You Can’t Afford Not to Have appeared first on Done For You.

As a small business owner, you understand how important it is to do email marketing, as it is one of the marketing channels with the highest Return On Investment (ROI). In fact, the ROI that comes from email is arguably the highest compared to other marketing efforts. So, low cost and high ROI make email marketing the best method for small business marketing.

As if that isn’t enough, a survey revealed that 80% of professionals state email marketing is the driving force behind their customer acquisition and retention.

In this guide, we’re going to dive into five email marketing tips for small businesses. These are the top email marketing best practices that will help you grow your email list and sales this year and next.

Tip #1 — Be strategic with your funnel

You could spend days planning and creating a compelling email series that illustrates the amazing features and benefits of your product. But if you send your campaign to a list of people who aren’t quite there yet, you’re wasting your time.   That’s one of the reasons having a compelling lead magnet is so important in your sales funnel.

Simply put, your subscribers might not be ready to buy your product yet.

To avoid ineffective email marketing campaigns, you need to understand the notion of sales funnels.

The marketing or sales funnel is a model that helps you conceive the buyer’s journey, which in turn is the path a prospect takes as they become familiar with your brand up to the moment when they decide to buy.

The right sales funnel can mean the difference between converting a flood of customers and clients in your business or listening to the crickets chirp in the background…

Click here to get instant access to a free sales funnel course, one that will give you a proven formula to crafting winning sales funnels no matter what industry your in, what product you’re selling, or you current level of expertise!

To advance your leads down the sales funnel, you need to have an appropriate email and conversion strategy for each stage of your funnel. What are the stages of the typical marketing funnel for a small business?

There are five:

• Awareness,
• Consideration,
• Conversion,
• Loyalty, and
• Advocacy.

And the best thing about the sales funnel? You can capitalize on email marketing during every stage.

Unlike paid ads or other less customizable mass marketing actions, with small business email marketing, you are in full command of when and how you engage with your list throughout the buyer’s journey.

So, instead of sending bulk emails to everyone on your list, be fully aware of where people are on their buyer’s journey, and customize your email campaigns accordingly.

Tip #2 — Make it easy to subscribe

This email marketing tip for small businesses seems pretty obvious. If you want to grow your list as quickly as possible you need to make it easy for new prospects to subscribe. However, you’d be surprised by how many websites bury their opt-in form in the footer, or some rarely-visited page.

Making it simple for visitors to subscribe to your mailing list means that you place the opt-in form where it’s clearly visible. And that is in multiple locations on your site.

• As a general rule, you need an opt-in form above the fold, which is the upper half of a page, the part that is visible without scrolling down.  That’s what landing pages do…
• You need an opt-in form at the top of the sidebar on your blog.
• You can create opt-in forms that are placed in the middle of your content, which can deliver a freebie or an interest-specific content upgrade.

Also, you make it easy for people to subscribe to your small business newsletter when you provide incentives, like a discount or a free report.

Now, if you expect to get too much information per subscriber, you might prevent some people from signing up. On the flip side, when you ask for one simple piece of information, like an email address, your conversion rate goes up.

In short, remember to place a short opt-in form on several places on your site and give prospects a reason to join your email list.  Also, make sure you do some A/B testing to see what placement gets you the most leads!

Tip #3 — Make it easy to read

Email marketing is a tricky endeavor for entrepreneurs and small business owners with no expert marketers in their staff.

Even if you serve great content, there’s no guarantee that you follow best practices and that recipients will read your email. There are, however, some simple tricks to improve open rates and reader engagement.

Most consumers read their email on mobile devices. Some professionals—if not just as many—also use mobile devices to access their inbox. With this in mind, one of the best email marketing tips is to write emails that are optimized for mobile devices. You can do that by keeping your content short, simple and ideally readable with minimal scrolling.

Present content in bite-sized pieces, utilizing bullet points and clear headings. Say what you have to say in a few sentences, and include a clear call to action to make it easy for people to learn more.

Always stick to one message/subject matter per email. Include gifs, video placeholders or other images to maintain interest and get your subscribers to keep reading.

In case you don’t know already, most email marketing platforms have a mobile responsive newsletter editor so you can easily build email layouts that automatically adapt to small screens.

Another way to have more people read your content is to use a consistent email template with your logo. Readers should be able to recognize your branding instantly.

Why bother to write clickable email copy when people don’t even open your emails? Your first priority should be to put together a good subject line that will get your subscriber to want to read more.

Download this curated collection of 100 subject lines. Use it to discover which subject lines work best so you can formulate your strategy and get better results.

Follow these readability tips to skyrocket the effectiveness of email marketing for your small business.

And now let’s move on to a tip that is less self-explanatory and often arouses controversy.

Tip #4 — Make it easy to unsubscribe

Yes, this tip is counter-intuitive, and we get it; you hate it when folks unsubscribe from your mailing list, especially when you’ve spent dollars to get them on your list.

You’ve also spent dozens of hours strategizing on your email sequences and cultivating your content, and you want people to see your work. But, unfortunately, at the end of the day, you just have to let your subscribers go.

If they’re not interested in what you have to say they’re probably never going to buy your product anyways. You should just let them go and, in fact, you should make the process simple—just one click.

For starters, by making it easy to unsubscribe, you leave the former subscriber with a positive impression of your brand. There’s no point spamming unsubscribed recipients who don’t open your emails anyway. Most popular email marketing services for small businesses will automatically include an one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom of your emails.

More importantly, you can see things differently and realize that every unsubscribe is an opportunity. Every time someone leaves the email list of your small business, it’s a chance to learn and improve your email marketing.

For example, you can automatically present outgoing subscribers with a quick survey. Your email marketing platform probably has a built-in way to do that automatically. With a survey, you can learn why they left.

For a customized survey solution, try the Askly Quiz Builder. With Askly, it is easy to ask the right questions and find out what your customers struggle with.

