Drip campaigns and trigger/action-based sequences are the engines driving your Marketing Automation. This is where the magic happens and all your hard work is paying off. Remember all those forms, lists, campaigns, tags and templates you created? Well, combine them with your prospect data points and this is where MA comes to life.
Salesforce calls them engagement studio or journey builder, HubSpot sequences and workflows, others just drips or automations. In this blog, part of our NoA MA mini-series, we will introduce some standard as well as more creative flows for you to try.
Basic flows to have in your Automation repertoire
We will focus on actual multi-step programs, not just content offer > auto-response stuff (those are typically managed from your form submission completion actions directly). Take a step back and look at your current manual, repetitive marketing and sales processes. Those will be your MA starting points. For example:
Customer onboarding: A sequence of welcome emails, FAQs, training resources etc. Unless your business is a self-service, this type of content is being sent out manually by either sales or account managers. With some simple flows you can automate those, time them right and get some good reporting back - making your onboarding more consistent and less time-consuming. This is likely an email-only program.
Lead nurturing: Persona-tailored, customized content, delivered at the right time. Build some content sequences that add value to your prospects. Look at your customer journeys and map touchpoints with content that suit the buyer stages. You can automate the lead selection (behaviour based) and/or make it easy for your salespeople to add prospects to the nurture program lists. Depending on your marketing platform, this could be made up of cross-channel communication (e.g. incl. email, banners, social, push notifications)
Upsell/Cross-sell flows: Keep existing customers current on your product/service developments. These informational flows will show you how engaged your customers are and if there is scope to grow your business with them. It is easy to incorporate discounts and incentives here too, based on their tenure or purchase volume. Likely email-based, but could include dynamic content such as banners on your product pages.
News/updates for prospects: Inform your prospects about your events (hosted and attended), webinars, new whitepapers etc. Use lead scoring and progressive profiling to get to know them better before you engage them or they reach out to your sales team. Build journeys that are consistent across email, social and display ads retargeting/remarketing. If you have an app, try in-app notifications.
Customer lifecycle milestones: Data that exists in your CRM can be used to trigger automations. Celebrate business anniversaries and other achievements. Use this same flow to ensure you are top-of-mind when you get close to contract renewal dates. This would likely be a mix of customer facing communication and internal notifications.
All of the above flows will likely include some behind the scenes actions, such as trigger or filter based alternative paths through sequences, e.g. alternative 1 for people who opened an email, alternative 2 for people who did not. This can get quite complex quickly but is also enabling you to be hyper-relevant at scale.
Each and every step in your campaign comes with its own improvement opportunities - you will find yourself tweaking email subject lines, communication timing, audience segmentation, CTA placements, copy and design etc. Some of the more advanced MA tools have A/B testing and machine learning capabilities built-in.
More creative flows to try
Once you realize the number of data points available for your programs, it is only a small step to really push your creative boundaries. Here are some of the data points you could use for your automations: lead status, list membership, CRM field values, dates, scores/grades, tags, campaigns, all kinds of behaviour data e.g. email opens, clicks, forms, landing pages etc. and all sorts of demographic details from your existing, connected customer database. Then, based on those triggers and filters, you can perform actions such as: sending messages (email, push, SMS etc.), notifying internal users, adding tags, changing status, adjust scores, assign to group/queue, enrol in campaigns and much more.
If we then add dynamic content to the complexity, we are really opening up a can of worms (but good worms!). Some higher-end marketing automation platforms give you the ability to evaluate multiple conditions in one or more complex rules (usually following ‘AND’ ‘IF’ or ‘OR’ and/or boolean logic), now you can be really targeted in your automations. Some Examples:
Event invites: Manage multiple locations, languages and industry segments in one invitation. This one is primarily powered by personalisation tokens and complex rules. Segment your customer base to be hyper-relevant without scrambling data in Excel.
Card abandonment campaigns: Have special offers ready to go for those undecided buyers. From free shipping to discount codes, there are plenty of ways to win them back when they don’t complete their checkout the first time around. Use pop-ups, emails and other channels.
Weather-based campaigns: Of course you use seasonal content already, but if your MA tool can pull current weather reports for locations, there’s a whole new world of customization at your fingertips. Combine dynamic content with spot-on timing to wow your audience.
"Personal Messages" from sales: Not all of your marketing emails have to have that typical marketing look and feel. Why not try sending emails from your sales reps inbox? With minimalistic formatting (text only style) and without your fancy graphics they look like a quick note sent from Outlook. Great for relationship building and trust.
Internal automations: Not all your campaigns have to be customer-facing. Delight your sales team with activity-based real-time notifications from their most valuable prospects. "So-and-so has been back to our pricing page and opened 3 out of our 4 last emails, maybe it is time to remind them we’re still here for them." Pretty cool.
A word of caution though: You really have to be able to trust the information you’re pulling your data and statements from (usually prospect fields in your Customer Relationship Platform or data from your CDP). Not only will it improve the accuracy of your audience targeting, but also spare you the embarrassment of sending a "Hello [insert first name] or [prospect company]" email which I'm sure we all have received at some point. Do some testing to be on the safe side, always.
Not all the above sample automations are manageable in just any marketing platform. Some of the more sophisticated flows are - as mentioned before - also very dependent on the amount (and accuracy) of the lead data you collect or have available in your connected CRM or Customer Data Platform or other sources.
Last but most certainly not least, we recommend working closely with your sales teams to identify the areas and topics that are suitable for your leads and customers. Relevanz is key and that opt-out button just a click away. Unless your content offers are tailored, useful and value-adding, don't bother lining them up in your campaigns.
As always, reach out if you have any questions or need help getting the most out of your existing marketing automation technology. And don't forget to check out or other MA related articles:
Author: Martin Hennig of NoA Connect, Stockholm.