What is Marketing Automation?

Introduction

Marketing automation is a form of technology that has one goal in mind; to automate the marketing process and make it easier for marketers to accomplish their goals. This helps marketers become much more effective and efficient in their work. It takes repetitive tasks such as social media and email blasts and automates them. This allows marketers to spend more time focusing on other tasks and to-do items they have, rather than having to remember to do the same thing again and again.

One question you might have is, “Does marketing automation interfere with the authenticity of the message my company is sending?”. The answer is no. The goal of marketing automation is to continue to produce authentic and helpful content to customers, without having to take up more of your time. It will help you reach your goals faster, and will still ensure your customers are still receiving quality content they would expect from your company.

How to Use Marketing Automation

Effective marketing isn’t creating a general email and sending it to as many people as possible. That doesn’t make the customer feel valued, it makes them feel like another number or another customer that a company doesn’t care about. You want to make the customer still feel like they’re important to your company, and that your company cares about them.

Rather, effective marketing is creating an email targeted at a specific audience and sending it to them, following up with them after the initial contact, and at the end, thanking them for their time. Your customer doesn’t want to be sent a generic email with a product or service your company offers. That feels impersonal and they can tell a thousand other customers got the same email. They want something that feels tailored to them, and feels like someone took the time to craft for them.

Using marketing automation allows you to still effectively market without having to sacrifice more time crafting content and following up with customers days later. Instead of having to remember to follow up with the different leads you reached out to, marketing automation will do that for you. It allows you to focus more of your energy on other marketing campaigns.

Three Categories of Marketing Automation

Marketing Intelligence

• This tracks codes to see what customers interact with online. Marketers are able to see and analyze this data for patterns or behaviors that can help with a campaign

• Business Development

  • This focuses on moving customers from the top of the sales funnel to the bottom. Essentially, this brings them from the interested stage to the buying stage. This category focuses on utilizing behaviors and attitudes of customers and closing the deal based off of those. A marketer might use SEO, social media, and blogs in order to achieve this goal

• Workflow Automation

  • This category focuses on internal processes. Some of these are budgeting, calendars, etc.

What Does Marketing Automation Help You Achieve?

There’s a lot that marketing automation can help you achieve. Here are some examples of what it can do for you:

• Generate more leads

• Prioritize your efforts and to-do list

• Nurture leads to become customers

• Manage email campaigns

• Reflect on the success of campaigns

• Better customer relationships and retention rates

It also helps you achieve a more efficient workflow and helps you generate more revenue for your company. Leads are also of higher quality if you use marketing automation.

What Should You Do with Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation can do a lot of things. However, in order to get the most out of it, here are a few things you should do with marketing automation:

• Combine marketing automation with your inbound marketing efforts

  • Inbound marketing is all about creating tailored content for targeted audiences. This main goal shouldn’t change by adding marketing automation into the equation. They should work together to still create that tailored content, but then taking over after the initial contact

• Send tailored content to a target audience

  • Don’t just create content without an audience in mind. Along the same lines, don’t send content to everyone you know. You want to create content that aligns with a customer’s wants and needs. By doing this, the customer feels like the company cares about them and will be more likely to use your product or service

• Create customer engagement campaigns

  • Once you close the deal with a customer, you don’t want to just forget about them. Make sure to create content specifically for them and still engage them. By nurturing those relationships, you’re guaranteeing that they’ll keep coming back, and they may even recommend you to people that they know

What Shouldn’t You Do with Marketing Automation?

As with anything, there are a few things you shouldn’t do with marketing automation. Here are a few things you shouldn’t do with marketing automation:

• Don’t start automating without double checking your goals

  • Marketing automation makes things much easier, however, with that, sometimes it’s easy to not keep an eye on it and make adjustments as needed. Take the time to revisit your goals and ensure your marketing automation is staying on track with them

• Don’t send generalized emails to everyone

  • Sending the exact same email to everyone you can think of is one of the worst things you can do. It wastes your company’s time and effort, as well as your customer’s. The success rate of just sending an email blast is almost nothing. Create content for specific targeted audiences to get the best out of your marketing efforts

• Don’t forget about your customers

  • Being focused on getting new customers and generating revenue can sometimes make it hard to remember about your current customers. Remember them and engage them. It’s not easy to gain them back if they feel like you only cared about their money and not about them as a consumer

If you’re just starting with marketing automation, keep going even though it can be lengthy. It’s worth it in the end! If you haven’t started using marketing automation, start now!

Challenge Coin...Accepted

The history and meaning of the challenge coin runs deep for many that carry them. With my military background, there is rarely a day I'm not packing my coin ready to draw.

The SMHeuristics team has been so excited to plan, design and launch a Challenge Coin gift to the Idaho Manufacturing community. The coin had its debut at our Start-ups & Suds event at Barbarian Brewing this week.

Challenge Coins are typically a representation of one's company or industry and a symbol of pride. It’s a powerful way to gift your customers, to challenge your competitor’s design or to recognize your internal team.

We hear the idea of the Challenge Coin is already spreading in the Idaho Manufacturing space and many are producing their own, if they haven't already. Here is a nice article from the New York times presenting a history and rules for the Challenge Coin:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/us/politics/challenge-coins.html

Flapjacks Make an Impact — Kicking Off Our Give-Back Initiatives

There are more than 6,000 nonprofits in the state of Idaho — each with their own donors and volunteers. According to the Idaho Nonprofit Center, these organizations create nearly 56,000 jobs in our state and approximately 380,000 volunteer positions. Nonprofits make a big impact on employment in Idaho, but they are also helping make a difference in the everyday lives of people in need.

Giving back to her community is especially important for SMHeuristics Project Manager Brennan Hussey, and she recently started some important conversations here at SMH about why it's important to give back. To gain some insight, we reached out to community leader Russ Stoddard, Founder and President of certified B Corporation Oliver Russell and author of Rise Up: How to Build a Socially Conscious Business.

We met with Russ, who gave our team some great ideas we wanted to implement immediately. For starters, SMHeuristics decided to joined United Way of Treasure Valley for their 12th annual Flapjack Feed to support local families in need of health, education, and financial stability.

Even as we build relationships with clients around the globe, we realize it is also important to build relationships in our own community. Hundreds of Boiseans seemed to agree — as attendees flooded the 12th Annual United Way of Treasure Valley Flapjack Feed.

During the event, the SMHeuristics team enjoyed a delicious breakfast — with the funds for each breakfast purchased going to families in need. (This was the nonprofit's largest Flapjack Feed yet, with attendance up 18 percent over last year and 1,532 breakfasts served!) Next, we helped assemble necessity kits (for children going back to school who may not have access to deodorant, toothbrushes, shampoo, and other personal care products). We were also able to add a personal and heartfelt note to each kit.

“This event is the beginning of our efforts to incorporate more opportunities to engage with our Boise community in a more socially mindful way,” says Brennan Hussey. “As we continue to grow as a company, we don't want to forget the community and where we started. If we want to be the company that actively participates in our local nonprofits, then the time to start incorporating those practices is now, in the first two years of a startup, rather than ten years down the road.”

Attending the Flapjack Feed was a great experience for the SMHeuristics team, and we are looking forward to supporting more nonprofits in the near future. It feels good to know that, even in a small way, we were able to help the kids in our community.

In the year to come, SMHeuristics will be increasing our level of community engagement, and we are all ready to help make a difference in the Treasure Valley. There are many people who need support, so stay tuned for more exciting happenings from SMH as we dive in!