With a quick survey, you can spot a trend and reach to conclusions regarding email content and list segmentation.

Here’s an example of MailChimp’s default unsubscribe survey:

Tip #5 — Automate your email marketing

Small business owners often do email marketing 100% manually. However, no matter how hard you try, email marketing is time-consuming and, you can’t do it all. The good news is that some of the manual email marketing work can be “delegated” to modern marketing automation for efficiency.

You’ve likely heard people talking about “email marketing automation” and “drip campaigns” a lot recently. Email marketing automation is quickly becoming an integral part of small businesses.

You need marketing automation for a dozen of reasons. Contrary to how it sounds, email automation can actually contribute to campaign personalization and customization—if you do it right.

By automating your email marketing, you make your sales funnel more efficient. Remember when we explained in the beginning of this post how important it is to be conscious of the buyer’s journey?

With the email marketing automation, you can send the right content to the right people at the right time. You also free up your sales people’s time so that they can focus on nurturing qualified leads.

Ultimately, you need email marketing automation for small business to nurture incoming leads, close additional sales and turn your new customers into repeat buyers.

Email marketing tips for small business

There you have it. Our top email marketing tips and tricks to help small business owners improve their marketing game.  If you’d like a hand in getting an email marketing campaign or a sales funnel set up, schedule a call and we can work through it!

The post 5 Important Tips For Small Business Email Marketing appeared first on Done For You.

The ultimate target of your content marketing strategies is to entice the a prospect throughout the buyers journey so that you can ultimately convert him into a customer, whether you’re selling products or services…

And, writing content that can work out at every stage of the journey requires expertise and a well developed customer avatar.

Today, we are going to talk about some simple tricks that can help you create powerful content for every stage of buyer’s journey.

Stage 1 – Awareness

A buyer has a problem, and he or she is looking for a solution to that problem.

This is the initial stage of the buyer’s journey, and during this stage, the buyer is open to all the options available in the market. The buyer is in the initial researching stage, looking for options that can help him bring an end to the problem he is facing.

So, during this phase, the content must –

• First of all, show them that you understand their problem and what they are going through
• Secondly, show that you have a solution to their problem
• Thirdly, reflect your expertise in the field

(NOTE: Well written sales letters follow a similar content strategy, in a more condensed format)

The most common forms of content that you need to target during this phase include

• Website content
• Blogs and articles
• Social media posts
• Research reports
• EBooks
• White papers

And, almost every other thing that makes the potential buyer’s aware of your capabilities.  If it’s material that sits at the front side of your sales funnel, it should be structured to raise awareness to your brand.

Don’t forget, 81% of all the buyers rely on online research before making a purchase. You need to target this figure and create content that entices buyers to move further down the sales funnel.

Stage 2 – Consideration

Once the buyer has moved from the awareness stage to the second stage i.e. consideration, he now has a clear idea of what he needs and starts to consider the various options that best fit his needs.

Your prospect now has a list of names and brands that offer solutions – of which your business is one.

At this point, your prospect starts evaluating the pros and cons of various providers and brands, and is trying to figure out which is the best investment for them.

Hence at this stage, you need to focus on the forms of content that fulfill their need for more information; particularly targeting how your business is better than the others in the market.

This requires you to create content forms such as

• Comparison charts and infographics
• Expert guides
• Video content

Stage 3 – Decision making

Once the buyer has moved down the funnel further and has gathered information about various brands, comparing them, he will now be more interested in learning more about the brand he has chosen. At this point, your prospect is looking for content that reflects your authenticity and expertise as a business.

You need to feed the buyer with content that is more brand-centric, and highlight the key features and benefit that you will bring to the buyer if he chooses you.

Some of the most common forms of content targeting this stage of buyer’s journey encompass –

• Use cases
• Expert guides
• Case studies
• Tutorial videos
• Testimonials

And all other forms of content which can build confidence in the buyer’s mind that he or she is making the right decision by choosing your business. This type of content is more centered on the fact that people who were stuck in a similar situation as the buyer right now have already used your product and services, and have reaped great results. It works as a confidence booster that they are at the right place to find the solution for their problem!

Talking about brands that you can research in terms of offering powerful content during the decision-making stage, Kissmetrics has to be one of the first names in the list followed by Hubspot.

With smart use of statistics in their content, they eventually sway a user’s decision away quite easily – something all businesses can learn from them!

Stage 4 – Retention

Now that you have enticed the buyer to make the purchase, does this mean the buyer’s journey is over?

No, certainly not!

This is a mistake almost every business makes – they forget that buying is really only the beginning of the buyer’s journey.

You need to continue feeding him with content that builds an long relationship and creates brand loyalty. This is again where powerful content comes into the picture. Content forms to target during this phase of buyer’s journey include –

• Newsletters
• Product guides
• Product update emails
• Greeting emails
• Newsletters and event forms

Basically, anything that keeps the buyer’s engaged and aware of the fact your business is striving continuously to make their life better.

It’s all about keeping the buyer hooked up

The most basic thing about creating compelling content is to keep the buyer hooked up throughout the journey.

Pointing them to the right content at the right time becomes the key. Understanding your buyer’s needs and then feeding him content that addresses those needs can be the difference between successful and not-so-successful marketing.

Businesses that manage to understand the buyer’s journey and target them with the right content at the right time can make a fortune… And it all starts with  understanding the different stages of the buyer’s journey.

If you’d like us to put together an action plan specific to your offer and the buyer’s journey that’s already taking place, make sure to schedule a free call with us!

The post How to Create Content for Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey appeared first on Done For You.

The old school of thought was that your email list should be treated like a hotel.  Every day that goes by that you don’t send an email, is wasted revenue.

… Email frequency, how often you send emails, used to be treated like an opportunity that you can’t get back – getting into your subscriber’s inbox.

