10 marketing automation mistakes you should avoid

Your growth depends on how you nurture your customers and leads. But are you investing in new and existing customers equally through marketing automation? Proper targeting must happen from the moment a potential buyer joins your email list - until they buy and become a loyal customer. Many B2B companies plan complex workflows for their buyer personas and create endless branching email sequences. Save yourself that cost, because complexity doesn't work in lead management!

Marketing automation supports customer journey and lead management. Dedicated email sequences for lead generation, lead nurturing, and lead scoring ensure a smooth handoff from marketing to sales and ultimately automate customer service for existing customers. But common mistakes make your job harder and cost you valuable conversions: - complicated data silos - too large campaigns - inappropriate content - multiple workflows. In this post, you'll learn what the most common mistakes are when implementing marketing automation and how to use marketing automation for both your new customer acquisition and existing customer nurturing.

These mistakes will ruin your marketing automation

1. Bad customer data from data silos

Data silos don't allow you to classify customers in the customer journey. Implementing marketing automation in a single team or silo will lead to failure, especially in an organization where there are multiple marketers and marketing teams. One simple way to avoid isolated marketing automation is to have sales buy-in to the plan. Include sales leadership in the conversation when setting up your marketing automation tool to align sales and marketing. Another challenge is that many companies use multiple marketing automation tools with overlapping functions at the same time. There are several single solutions on the market that can handle all of these tasks. You may need to use marketing automation software for these tasks to eliminate data silos and optimize your lead management.

2. Too big campaigns

Campaigns that are too big never get done. You get lost, you can't test and optimize your email sequences, and you don't know what to set up when staff changes. Your lead nurturing campaign should look a little different for each lead, depending on how they got on your email list and what their specific needs are. This way, you can average higher open rates and better click-through rates. Plan your entire campaign closely in advance. Create an outline of the emails you will send to each segment of your list. These emails should include both value-oriented and offer-oriented copy. This way, you can build trust with your subscribers before you start selling and don't get bogged down.

3. Inappropriate content, despite software

Even if you can manage emails and landing pages well, you still need to create quality content. Your subscribers have opened your email, but if it's irrelevant or full of spelling errors, they won't read it

4. Multiple Marketing Automation Workflows for the Customer Journey

You only need one Marketing Automation workflow for the entire customer journey! Like a monthly email template sent to all active contacts. This template contains placeholders for matching elements across the entire library (the content hub). This way, no one gets the same newsletter, but everyone gets personalized, relevant items from the library. After lead generation, the focus is on introductions to your subject area, explanations of other pricing levels. Existing customers expect updates. Once the contact spends some time on your site, the recommendation is made and becomes more personalized based on past click behavior. He is guided through the customer journey as if by a personal advisor. The benefit is that once you've created a comprehensive content hub, your team can optimize it for better content and the software takes over the personalization, which was previously a complex workflow.

Which is worth more - new customer acquisition or existing customer service?

Good service is important both for existing customers and for growing the customer base. The question of whether marketers should spend more on new customer acquisition than on existing customer care depends on the company's goals, its products and, not least, the size of its advertising budget. Some studies even provide results that acquiring a new customer costs seven times as much as keeping an existing customer happy with the right measures. Loyal customers not only reduce advertising effort and costs, but in the best case also provide free advertising in the form of referrals. Acquiring new customers is, of course, the biggest growth driver. Providers who focus only on managing existing customers will have a hard time maintaining their market share. If an online store mainly sells products that promise high resale rates, it always pays to focus on existing customers. For example, if a B2B company has crossed this threshold, various measures to retain existing customers can go smoothly.

Do both - existing customers and new customers, with the same approach

Even young companies focus only on attracting new buyers, ignoring existing customers. But especially in the beginning, every store needs a solid multiplier and network where people are always happy to talk positively about the company.

Mistakes in lead nurturing that destroy your conversions

Every step of the customer journey should be included in your lead nurturing process. Imagine a company that offers a great product and competitive pricing, but doesn't have a single customer. If you do it right, you can use lead nurturing to support your lead generation efforts. More leads mean more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. And more customers mean a huge increase in revenue. Leads don't turn into customers right away. By creating a customized journey for every lead that comes to your website, you win. That's the whole concept behind lead nurturing. Unfortunately, most marketers make some fatal mistakes along the way that ruin their conversion rates.

Mistake #1: Skipping the research phase

When it comes to lead generation and making sales, it's important to find the ideal prospect. No matter what product or service you offer, you need to understand your potential buyers. Survey your customers with lead nurturing emails. Another great way to learn about your ideal prospects is through book reviews on Amazon. Simply browse books related to your product or solution. This way, you'll be able to address any problems visitors may have. You should also start collecting email addresses as soon as possible. This way you can create mailing lists for your email workflows. The next logical step is to fully optimize your lead magnets.

Mistake #2: Missing Lead Scoring Campaign

Put yourself in your potential customer's shoes. They visited your website, they liked what they saw, and they were excited about your lead magnet. Many potential customers don't buy on the first inquiry. Don't rely exclusively on a single email autoresponder series. You need to have a plan for continued interaction with your email list, even after the series is over. For example, you could email your subscribers when you publish a new blog post. In general, you should write as if you're talking to just one person, not your entire list. Monitor and improve your email workflows. As with any campaign, you should monitor, test and optimize your email sequences. Use your email marketing analytics to find out where your subscribers are bouncing. You can also send surveys to your list at critical points in your email sequences to find out why someone isn't buying.

