The power of automation…how to streamline your lead generation

Thinking of putting together a new strategy for your marketing in 2020? In the last year, we’ve seen a huge uptake in our clients implementing some kind of automated lead generation into their strategy and the results have been incredible!

In this article, we look at the benefits of automation within your business, the drawbacks, and some of the tools we would recommend to get you started.

So what does automation really mean?

It’s a way of streamlining the journey that your customer takes so that many of the day-to-day activities that customers rely on you for are taken out of your hands. Automated lead generation can be done in many ways, from a simple chatbot on your website, to more advanced email automation.

Benefits of automation

• Time-saving – a key benefit of automation is that in most cases, once it’s set up you won’t need to do any of the dirty work. Your system will nurture those leads until you need to intervene, this could be a day later or in some cases never!
• Cost-effective – whilst there are sometimes a few upfront costs, it’s a relatively cost-effective way to drum up those leads. Plus, you will be saving the time of your employees which they can focus on other jobs.
• Better insights – automation will be set up on some kind of CRM system and therefore it will collect all the data that’s plumbed in. The more advanced automation tools will allow you to delve deeper into how that lead found you, whether it was from an organic search or paid advertisement and also at what stage the customer drops off to help you improve your systems.
• Increased productivity – all the time you and your staff are saving can be put into other tasks meaning your workforce will be far more effective. You may want to put those extra hours into nurturing those very warm leads.

Drawbacks of automation

If it’s not implemented correctly, automation can have the opposite effect for some businesses. Customers are now so much more aware of this as a tool that they may avoid certain triggers if they gauge they are talking to a robot.

You need to ensure your marketing messages and communications are on brand and still feel like a real person is on the other side of the computer.

Tools we would recommend

Email automation – if your customer has consented to receive email correspondences, why would you waste this opportunity? Email automation can be set up on various platforms (we typically use Mailchimp and HubSpot) and then be sent out based on a customer’s action. Popular email automation we use for e-commerce sites is the abandoned cart email which reminds a customer of their unpurchased products.

Chatbots – long gone are the days when chatbots can only answer yes or no to a question, they are far more advanced than you can imagine! A properly set up chatbot can support increased lead generation and workforce productivity as the little robot behind the screen does all the work for you.

We found some really interesting stats on chatbot usage here >>

Pop-ups – a simple way to get potential customers’ email addresses or contact details is to provide them with something informative in return for their details. This could be a brochure about your services or price list for example. Pop-ups can easily be set up on systems like HubSpot and will trigger on a certain action such as scrolling through 50% of the page, or at the intent to exit the page.

Remarketing – have you ever been researching a product online and all of a sudden it’s following you around the internet? This is a clever tool called ‘remarketing’ and is a relatively cheap way to get in front of people who have already shown an interest in your business. When set up correctly, it won’t feel spammy either, but may just be the push the customer needs to make a purchase or give you a call.

Contact your full service marketing agency…

We know that all the above takes a lot of time to initially set up, and in some cases can become quite technical. This is where CW Marketing comes in.

As a full service marketing agency, we have experience setting up automation for many of our clients, big and small!

From a simple ‘Are you ready to checkout’ abandoned cart email for e-commerce clients using Mailchimp, to more sophisticated lead nurturing for our Spanish property client utilising HubSpot… we’ve got most bases covered.

Get in contact today and speak to one of our Account Managers about how we can help you with your 2020 marketing strategy, and don’t forget to include automation!

Call us on 01202 888200 or email us on info@cwmarketing.co.uk.