Now though, there’s a much better way of managing your list that doesn’t alienate your folks, and keeps your engagement and click rates steadily high…

Mailchimp did a study a few years ago, correlating frequency of emails and click rates.  It turns out that the majority of folks in the study had diminishing click rates the more frequently they mailed…

Meaning, even though they were mailing more often, in some case they were actually getting fewer overall clicks!

And really, you wouldn’t believe how many product owners and email list owners I talk to who don’t do any kind of list management whatsoever…

They have a big list, and they mail that big list no matter how old or how dis-engaged their folks are!

These business owners don’t have any idea what their list is into or what they want more of…  It’s been forever since they asked them for insight through a segmentation survey funnel.  All they know is that at some point in the past, these subscribers opted in for something and they are just going to keep mailing.

When it comes to managing your lists, marketing automation and customer segmentation, there are definite best practices that you should put in place, and it’s important to understand that your prospects and customers are different.

Things may work well for your list that don’t work for others.  In turn, you might hear people tell you what you need to do, and it might backfire.

So, know that you need to test this stuff out religiously and understand that your list might be a little different than everyone else’s!

Knowing What Your List Wants

Email List Management can be a pain sometimes. If you’ve got lots of products or websites, you’ve inevitably got quite a few lists that are segmented a million different ways and have lots of autoresponder sequences set up.

Keep in mind, your prospect and customer lists are probably your company’s most valuable asset, so invest some time into understanding what your folks want more of and what they can’t stand!

Now, I know there are countless experts around the web trying to convince you that you need to build your email list. But once you have it, what should you do?

Should you email them once a week? Should you write long emails? Should the content be formal or conversational?  Should you put your logo at the top and make it look pretty?  Should you hire someone to manage the list?

There’s so many variables, and we’ll be getting into them in a minute!

Where Customer Segmentation Starts

How you arrange your list matters.  The person who has the best control over their list wins at the end of the day.

By segmenting your list the right way and creating some marketing automation around those customer segments, you’ll be sending less email on a daily basis while getting better engagement, higher clickthroughs and more revenue!

Buyers vs. Prospects

Think about this.  Who is a better lead – someone who has bought from you in the past or someone who hasn’t?

Someone who has bought from you!  Of course!  They’ve shown you that they value your information or products or services or whatever.  They’re not afraid to buy something online.  Plus, they have the resources to actually purchase something!

That means your buyer list should be your absolute most coveted list!

The folks who’ve never bought anything from you have a lower weight in terms of email list value.  Those folks found you for a variety of reasons…  Maybe you gave away a free lead magnet or they opted in through a content upgrade…  The fact of the matter is, they just signed up to get that something for free.

… Don’t get me wrong, the leads that you generate through free reports and landing pages have their place, but they don’t outweigh real-life customers.

Realistically speaking, just having those two lists is a big deal.  You’ll treat your buyers and prospects differently.  You may even set up marketing automation to work with those two groups differently.  You might send something to your prospects that you don’t send to your buyers and vice-versa.

So, at minimum, you should have a buyers list and prospects list.

Now, let’s break them down even more.

Keeping Affiliates and JV’s Separate

Affiliates and JV’s are your marketing partners – they help you reach the corners of the Internet while making a percentage of the products and services sold.

For this reason, you should keep your affiliates and JV partners on a separate list, making sure to only mail to them when you have something for them!  Think affiliate contests, new products, launches and when you’re moving your company in a new direction.

The ONLY market where your affiliate list might be your prospect list is in the Internet marketing space.  You want your affiliates to be well trained so that they can help you promote better, so it would be advantageous to do some training or link off to good marketing products.

I know quite a few product owners in different niches who have entire courses that they give away for free to their affiliates, all in hopes of making them better marketers who promote their products!

List Interests

Let’s face it, not every person on your list is interested into the same thing!  In the Internet marketing space, some folks are interested in free traffic.  Others in paid traffic.  Still others in list building or product development.  That’s one of the reasons we’ve done so much work perfecting surveys and quizzes that drive marketing automation.

The more control you have over what your list is interested in, the better you can market to them.

There are quite a few ways that you can figure this out…

• Surveying your list
• Monitoring email link click throughs and assigning them to a tag in your email marketing software
• Putting a dropdown list on the optin form
• Tracking what pages someone visits and putting them in different tags
• Creating retargeting audiences around the URL’s that people visit

There are lots of ways to get this data.

If I mail my list of 40,000 business owners, with some clicking through and then some filling out the survey…  I have a very poor picture of what my list is into, simply because there isn’t enough data!

If, however, I track who opened an email based on the subject line, I’ll have a much better idea of what they want more of!

Some email platforms like Ontraport and Infusionsoft make this type of marketing automation and customer segmentation pretty easy…

Active vs. Inactive Leads

With email, on most platforms including Ontraport, you have to pay once you hit a number of emails sent or a number of contacts in your database.

For example, included in Ontraport’s monthly cost is the ability to send 100,000 emails.  Once we hit that 100K cap, we pay $99 for each additional 100K emails sent.

There are months we’ll spend another $1200 on email!  Crazy, huh?

One way to curb both of those things, extra costs and low deliverability rates, is to only send email to your active subscribers.

Let’s face it.  If someone hasn’t opened your email in the last 4 months, they probably aren’t going to.

I know it hurts but just delete them out of your system.  They’re gone.  And if they come back, they’ll sign up for your stuff again.

If you can’t bring yourself to delete them, then set their email status to ‘No’ or unsubscribe them or whatever.

How Did They Find You?

Often times, we’ll do customer segmentation by what promo they signed up for, meaning what lead magnet did they download or what video they watched which make them sign up?

Another way I’ll do it since we work with some affiliates is tag leads according to who sent them.  It’s funny to go through and see how many people are on how many lists!

In fact, when we were doing a lot of webinars a few years ago, less and less people were actually new to me!  It got to the point where we’d run an import of the people who signed up and only about 30% were new leads!!

You wouldn’t believe how many people signed up for the same automated webinar 4 and 5 times through different affiliates!  (maybe you were one of them? – there’s nothing wrong with that by the way!)