Mistake #3: Ignoring follow-up

The extent to which you succeed in converting a lead into a buying customer depends largely on how well you follow up with them. Of course, you can't handle one-on-one conversations with software, but you can automate things like your lead nurturing campaign and lead management. First, you need to show why the potential customer needs your product. And, more importantly, why your product is better than your competitors'. This way, you can find out what worked and what didn't in your campaign. Fortunately, tools are getting better all the time, especially in B2B. These days, there are ingenious tools that let you run split tests and analyze the results of your campaigns at the touch of a button.

Mistake #4: Assuming marketing automation is easy

Marketing automation is inherently detailed and complex. However, marketing automation success using a tool has a cascading effect. If you don't define your lead scoring strategy properly from the start or improve your data hygiene, it will negatively impact the leads you can pass on to sales or pass on to lead nurturing.

Mistake #5: Marketing Automation is not set up properly

You're most likely missing out on the full potential of automation because you're only sending emails with your marketing automation tool. Marketing automation won't work as it should if you don't deploy it with the right vision in mind. A key requirement for proper marketing automation implementation is a strong, reliable knowledge base through your content hub.

The right message at the right time to the right customer - otherwise it's no good

By targeting your entire database rather than batching it, you can increase your conversion rates. By expanding your database with targeted contacts and designing the customer journey according to buyer personas, you can increase your sales in the long run. Help customers reach the next stage of the Customer Journey by improving their customer experience.

Automation in customer service - just a buzzword?

Automation has become a necessity. To keep up with customer demands, you need to scale support and success functions. Automation doesn't replace human agents, it just makes life easier for your support team. Customer service automation helps companies deliver support with a minimum of human intervention. Other benefits of customer service automation include lower support costs, elimination of human error, 24/7 customer support without interruption and, as a result, higher customer retention. Processes you can automate include setting up a searchable knowledge base, adding response templates, and developing AI-driven chatbots. Automation is not an optimal solution when dealing with critical customer issues or customers with high contact needs. However, as repetitive tasks are handled through automation, the customer service team can focus on complex and important tasks. Automation can also help with routing tickets so that issues are assigned to the right person and turnaround time is reduced.

Digitize existing customers and service with marketing automation

You can go from automating the first-time user experience to setting up an AI-driven chatbot for on-demand help to automating the offboarding process for your users. Automating customer service along with customer service agents can improve your customer experience.

Workflows and Marketing Automation

In the context of marketing automation, the definition of a workflow remains the same, but the concept takes on a more significant role. Workflows are used to concretely define business processes for the marketing automation system. You could design a marketing automation workflow that sends a series of onboarding emails with instructions as part of a welcome email campaign. The emails would provide relevant and timely content to a new customer.

Marketing automation triggers

When a contact performs an action, such as subscribing to a newsletter or signing up for a demo, they can be added to the appropriate workflows already programmed into the system. This way, the right marketing material from the Content Hub is sent to the contact at exactly the right time. In fact, subscribers who receive welcome emails tend to engage more with the brand. A welcome workflow usually consists of one email or a series of interconnected emails. Whichever way you choose, make sure you send an email right away. Currently, users expect a message to appear in their inbox as soon as they sign up.

Re-engagement workflow

Before you start developing campaigns, you should define what an inactive contact is in the context of your business. For example, an online grocery store would expect customers to interact on its website or app once every two weeks. Maybe your emails aren't being opened because the subject lines aren't grabbing the customer's attention. In this case, you should provide an easy-to-find link to unsubscribe and direct the customer to a survey. Customers' opinions are important and of great value to businesses. Positive feedback can show you where you are on the right track. You can continue on that path and your efforts in that direction. Customers value customer experiences more than advertising. Customers experience a boost when they have the opportunity to share their experience. If there was a negative interaction, it is possible to correct course in a timely manner and retain the customer. Customer feedback is a means to retain the customer and is slowly becoming a differentiator in today's marketplace.

Workflow for shopping cart abandonment

Workflows for abandoned shopping carts are a means to overcome obstacles and get customers back in the buying mood. Improving the customer journey through the tool and incentivizing it through cleverly used marketing communications go a long way toward reducing abandoned purchases.

Topic Workflow

Content is the backbone of this workflow, from lead scoring to their subsequent conversion into customers. Once you have a segmented list with a proven interest in a topic, it's possible to create an email workflow that draws on all the related content from your content hub. Sending the content to a lead will drive them to associate your brand with value and ultimately enter the sales cycle.

Renewing a buying workflow

Subscription services fall into a marketing automation workflow. But products can also benefit from being included in a planned marketing campaign. Aside from subscription products that expire at specific intervals, you can use your tool to run seasonal campaigns around important holidays or events. Designing marketing automation for subscriptions ensures that you keep up with your customers' buying cycles.

Solution: manageable marketing automation workflows along the customer journey

Keep in mind that leads don't convert immediately and may require a certain amount of relationship building to move into the buying phase. With manageable workflows along the customer journey, you'll significantly increase your conversion rate and build a solid foundation with your customers.

Conclusion

Complex marketing automation workflows don't work. - Every customer journey is different for every prospect and customer — Your email workflows aren't delivering relevant content to your contacts at the right time — create content systematically and store it in libraries. Considering the above points, many companies, especially in B2B, often lack planning when it comes to marketing automation. In which phase of the customer journey, which customer data, which workflows and which content are necessary to stay relevant? Marketing automation with complex workflows won't work, but you can use simple lead nurturing throughout the customer journey. And that's from new customers to existing customers. The best solution to these needs is to organize your content on your website in the form of a content hub. This allows you to attractively present and continuously expand your expertise on a particular topic. And this around a content focus that both users and search engines can easily find.