Marketing automation helps make life a little easier. Letâs take a look at marketing automation in a broad sense to truly understand the specifics of how automated content marketing. In a nutshell, marketing automation refers to platforms that help businesses automate all of their marketing and sales engagement processes to generate more leads, convert those leads to sales and optimize return on investment (ROI).Lead generation is what fuels the sales process. With marketing automation, youâll be able to identify 98% of the web traffic that was once completely anonymous.
âMarketing automation produces higher conversions more efficiently by enabling near one-on-one email communication, for the first time ever, with every prospect that enters a companyâs pipeline. Thatâs really the magic of marketing automation. Itâs personalization through automation.â
Rick Carlson, CEO of SharpSpring in his interview with Biznet Digital
What is Automated Content Marketing?
Automated content marketing is defining repetitive content marketing tasks, finding tools and applications to take those off your list and produce them automatically. You can work efficiently and effectively, which ultimately leads to saving time, effort and money.
Content is essential to attracting, engaging and acquiring customers; ultimately, itâs one of the most important parts of your marketing strategy. Why? Because it costs less and delivers more.
According to Demand Metric, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads.
Content marketing includes:
- eBooks
- Blogs
- Videos
- Whitepapers
- Quizzes
- Infographics
- Emails
- And more!
How to Use Marketing Automation With Your Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing and marketing automation go hand-in-hand, and when you utilize your content better, you donât need to create as much.
Marketing automation enables you to leverage content more efficiently by providing a wider reach and ensuring it gets in front of the right people. Knowing its benefits, itâs clear your business should use automated content marketing, but what exactly does this look like? Letâs explore two ideas to incorporate into your strategy.
1. Lead Nurtures
Once a lead has put their name into a form to receive a piece of content or subscribes to your newsletter, you need to implement marketing automation.
The leads coming from content pieces, whatever the piece may be, are three to five times more likely to convert than cold leads. Therefore, itâs essential to make sure that a ârequest for more informationâ form is attached to a specific, intentional email â or lead nurture â series.
The sequence will pave a pathway to take that lead further through their journey, hopefully getting them closer to making a purchase, the final step of your business.
For example, a lead puts their information in a form to receive an offer about what content marketing success looks like a year after implementation. Your prospect then receives an email thanking them for the download with an attached video to learn more about content marketing automation. This lead will then be sent however many more emails you have chosen in the sequence.
2. Lead Scoring
Lead scoring allows you to organize and prioritize leads based on the specific information they have provided or steps a lead has taken.
Specific information can include:
- First and/or last name provided
- Title provided
- Email provided
- Forms completed
- Email clicks
- Media views
- Social interactions
- Pages visited
- Campaign pages visited
How Do You Optimize Email Campaigns:
1. Using content workflow processes: With a platform such as SharpSpring, you can assign content that needs to be updated or created. The content can then be placed in the calendar, where it will automatically publish on the defined time.
2. Share content across multiple social platforms: Maximize your reach by distributing your content through an automated social sharing service.
3. Promote, promote and then promote some more: We live in a pay-to-play society, and therefore, we need to pay a little to ensure our content reaches the right people at times. When creating ads, youâre also able to specify your target market demographics.
How to Improve Email Marketing with Automated Content Marketing
Emails are one of the easiest â and most effective â ways to improve your marketing. But how to improve your email marketing? You guessed it, through automation.
Letâs dive into four hands-on strategies to enhance your email marketing.
1. Lead Segmentation with Dynamic Lists
Email is the most effective channel used to reach client prospects and customers with content. That said, sending content to subscribers doesnât matter if they donât bother to read or act on what youâre asking them to do.
Lead segmentation is where you separate leads depending on their interests and behaviors. Organizing your leads will result in more personalized interactions and higher conversions.
By segmenting your leads, you make sure the content you work so hard to put together actually gets sent to people who will read â and enjoy â the email.
When you organize leads into dynamic, rules-based lists, people will automatically be removed when they no longer meet the action rules.
2. Creating Visual Workflows
Using visual workflows, youâll be able to automatically remove leads from an action group or lead nurturing sequence when a specific event occurs. You will also be able to begin different actions based on the applied filters to a single trigger.
For example, if a lead is sent an email with a button to view a specific piece of content, but there is also an in-text link to speak to a member of the team and they click the latter, the lead will move to a more sales-focus lead nurturing sequence.
3. Personalize Emails
Personalizing your email â both by using the leadâs name and actually signing off with a specific member of the team â will help you stand out from the clutter. According to Campaign Monitor, personalized subject lines in emails are 26% more likely to be opened. Using the leadâs name will help earn their trust and help build familiarity.
4. Have One Goal for Each Email
An important rule of thumb when it comes to most email marketing content is to have one goal youâre encouraging the lead to take. With each email, make sure to have one main call-to-action (CTA).
Taking the four steps above will help you create persuasive emails, which will ultimately lead to a high click-through rate (CTR). To further increase these statistics, we recommend working on optimizing your email campaigns.
How Do You Optimize Email Campaigns
In 2019, over 293.9 billion emails were sent every day, a number which is estimated to increase to 347.3 billion by 2022. That is a lot of emails. To help you be part of this growth, we have three useful tips that show you how to optimize your email campaigns.
1. Track Progress
Test everything when it comes to your emails â your subject line, greeting, body content, photo, button color and placement. Do A/B testing and see which option resonates most with your leads, that is, it results in opening and engagement.
2. Social Sharing Buttons in the Email
Not only does social sharing show your lead is further in their journey and truly delighted with the content youâre sending them, but it also helps you reach more potential customers.
Make sure to include social sharing links in all of your emails. When writing out content, make sure to edit the metadata as this is what will show on Facebook and LinkedIn.
3. Mobile-Friendly
When it comes to emails, ensuring they are compatible with both desktop and mobile is critical. Simply put, customers demand a seamless mobile experience:
- Emails that display incorrectly may be deleted within three seconds.
- More than 70% of people read their email in a mobile app.
4. Measure Your Success
Make sure you are tracking your email marketing KPIs to be sure have a handle on what success and improvement look like for your business.
Marketing automation can seem like a daunting pursuit, but with some patience, not only will you be able to utilize it to better achieve your business goals, you will also see a strong ROI. For more tips on automating your content marketing, contact us or get a demo.