Additional List Management Tips…

Here are some additional list management tips that have worked for me.

We’ll be digging into these a little deeper in future articles…

Email Your List Often

The first time I heard this, I almost laughed. If I email my list everyday, people will unsubscribe! They’ll report my emails as spam. I worked so hard to get them on – I don’t want to make them mad!

What I can tell you is that the people who unsubscribe would have done so anyway, sooner or later. There’s no way you can continue to give away content week after week without asking them to take action in some way. Maybe that’s through an affiliate link or by selling your own products.

The point is, you’re in business to make money, right? That’s what keeps the lights on and a roof over your head. Your true prospects, friends and customers will understand that.

Make Use Of Actions And Rules

In some of the more sophisticated email marketing platforms, like Ontraport and Infusionsoft, you can do lots of complex customer segmentation and marketing automation.

Things like:

• If someone goes to this page, add them to this list
• If someone clicks this link, remove them from List 1 and put them on List 2
• If someone chooses this field in this form, add them to this sequence
• If a customer buys X product, put them in the sequence that promotes Y product

The term ‘behavioral segmentation’ seems to be the newest phrase in Internet marketing, and the examples above are what’s fueling that revolution.

My point is, the better you understand what your list is doing and what they’re into, the fewer emails you can send and the greater your engagement will be!

Keep Things Current

If you don’t plan on writing to your list every day or every couple days, set up an autoresponder series that does it for you. That’s why we built Scriptly, the make autoresponders easy.

The worst thing you can do is let people forget who you are.

Actually, just this morning, I got two emails – one from Tony Robbins with a direct link to a video and one from another email marketer with an opt-in which forwarded you to the same video.

Keep in mind, this is the first email I got from the no-name marketer and I was a bit skeptical. I didn’t remember signing up for anything of his. I didn’t recognize his name at first. And I was a bit weirded out because he was making me signup for something I already had a link to. I thought maybe he was trying to grow his list off of Tony’s video.

So, after twenty minutes of checking nameservers and digging, I finally remembered who this guy was (and it’s cool…). I just didn’t remember what I was doing on his list!

Marketing Automation Starts With Customer Segmenation

With the right customer segmentation, even the smallest of lists can outperform giant ones because they’re so specialized.  A list of 1000 subscribers all uniquely interested in on topic will far outperform a list of 100,000 people who signed up for any number of reasons.

It’s your job to cultivate that list – to segment them – into groups that you can nurture through blog posts, lead magnets, videos and so much more.

Sure, it takes some sloshing through data to get started, but you’ll be glad you put the time in pretty quickly!

The post Customer Segmentation: Marketing Automation Based On What Your Audience Does appeared first on Done For You.

A Salesforce report  proves that more than 67% of market leaders use at least one marketing automation platform.

More than 49% of companies are already using marketing automation, one way or another. At least 55% of B2B companies are adopting technology to make marketing automation work.

And why not?

75% of marketers believe that marketing automation helps save time and boost sales productivity.

Plus, businesses also achieve increased customer engagement (68%), more timely communications (58%) and increased opportunities such as upselling (58%)

Those marketing automation stats are not surprising.  Implementing marketing automation is one thing.  Making sure that marketing automation really works for your business – as in does it help you manage certain parts or functions of the business – is another matter entirely.

Does marketing automation help you achieve more with less? Is marketing automation the reason why sales and customer satisfaction improved drastically?

The key to making marketing automation work for your business is to create “wow” experiences for your customers and still not overdo it.

Marketing automation tools (marketing stack) and software are crucial to making all that magic happen. Marketing automation tools can be found within the best autoresponder services or as a separate platform. Before you get deep into marketing, there are a few principles for you to follow.

Lay the groundwork for Marketing Automation

There’s groundwork, due diligence, planning, and marshaling resources for every project or product.

Architectural drawings precede construction projects; engineering technology and planning precedes most products produced in factories.

Marketing automation does not need any investments and infrastructure on the scale of real estate projects and automobile manufacturing, but does need to be planned for.

You always want to start with the end in mind…  In other words, what will you be selling to your customers and how will it be presented so that they convert in your sales funnel.

However, you’d still need to lay the groundwork for marketing automation.

• Who is your target audience?
• How well can you define your ideal customers’ persona?
• How will you build and maintain different kinds of audiences based on geographic locales, behavior on site, or if any actual actions were taken?
• If and when you have segmentation done, how and where do you start interactions as a precursor for your marketing automation sequences to trigger?
• How will you personalize your automation sequences?
• How do you segment and maintain audiences that are clearly defined such random visitors, blog readers, email subscribers, potential customers, existing customers, and customers who meet certain criteria (such as made purchases of over $100 or so)
• What are the exact objectives of every piece of marketing automation sequence that’s ever triggered?
• What are the various elements of each marketing automation sequence , how are they all connected, and how does it all work at a holistic level?
  What are the various events that’ll trigger corresponding actions within your automation sequences?

Marketing Automation Isn’t just about email

It’s true that email marketing is a true breadwinner for most businesses and it boasts of a humongous 4300% ROI. That doesn’t mean that marketing automation is only about using email, though.

You could use something as simple as a push notification delivered through an app, an SMS notification, or use a combination of email and SMS notifications to provide for a great experience for your customers.

Subscribing to fancy marketing automation platforms and sticking only to email marketing (mistaking that to be marketing automation) is a fallacy.

Marketing automation can spread into all marketing channels, sales funnels, and advertising methods.

Keep It simple

Too many business owners and marketers tend to overcomplicate things with marketing automation. When you keep your marketing workflows, marketing automation sequences, and sales funnels simple, you just win.

Marketing automation already puts you at the risk of being cold, impersonal, and “robotic”. To overcome this challenge — and to generally make automation successful for your business — you need to embrace simplicity.

