With over 10 years in marketing communications, I have routinely owned the marketing automation funnel for startups to Fortune 500 businesses. Magic can happen when communication and automation strategies are aligned and support one another. Below, you will find how I approach building marketing automation programs.

Start small and simple.

When I work with a company that hasn’t done any automation, I always tell them to start small, which can mean multiple things:

1. Start with one email that’s automated based on user activity
2. A/B test short and simple automation
3. Try automated journies with loyalists before trying to gain new leads

Why these strategies?

Testing how baseline automation works for your business allows you to obtain key insights, such as how the initial email is performing, what type of messaging is working, and what type of content will resonate with your target audience.

Some insights I’ve gained from this method:

• If you choose the single email route, such as a reminder about a full cart, it’s important to check how well that email performs after 10-15 days. If it has less than a 50% open rate, it’s time to return to the drawing board.
  • Try looking at your time of send—is it too soon or too far from when the customer looked at your site?
• Choosing to A/B test anything is always a good idea, and when it comes to marketing automation, messaging, time of send, and frequency are great places to start.
  • See how people interact with certain subject lines. Are they more active in the morning or afternoon? Would adding a reminder to your journey help drive conversion?
  • Within the first two weeks, you can see your emails’ performance and start brainstorming what you want to test next.
• Try emailing your subscribers and seeing how they interact with your communication. Then, send a reminder to those who still need to open an email to see how effective that time of sending was. Use those findings to start your first automation journey!

Use your findings to create robust automated journeys.

Are you ready to build more complex journeys after 4-6 weeks of testing, learning, and pivoting your marketing automation structure to align with your business goals?

Some people build journeys that last over 30 days, but I would hesitate to do that because updating journeys after initial findings is complex. Here’s what works best for building initial journeys with three or more emails.

1. The first email is the most important—it must be catchy, instantly engaging, and easily digestible.
2. What if they don’t open the email? It’s okay! Send a reminder 1-5 days later to ensure they remember you! It can be as simple as changing the subject line or headline to be more urgent.
3. This is the point where people engage or not; you’ve given them 1-2 chances to engage, but if they don’t, unfortunately, they snooze, they lose. However, if they do, you can continue to pepper them with information they agreed to learn more about.

How’s your marketing automation strategy?

How are you using marketing automation for your business? Do you have a strategy? How about a content calendar to track which efforts are driving the most traffic? I can help! Reach out if you need help! I’m looking for freelance and full-time opportunities.

Reach out on LinkedIn to connect!