The Importance of a Marketing Automation Workflow
Buyer’s Journey / Conversion Funnel
Prospective customers will rarely make an immediate purchase when they first visit your website. The modern consumer is generally more research-driven and highly self-directed. For this reason, before you design a marketing automation program, you should consider the buyer’s journey/conversion funnel with both your mind and heart, since empathy is vital here. This concept can be fitted in every stage of the buyer’s journey through brand awareness, consideration, the purchase decision, and customer loyalty.
Churn Prevention
One of the most important tasks for the marketer is keeping prospects moving through all of the stages of the conversion funnel. It is therefore very important to prevent drop-offs (also called churn). The prospects can churn for various reasons; some could be busy in that they lack the time to stay up to date with your brand, while others are simply uninterested in your products. For this reason, they need direct attention, which is too difficult to do manually.
Marketing automation is vital in the process of preventing churn. You need to fully understand and diagram your workflow, so that you can identify the areas where churn is common. You will also need to know if there are events that might be causing the prospects to churn, and at what scale the churn is happening. Although you can tell what’s happening from your analytics software, you need to find out why.
Consumer Communication
Customers want to be left alone to use the product they purchased. They will typically only communicate with the company when they experience problems. However, the issue is that many companies only communicate with their clients when they want to upsell, or solve problems. This can create a huge blind spot for the business. You need to maintain a direct and close pulse on the concerns of your customers and the tactics in place that differentiate your company from your competitors. Feedback bars, customers satisfaction surveys, social media, and email announcements can help you maintain a direct connection with your clients.
Designing A Marketing Automation Workflow
What is a marketing automation workflow? Well, it’s a collection of steps or “touches” that determine the path to reach an objective. This includes the various steps needed to complete goals such as demo sign-ups, purchases, or download. Workflows are vital when it comes to conversions, and you need to get them right – design one to match the needs of your customers. For every successful workflow, there are two fundamental goals; minimizing churn at every stage of the conversion funnel, and keeping prospects in motion through the conversion funnel.
You should fully plan out a workflow before you put together a marketing automation campaign. Piece it together keeping the user experience in mind. It should also be emotionally compelling and logical.
Measuring The Ability To Produce Desired Results
Besides creating marketing automation workflows, it’s is crucial to examine whether they are working or not. You can monitor the workflows, patterns, and sequences with software. Be sure to set up the analytics software in order to monitor your marketing automation program and find out the trends that affect the bottom-line of your company, as well as the possible hotspots for churn in your conversion funnel.
Summary
The buyer’s journey of a consumer is complex. Understanding the buying cycles of your business can be accomplished by deconstructing the paths customers take when purchasing goods or services.