Thankfully, there are established ways to ensure that you work towards simple, but personalized automation:

• Make audience building automatic. For instance, everyone who reads your blog is one kind of an audience compared to regular traffic who visited your web pages only once (which is a different audience and managed as such).
• Start with simple event and action triggers. Send a welcome email to every person who signs up to download a freebie on your website. Send a thank you email after the usual transaction emails reach your new customers.
• You need highly-engaging and captive audiences for your marketing to work. Don’t buy lists. Use any of these awesome list building plugins  and put them to work for you. Our email marketing handbook is a great refresher to make lead generation work .
• Always work to build your own list of audiences — email subscribers, phone contacts, customer database — who know you, are familiar with you, and of people who give you explicit permission to hear from you.
• Don’t fuss, fret, and waste time on the exact marketing tools, the marketing stack, or the actual marketing automation platforms you’d need to use. It’s more important to get started first and then figure things out along the way.

Start with what you have

You don’t need a Marketo, a Pardot, or a Salesforce to start with marketing automation. Start with what you have or start with tools you can easily get access to.

For instance, using Mailchimp lets you start for free (for up to 2000 subscribers or 12000 emails) and provides you with a lot of automation possibilities right out of the box. For graphic design, you can use Canva for free.

Don’t go overboard with tools and strategy. Start with what you have and build on it as you progress.  And if marketing automation is something you want help in setting up, make sure to book an Action Plan call with us…

Marketing Automation doesn’t do everything

Matt Burke of Hubspot goes about busting a few marketing automation myths  and a few of those myths really need a second look: Marketing automation doesn’t mean your business wants to get lazy.

Nor does marketing automation let you “set it and forget it”.

Further, marketing automation doesn’t do absolutely everything for your business. It won’t help if you dream up a fully-automated business.

Marketing automation only helps you do marketing efficiently, purposefully, and quickly. It lets you streamline your processes and boost your revenue in ways you’d never imagine.

Yet, it’s not the holy-grail that promises you a hands-free business (no business really is).

Say No to Automation For Automation’s Sake

If you approach marketing automation for “automation” sake, you’ll end up spamming everyone around and do impersonal marketing which neither helps you nor does it help your potential customers (and other stakeholders).

Don’t do marketing automation just because you thought it was cool, and it’s trending, everyone else seems to be using it.

If you just put software (without strategy) to work, you’ll end up sending out multiple emails with subject lines like “Hello Customer”, not taking time to segment lists so that your existing customers don’t get another message that says “Buy now”, and possibly end up with a chain of marketing messages that make no sense to your customers or subscribers.

How are you approaching marketing automation?

The post 6 Critical Principles To Make Marketing Automation Work appeared first on Done For You.

Creating and selling digital products can be challenging, but not if you've got the proper digital product sales funnel!

This post will serve as your roadmap through our Done With You Accelerator!

You don't have an email list to mail to and get a quick hit in revenue…  You don't have affiliates you can call to mail your offer out…  Nor do you usually have any data that will help you determine that your thing will sell.

If you've been in your space for a while or creating a product because you found a solution to a problem you faced, you've got a much better chance of knowing it's viable, but you still have to get the sales funnel structure right.

I'll walk you through the basics of setting up and selling digital products in this mini-tutorial. You might already be halfway down this list, and that's awesome…  Good for you!

After working with hundreds of clients and launching hundreds of offers into the marketplace, this is our process for getting it done…

Step 1: The Product

The first step to selling anything online is to figure out what you should be selling. Sometimes, that's gut instinct. Sometimes, you see a need in the market that you know needs to be filled. Other times, you see a way to put your unique spin on something to make it more effective or solve a related challenge.

You need to ask yourself, "How can I best help my customers solve a problem in their lives…" Is that through a digital product, a service-related offer, or a consulting experience?

The other question you need to ask yourself is, "How do I want my business

There are plenty of things you can sell and various formats you can package them in.

You can put together the following:

• eBooks delivered as a PDF or through a Kindle/iBooks
• Video Courses fulfilled on your website or through a Learning Management System (LMS)
• Audio Courses fulfilled on your website or through an LMS
• Digital newsletter delivered regularly through email
• Membership is where members receive access to any of the formats mentioned above

Step 2: The Offer

And you'll need to create the product, too :0)

Unfortunately, most people new to building a business online think that once their product is complete, they're all done…  When really, they're just getting started. The next step is selling digital products online (or offline!)

Next, you need to figure out your "offer." In simpler terms, you present an offer for acceptance or rejection.

You might offer your membership for $67 a month, your ebook for $37, or your "assisted coaching program," which gives members access to a digital course for $1,500 a month.

Your offer is where you can get creative. You can do the following:

• Single, one-time payment
• Multiple payments spread out over a payment plan
• Monthly payments for as long as your subscriber remains in your program
• Front-end downpayment with smaller monthly payments as they remain a member
• Free trials with memberships after so many days or weeks

There are lots of ways you can make your offer…  You might want to bake that into your request if you wish to subscription revenue. If you'd rather have upfront cash, that's fine, too.

Step 3: The Sales Funnel

When selling digital products online, you will need a sales funnel.

A sales funnel isn't a standalone page that gets an email optin… That's called a landing page.

It is also not a standalone page with some sales copy asking for the sale—that's a sales page.

A "sales funnel" is a series of pages, sales copy, and email copy that quickly moves a prospect through the buying process and automates as much of it as possible.

Your sales funnel needs to be built for your offer. We discuss this extensively in the Convert book.

If it's a higher ticket, you'll need a webinar. You can get away with a sales video if it's the lower ticket. In both cases, you will want to have a lead magnet set up to get people converted into your email list so you can market to them in the future.

Here's an example layout of our Webinar Sales Funnel:

And here's the design of our Video Sales Letter Funnel:

Each funnel starts with a landing page giving away a free 'something' like a report or ebook.

