{"id":11508,"date":"2022-02-09T19:58:06","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T19:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/02\/09\/6-elements-that-will-make-marketing-automation-work-for-you\/"},"modified":"2022-02-09T19:58:06","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T19:58:06","slug":"6-elements-that-will-make-marketing-automation-work-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/02\/09\/6-elements-that-will-make-marketing-automation-work-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Elements That Will Make Marketing Automation Work for You"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The first thing that you need is alignment between your sales and marketing teams. Start by aligning your goals. What are the products or services sales need to push? What are the metrics they need to see? These and other questions will help your marketing team develop a strategy that complements and supports the sales team.<\/p>\n

If you want to formalize the relationship between sales and marketing, you should consider a Service-Level Agreement (SLA) to quantify and qualify standards of accountability between both teams. For instance, an SLA can specify only SQLs that have actively engaged your business will be passed on for a specific campaign. All this will tie back into your marketing automation\u2014determining which tasks are automated as well as how you automate things to begin with.<\/p>\n

Once your goals are clarified, the next thing you need is a clear and detailed road map, including your lead generation channels, key touchpoints\/moments along your process flow, and finally the hand-off between marketing and sales. This road map should be able to answer all questions anyone might have regarding timing, what to do, and what metrics indicate success at each step.<\/p>\n

You may want to turn your road map into a flowchart<\/a> to make it easy to understand for everyone. If necessary, try to consider all scenarios. You\u2019ll find it a lot easier to identify which particular tasks can and should be automated if you lay it all out clearly. Incidentally, a road map will also help you choose which marketing automation tools you implement\u2014be it a chatbot for initial inquiries, to a mailer for follow-ups, and so much more.<\/p>\n

One of the most popular ways to utilize marketing automation is in lead generation. While it\u2019s certainly great to have leads come in without expending much effort, you still need a way of determining which leads are qualified enough to draw into your database\u2014and which ones you should ignore. Lead scoring is all about assigning a value based on a lead\u2019s intent to purchase what you offer. Arriving at this number requires you to identify what matters most to you and your teams.<\/p>\n

Generally, however, points can be added or subtracted to a baseline score from such criteria as prior visits, engagement on social media, responsiveness to emails, and so on. You then set a score threshold which aids your marketing automation systems in determining what inbound leads are kept and which ones you\u2019ll never even see. Studies have shown that only <\/a>21% of marketers<\/a> have a lead scoring system in place to optimize their automation efforts.<\/p>\n

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