10 Things You Need to Know About Automated Marketing

Automated marketing is not only a great time-saver for anyone running a business, it is also highly affordable and, when used properly, very effective. Using it properly is key to its success, though, and to do this it is necessary to understand its strengths and its limitations. Here are the top ten factors that will help you deploy a successful dotMailer automated marketing strategy:

The major advantage of automated marketing. The prime advantage is the same as all forms of automation – greater productive capacity for the same or less outlay in time and effort. In the case of email marketing, this extra productivity takes the form of sending messages automatically at the most relevant times and targeting individual customers with personalised messages.

Use your intelligence. Another major function of automated marketing is for tracking codes embedded in websites, emails and social media to build up a picture of customers’ Web behaviour. The software can tell which groups or threads on social media sites were followed, which email links were clicked or what search terms are used to find certain sites.

Warming up leads. Automated marketing software can also be used to transform leads from initial enquiries to sales-ready status. Possible leads are scored, based on the customer’s activities, and then receive appropriate forms of email marketing.

Dealing with the admin. When online marketing’s internal processes – such as budgeting, planning, workflow, calendar – are automated, everything moves much faster and smoother, helping the human element concentrate on that all-important personal touch.

Don’t expect it to do everything. Although automated marketing is outstanding when it comes to managing and optimising email and subscribers’ lists, it won’t build those lists for you. When undertaking email marketing, it’s essential to gather and maintain lists of customers willing to receive your emails and subscribe to your newsletters. Automated marketing tools can make the data harvesting faster and simpler, but you need the human touch too!

Enhance the personal, don’t replace it. Your automated marketing strategy should be guided by two basic principles, all related to the above: let your automated processes change and evolve with the customers themselves and make sure the methods you employ are not the same ones that would annoy you if you were the customer.

Don’t neglect the content. With good content to back it up, automated marketing will give you leads to follow up thanks to enthused and motivated customers. It will, in turn, give the customers just what they need to. However, for this to work, you need to make sure the content is consistently good.

Don’t expect it to avoid email filters on its own. Email software is easily keeping pace with email marketing software, and as such there are more  tools than ever before to filter out spam and other unsolicited information. Automated marketing will not be able to evade autofilters and priority inboxes without your assistance – well-crafted subject lines and from addresses help here, as do lists of happy and willing subscribers!

Works best in tandem with other methods. An online marketing strategy needs to employ many different methods if it is to excel, especially as consumers don’t always make their decisions based on what’s in their inbox. Make sure your automated marketing is integrated with other tactics, such as social media.