Then, there's either a sales page with a sales video:

Or, a webinar registration page:

And, each of those sales pieces is backed up by some solid email marketing automation…

Your conversions will be better if you ask for the sale earlier. If you wait too long, your prospects won't be as engaged as they should be…

So, we create done-for-you sales funnels with our clients that capitalize on buyers ready to take action immediately AND buyers who still need some warming up!

That way, you get the fast revenue you need to re-invest in growing your business while also growing a tribe and loyal base of customers that will buy from you for months and years…

Step 4: Getting Traffic

Now, there are lots of ways to get traffic…  You can write blog posts, wait for Google to index the content, and hopefully rank you somewhere favorable.

You can try to wrangle affiliates to mail for you, but you need to put up with their schedules and suffer a lot of rejection if you don't have a personal relationship with them.

You can write press releases or sit on forums answering questions and hopefully directing enough people back to your site to make a dent.

Our favorite way of getting traffic is to pay for it! This is from a guy who used to say he was allergic to paid traffic and lived for SEO'ing websites…

Now, there are many places where you can get traffic, but only a few will make sense for your offer. You can get traffic from:

• Facebook - the one most people start with because it's generally easy to set up
• Google Adwords is arguably one of the best sources of traffic on YouTube, but it is more challenging to figure out.
• YouTube Ads - solid when you're using video in your marketing
• Pinterest - very niche-specific but low cost when you use it correctly
• Native ads - works well with offers embedded in blog posts and advertorials

Also, we're happy to dive in and take a look at what the best traffic source is for you and your offer if you set up a free Action Plan call with us here:

Wrapping Up

Selling digital products is an excellent way of starting and growing a business online. The cost of fulfillment is almost non-existent. You don't need a physical location or inventory. However, you need to solve a real problem in the world and also make sure that your target market knows you exist...

Building an online business isn't a "Build it, and they will come kind of thing...

If you don't figure out how to grow your brand awareness and put people on your sales video or webinar, it will be an uphill battle no matter how much work you've put into the product.

If you'd like to jump on the phone and chat about your product, traffic sources, or sales process, please click here to set up a call with us!

The post The Ultimate Guide to Selling Digital Products: Master Your Sales Funnel appeared first on Done For You.

Survey segmentation is one of those underground hacks that automate marketing funnels and increase conversions, but not many marketers do them because they’re thought to be “complicated.”

When you funnel a few thousand people in at the top of it and get an immediate sales bump on the bottom, plus better qualified prospects AND data to use in your marketing; what could be better?

And, considering that the Askly Survey gets a 82% completion, 8 out of 10 people who hit the first question finish!

When To Use Survey Segmentation

There are three different times we’ll use surveys, quizzes and segmentation in our marketing; immediately after an optin, immediately after a purchase and as a paid traffic landing page.

Optin/Lead Confirmation

A prospect is never more engaged with you than right after they optin for something like a free report of free video.  That means that they’re ripe for answering a few questions about their situation because they know it’ll help you market to them better.

After all, if you just downloaded a free workout PDF from a health and fitness guru, wouldn’t you take the time to answer a few questions about the goals you had in mind for yourself?  The unique challenge that brought you to dowloading the report and putting it in action in your life?  Of course you would!

Not to mention, there is the Law of Reciprocity at work…  They just gave you a free report so you’re more than likely to complete a short survey for them!

Immediately After Purchase

Similar to the Optin/Lead Confirmation, a person is never more engaged with you than after the buy something.  The one caveat here is that they did, actually, buy something!  You’ve pushed them past the threshhold and converted a buyer so they’re uniquely invested in making sure that you know how to help them.

They know that by filling out a survey or taking a short quiz, you’ll be able to help them more effectively.  They expect you to take action on their answers in some way – even if it’s just making sure that they receive marketing or content related to their specific challenges.

For you, this buyer data is a goldmine though.  You know exactly what your buyers want more of, what challenges they are facing, and what you need to do to help them most effectively!

Paid Traffic Lead Generation Quizzes

One of the chief benefits of quizzes and surveys is that they disarm a prospect.  When someone clicks and ad and needs to answer a few questions about their situation (or the situation that brought them to you!), their more likely to optin.

For over a decade, we’ve been dropping people from an ad right to a landing page asking for an email address.  It still works.  In the last few years, two-step optin forms (where you hit the button and then the optin form pops up) have taken the cake for conversions.  In the coming years, you’ll see marketers use more surveys to ease a prospect into the signup.

In fact, most big media buyers in competitive and targeted niches use surveys exclusively!  Think dating sites, mortgages, insurance, etc.  Most of their campaigns go to some form or survey or quiz before they ask for an email address.

We use surveys in some niches to qualify a prospect BEFORE they ever get asked to enter an email address for a signup!

The Benefits Of Survey Segmentation

At the end of the day, when you survey or quiz your prospects and customers, you get data.  What you do with the data is what determines how successful you’ll be.

If you create a survey or a quiz and never send traffic or never check the results; it’s not much good to you.  However, in using the data, there are so many things you can do to create a seemless sales funnel.

You can:

• Use your CRM or email marketing software to automate campaigns, autoresponder sequences or workflows based on survey data.
• Mine the data as a whole to figure out what product or service needs to be launched next, ensuring a solid group of buyers already on your list...
• Sell more effectively on sales calls and in meetings because you know what challenges are plaguing your prospect...
• Qualify your leads more accurately, making sure they receive the right marketing material at the right time...
• Create sales and marketing material that speaks to your perfect customer avatar, increasing conversions both now and into the future...
• Plus a LOT more!

How To Use Your Prospects Data

There are countless ways to use the data, some we have explored…

For Services

For our services, we’ll fire off emails automatically when prospects answer certain questions more favorably than others.  For instance, if someone tells us that they have an email list of 10,000 or more people, they receive a scheduling request right away.  If they answer that they’re just starting out with email marketing, their email sequence will be more educationally based.

