Saving 30 minutes each workday could transform your ability to make a difference in your business scaling efforts. But how can you magically gain 30 minutes in a workday when you’re already so busy? Well, it’s not magic (although it’s close), it’s marketing automation! Marketing automation is when a program or software, such as CRM, can do certain tasks automatically, or can make doing a task a lot faster. Think about the Auto-Fill function in Microsoft Excel. Without that automation, it would take a lot longer to complete certain spreadsheets and workbooks.
Workflows:
One way that CRM can automate marketing processes is through a workflow. In HubSpot, a workflow is a tool you can use to automate sending emails, setting tasks for other team members, or changing a contact property based on a certain set of “rules.” For instance, you can create a workflow by setting a rule that every new subscriber to your newsletter will automatically be sent a thank you or welcome email. Or you can set a workflow that automatically changes the contact property of a contact after they take some sort of action on your site.
This, needless to say, saves you time by automating these tedious tasks, but also frees you from the anxiety of human error. Human error is responsible for a lot of damage done to companies’ and businesses’ marketing efforts and email sender reputation. By automating certain marketing you remove the risk of sending an email with a typo, or sending the wrong email.
But workflows, if not properly set and tested, can cause you to actually spend more than 30 minutes putting out fires it creates. So what’re the best practice when it comes to workflows? There’s no right answer. Many people that use workflows learn through a process of trial and error. Needless to say, it can take time to become very confident in using workflows in HubSpot. I know for me, it took me a while to get to a certain skill level.
If you do not have time to learn workflows, and/or would like an expert to teach you: let us know if you need help.
Creating Active Lists
Do you have mailing lists saved in systems like excel or google sheets? This could cause problems due to contacts unsubscribing and GDRP laws. Not only that, you are dedicating a lot of your time to cleaning up and adding contacts to these lists. By using CRM instead of excel or Google sheets for lists of contacts, your data is constantly guiding your marketing. All of your systems (lists, workflows, etc.) are speaking from a single source of truth. That’s powerful. You will have the confidence
Active lists are lists in HubSpot CRM that are built based on a set of rules. For instance, you can create a list of contacts based on your contacts, companies, or even deal properties. You can exclude people from active lists using these properties. In combination, you can really create a list of contacts with a very narrow set of qualities. Before, marketers would have to create such lists by hand, but by automating these processes, you know that you are getting an accurate list free of human error every time.
Automated Emails:
Any digital marketer knows the importance of sending emails at the right time: a Thank You email for signing up to a newsletter or event, or an email when a contact has purchased your product is all an essential part of maintaining good customer database maintenance.
You can create automated emails in HubSpot or other marketing automation platforms by using workflows or in the email itself. Say you create an email using HubSpot, you can select when that email gets sent based on a trigger or a series of triggers. This works great for sign up emails. But it also works well for email campaigns.
Email campaigns are probably already an important part of your marketing strategy. But with automation, they can take up even less time. Use HubSpot or other email marketing platforms to choose a convenient time to send out email campaigns. In fact, you can create entire campaigns and set the time that they will be sent out.
Even more conveniently, you can use all three of these mentioned automation elements to choose who will receive the following emails in the campaign based on the actions of the recipient. For instance, if you only want to send the second or third email of your campaign to those who opened the first email, you can create a workflow for that. Alternatively, if you want to send out a secondary campaign for those who click the links from your first campaign you can create an active list of those contacts.
But why go through the trouble of using that type of automation? Email browsers like Apple and Google have recently become stricter in their filtration of marketing emails. If your open rates are low, and you are sending emails to contacts who do not open them, this can hurt your chances of ending up in the priority inbox of those who do open your emails. Using automation can help you to market smarter and reach marketing and sales qualified leads more efficiently.
Automation can actually save you more than 30 minutes per day. It will save you countless hours in the long run in strategy meetings with your team on how to create more effective campaigns and finding new leads to market to. Marketers will be more successful when they engage those who want to be engaged and eventually delighted by your content.
If you already have HubSpot, but are lost in how to create effective automation, we can help. Or, if you are thinking about purchasing HubSpot, but are unsure of how to best use automation to your advantage, then we can help! Request a consultation by clicking here!
