Marketers say that the biggest benefits of automation are saving time (74%), increased customer engagement (68%), more timely communications (58%) and increased opportunities including up-selling (58%) (Adestra Marketer vs Machine 2015). On top of helping your bottom line, 47% of marketers think the cost of investing in an automation platform is worth the (sometimes very high) price tag.
There is, however, a problem with discount codes, coupons, and other similar incentives. If they’re used too frequently, they will not only cut your margins short but also desensitize your audience. Sometimes to the point that some of your customers won’t buy from you when shown a regular price because they’ll know that another sale will probably take place in the near future.
Organic SEO's flip-side offers up a paid method for marketing on search engines like Google. SEM provides an avenue for displaying ads through networks such as Google's Adwords and other paid search platforms that exist across the web throughout social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and even video sites like YouTube, which, invariably, is the world's second largest search engine.
Lead nurturing campaigns aren't the only type of email marketing automation you can use to get more out of your contacts database. Think about the contacts who are already your customers. Email automation can not only help you convert leads into customers, but it can also help you delight your existing customers and encourage activity like greater product adoption, upsells, evangelism, and additional purchases.
Sometimes customers stumble upon your online store before they're ready to make a purchase. In fact, 97% of first time site visitors leave without buying anything. This is where retargeting is key. Google remarketing ads—also known as retargeting ads—bring back website visitors who left your store. These ads reach shoppers across many other channels of the web, whether they're reading an article, listening to music, or shopping somewhere else. And when you create retargeting ads in Mailchimp, we’ll automatically generate thousands of ads that display in the right place at the right time, with no added fees from us. Find out how retargeting works.
If you're a developer using a Django-based app, you can add drip email functionality to your own app using Django Drip. Built and used internally by the Zapier team, Django Drip is a simple app for creating drip email campaigns. Just install it on your Django app, and it'll tap into your app's user list and let you send automated drip emails from your Django admin.
Jumplead helps you customize your drip campaigns for users at every stage. It's a CRM that lets you identify your customers in real-time, then apply that knowledge to your drip emails. You'll be able to send customized emails to your potential customers depending on what they've seen, where they live, and more. You'll then get notifications on the most promising people you should follow up with.
It opens the door for irrelevant, spammy, automated messages. Understanding that a large database of leads is required for marketing automation to have any effect on their bottom line, many marketers end up buying lists of contacts to nurture with marketing automation. The consequences of list-buying are numerous, but most importantly this spammy tactic produces incredibly low ROI. Along with the cost of buying these lists, sending unsolicited emails to people who have never requested any information from you leads to low engagement and hurts your IP address reputation, lowering your email deliverability rates.
Content marketing is more than just blogging. When executed correctly, content including articles, guides (like this one), webinars, and videos can be powerful growth drivers for your business. Focus on building trust and producing amazing quality. And most of all, make sure that you’re capturing the right metrics. Create content to generate ROI. Measure the right results. This chapter will teach you how.