For Products

If someone tells us that the thing they want their website visitors to do is “book a call,” they’ll go into an email sequence for Timeslots, our call scheduling software.  If they answer that they need help with their webinar copy, they’ll go into Scriptly’s Webinar Creator sequence.

For Coaching & Consutling

Some of our clients are coaches and consultants and we’ll set up surveys to segment their prospects into buckets for them. This way coaches and consultants are able to communicate and promote products to people who are actually interested. Usually survey segmentation for them deals with a “Challenge Measurement,” like “On a scale of 1 to 10, how urgently are you trying to find a solution for ____________.”  The higher the urgency, the sooner they’ll get on the phone with one of our clients.

Getting Started With Surveys

Surveys and quizzes have become a vital part of our business and are growing in popularity with our clients because they give immediate feedback and data on prospects and leads…  Not to mention the marketing automation that you can run them through is astounding!

To get started with your very own survey, segmenting each and ever lead the flows into your business, click here to set up a free Askly account!

The post Inside The Survey Segmentation Funnel appeared first on Done For You.

Now, back when I got started, I had no idea what people wanted.  I didn’t know what an ‘customer avatar‘ was and I surely couldn’t write copy to save my life.  So, I did what everyone does and threw a bunch of stuff at the wall hoping to get lucky!  To put it simply, I never did.

There was never a moment that I can look back on and say, “That’s it.  That was a turning point in my business.  That person/thing/promotion/etc. made it all worth it.”

We’ve all read those stories…  Where someone has an idea, builds it and sells it off…  Or a big company partners with a nobody who’s created something particularly cool…  That wasn’t my path though.

For me, I made millions of small decisions along the way that dramatically changed my focus over the years, always trying to give my tribe what they wanted…  My customers, my clients, and my list.

About 6 years ago, I made it a point to start surveying my list at least a few times a year to see what they wanted more of from me.

As email marketing and automation got more intricate and complex, I started surveying the entire list shortly after they signed up for something from one of my companies (and we get a lot of leads each day).

Now, there are quite a few surveys that we use…  We use:

• A Challenge Survey that segments respondents into different buckets and fires off an email autoresponder sequence catering to their specific needs.
• A Content Survey that determines what kind of content they want to consume; like PDF's, videos, blog posts, etc.
• A Development Survey which helps us figure out what software or features need to be next in development, based on what our members want...

Let’s dive into each a little more…

Your Challenge Survey

Challenge Surveys are the most potent forms of survey or quiz you can run, for sure.  We talked about the Anatomy of a Challenge Survey here, but the goal is simple…

You want your prospects to tell you what’s bothering them.

When you know what’s bothering them, you know how best to help.  That might be through your coaching program, a consulting solution, a digital product or a service you offer.

At the end of the day, they came to you for a reason…  Be it a Google search, a paid Facebook Ad, a personal referral or a social page; they hit your website and signed up on your list for something…  By understanding what motivated them in the first place, you can help them out with a solution.

The “Challenge Survey” helps get to the source of their problem so you can take action on it through a sales offer or a triggered email sequence.

Your Development Survey

At its core, your Development Survey needs to get prospects to tell you want they want more of, so you can either add it into an existing product or service OR build something brand new to focus on it.

Not only does it help you figure out what will move the needle for your customers, but it’ll also increase retention and loyalty for your products and services.  By giving your tribe a voice, they’ll be much more apt to purchase from you (or continue purchasing from you) in the future!

At the end of the day, you want to give your folks choices…  Or at least a box that they can type their answer in.  Example questions might be:

• Out of the following choices, which is the most important to you?
• Which of the following should we create next?
• With of the following courses would you be the most interested in purchasing?

Your Content Survey

Content is a tricky thing…  Especially when you’re new to digital publishing, you might have a hard time writing stuff or putting stuff together that your tribe is really interested in.  And, lets face it…  Content is expensive!  If you’re writing it yourself, you’ll be toiling away for hours and hours!  If you’re paying someone, you can plan on some pretty crazy hourly fees!

Not to mention, well written content should solve problems and give your tribe some insight into their life, somehow…  So, why don’t you ask them what they want you to publish?

Most of our reports and blog posts are driven from survey submissions in one way or another.  It’s a quick way of making sure that our stuff will help!

Getting Setup

Now, they surveys and quizzes you run are going to be specific to your business, but Askly is the perfect tool for getting them set up quickly and easily!  Not to mention, all of the quiz types are engineered for performance so you don’t need to worry about lackluster results from your respondents…

Get them to the first page of the survey and we’ll take care of the rest!  Click here to set up Askly account!

The post Pinpointing What Drives Your Prospect appeared first on Done For You.

One of the biggest challenges that we business owners face is knowing why, exactly, people come to us.

Sure, it might be that we’ve created the coolest, most wiz-bang widget on the face of the planet or we’ve got a digital course that solves a burning challenge in their life…

But what if we have LOTS of products… Or LOTS of offers that might make sense to a prospect?  How do we quantify those people and make sure they get exactly what they need, when they need, digitally…

Sales guys will tell you that in-person meetings or phone conversations give you insight into what your prospect really wants…  But what if we had a way of doing the same thing digitally without being forced to be on the phone?

That, my friend, is where a quiz comes in…

You see, surveys and quizzes, when structured correctly, give you a window into the soul of your customers.  You can drill down into the exact thing they want or the exact challenge that they’re facing quickly, while being able to deliver a solution that’s customized for their needs.

Imagine this…

You have ONE products, but 6 different markets that your product serves.  There isn’t any way to promote the products without maintaining 6 different ad campaigns, all with unique targeting, inflating your ad budget exponentially.

To pull off a successful campaign, you need to know exactly who’s on a page, why they’re there, and what you can do to help them immediately.

It’s a challenge that we had with one of our software products, Scriptly, early on.  It’s a challenge a lot of our DFY clients face with they have lots of different products or lots of different customer avatars.

So, what we did was put together a survey asking them about their specific situation:

Question 1: How Big Is Your Email List?

This question is meant to be easy to answer.  It gets buy-in from the folks going through the quiz and gets them clicking.

Other examples are:

• Are you male or female?
• What age group do you fall into?
• How big is your house?

Question 2: What Do You Want Your List To Do?

Here, we’re trying to get insight into their primary motivation for thinking Scriptly might be write for them.  Their answer also hints at their business model from a very high level and it’s data we can use to put them into marketing buckets.

Other examples might be:

• How often do you work out?
• When is the last time you've been on a date?
• How long have you been in business?
• Do you regularly give to non-profit organizations in your community?

Question 3: What Do You Primarily Sell To Your Email List?

Here, we’re looking for their business model.  By understanding what they’re selling, we can connect them to the sequences and strategies inside Scriptly that will make the most sense for them.  This is all done through marketing automation of course, but simply knowing what they sell means we have more data we can use down the road.

Other questions might be:

• What is your preferred type of workout?
• What causes do you contribute to most regularly?
• What types of movies do you watch?

Question 4: What’s Your #1 Challenge With Email Marketing?

This question is the one we’re building to.  It’s the most important one in the whole sequence.  By knowing exactly what’s challenging our prospect, we can try to help them answer it…  Not to mention, but asking the question, it frames them a little bit differently before they hit the sales material!

There’s lots of things you can do at this point.  You can have a sales page for each of the challenges…  You can create one sales page that address all of the challenges.  It’s up to you which way you want to go, but having individual sales pages is the best way we’ve seen to converting these prospects!

Here are some examples:

• What's your biggest challenge when it comes to maintaining your weight?
• What's your #1 roadblock as it relates to getting things done...
• What's your #1 health challenge at the moment?

Then, let them tell you what it is!

The Results

This quiz was patterned after some of the best, socially shared quizzes on the planet.  Granted, I know it’s not the prettiest or the most elegant, but it gets results.  In fact, over 82% of people who hit the first question complete the quiz!  Compared to the industry average 13%, that’s an incredible bump!

Check it out:

… And it increased conversion by a whopping 42% on the sales page…  Just by asking the right questions!

Now, there’s lots you can do with this technology.

• You can send people to different URL's based on their responses.
• The data can be used in your email marketing software to trigger rules or action-based events.
• You can use it for your sales reps on their sales calls
• Or, you can simply let the data inform your next product release...

The choice is yours.  To start building a free Askly Survey, click here to sign up!

The post The Anatomy of a High-Conversion Quiz appeared first on Done For You.

For a while now, I’ve been a heavy user of surveys…  From product development to market segmentation to pre-selling offers.  We’ve used them for clients too – from health and fitness to survival and photography.

Here’s the thing with surveys and quizzes…  They’re hard to create.  Sure, there are software solutions out there that make them easy, but conversion sucks.  In most cases, a potential respondent would rather chop off their arm than waste a few minutes taking a quiz!  That’s why it’s so important to make sure we ask only questions the questions that are important to you and your business!

Now, in order to understand what questions to ask, you need to first understand who your target market, your customers, are.

• What do they like to do?
• Where do they live?
• How much money do they make?
• What kind of car do they drive?
• What are their fears?  Ambitions?
• What are their challenges?

Now, some of this is pretty self-explanatory…

If your customers are Fortune 5000 executives, you’ve got a pretty good idea for a few of those questions…  But what are their challenges?  What are their ambitions?  To TRULY speak to them in your marketing, you need to TRULY understand them…

And that’s where surveys come in.

Question 1: Getting Buy-in

In terms of importance, the first question you ask is the most important when it comes to getting someone to finish the survey, but not for the reason you’re thinking…

Sure, the first question sets the tone of the survey.  It gives the respondent and idea of what the rest of the questions will be about.  More important than that though, it get’s a user clicking…

The very first question you should ask is something that’s simple.  It can be a yes or no question…  Something that’s very familiar (and not very personal).  Something they don’t need to think about much.

After they answer that first question, they’re MUCH more likely to finish…

Question 2: Positioning

The second question in your quiz needs to do some positioning.  You want your respondent to give you some information that’s specific to them and their situation.

For example:

• What are you looking to power with solar energy?
• What do you want your email list to do?
• Which type of photography is your specialty?
• What health conditions are you currently afflicted with?

This question is usually quite important in terms of the overall survey and knowing our customers better, but the next two are far more important…

Question 3: Challenge

Depending on the type of survey, Questions 3 and 4 are sometimes combined, but let’s talk about them separately…  When it comes to getting visitors to take action, we need to understand WHY they are taking action.

The quickest way to figure that out is to ask them what their biggest challenge is…

So, if we know that our users are looking to lose weight, challenges they could be experiencing are:

• They have trouble eating the right foods
• They don't have enough time to work out regularly
• They eat too many snacks at night before going to bed
• They aren't active enough throughout the day

Each of those answers could lead to a whole host of different product offers or services…

Question 4: Urgency

The thing we want to know is how urgent the challenge is…  If someone is having trouble losing weight, and their answer was that they don’t have time to work out regularly…

We need to figure out how urgent (or willing) they are to take action…

Are they just ‘researching’ or are they ready to drive to the gym to meet with a health coach?

Some of it will be motivated by how uncomfortable they are…  How much pain they’re in.  By knowing how urgent they’re looking for a solution, we can help them more effectively.

The Right Questions

There isn’t any magic formula to asking the right questions.  You have to get people to click through, of course…  But you also need to know how to frame your questions in a way that segments your visitors into different buckets.

Those buckets can be used for marketing, sales and product development.  Or, you can simply interpret the data and figure out what your customers want more of!

Get started building an Askly Survey today, for free!  Or, if you’d like to speak to a Response Expert, click here to set up a call.  We’re happy to build out an Enterprise Level survey solution, complete with all the marketing bells and whistles for you today!

The post 4 Questions To Ask To Better Qualify Your Prospects appeared first on Done For You.