Marketing Automation for Lead Generation – The 5 Tips That Accountants Need to Know

If you’re looking to boost your marketing’s performance, automation can be the answer you’re looking for. Learn what it takes to leverage it to the fullest.

Being a creative person doesn’t necessarily make a good marketer. The best ideas can amount to nothing if they’re not structured properly.

This is what David used to struggle with. 

He had tons of good ideas on how to market his firm. Creating a framework that would make those ideas effective is another story. As a result, his marketing efforts failed to generate the desired results.

Luckily, this changed when David joined Oompf Global. He said that gaining focus and clarity was the most valuable aspect of the program.

He and his team learned how to create a system that would maximise the performance of their campaigns. And after testing the system, they found that it works extremely well for converting potential clients.

Of course, we can’t get into all the specifics of a good marketing system in one article. But what we can show you is one of its most important aspects.

Marketing automation is the cornerstone of a VITAL firm. It optimises your marketing efforts, ensuring that you get the highest returns on every dollar spent.

In this guide, you’ll see how to put an automated system in place and make every strategy much more effective. 

But first, let’s go over a real-life example of what automation can do.

How Franklin Street Boosted Subscriber Numbers by 15% with Automation

After giving their website a revamp, Franklin Street decided to focus on marketing automation. That’s because they wanted to streamline their campaigns and get clients smoother and quicker than ever before.

To make this happen, they first integrated all their web forms. By doing so, they were able to get more leads into their marketing funnel. Plus, this integration helped the company track its performance closely and tweak the strategy to get even better results.

The automated platform chosen relied on sending relevant emails to prospects at the right time. Each of those emails had the goal of getting the lead further down the funnel. And this could all happen even without the team’s conscious effort.

For instance, the first email would come from Franklin Street’s CEO, who’d thank the prospect for signing up. It also encouraged their leads to look at the company’s library of books and whitepapers.

From there, every lead received check-in emails that would nurture their relationship. On top of these emails, they would get additional messages encouraging them to take action. And these messages invited them to get in touch with Franklin Street and engage with them more.

So, how did this system improve the company’s marketing?

First, Franklin Street saw a 15% boost in their subscriber count. What’s more important is the fact that about a third of those subscribers downloaded the company’s books and whitepapers.

Franklin Street also started getting more direct replies, many of which they turned into clients. On average, 1.1% of subscribers ended up working with the company.

How would you feel if you could turn 1% of all your subscribers into clients? This would surely be enough to generate outstanding results.

The secret to achieving that – and more – is by automating your marketing the right way. 

Now, let’s see how to do that.

Tip # 1. Start Simple

When you first think about automation, lots of ideas might rush through your brain. And this isn’t necessarily a good thing – David’s example is proof of that.

Trying to do too many things at once almost always leads to poor results. You don’t get to follow any of those ideas through to their completion, which dilutes your marketing efforts.

It’s better to start small and maintain a laser-sharp focus on a handful of things. 

For instance, you can focus on one stage in your funnel and two buyer personas. Instead of trying to create many segments and campaigns, focus on your core.

You’ll see what gets results and what doesn’t as you go about adding more segments and enriching your strategy. And from this point on, all you have to do is keep tweaking your campaigns to make them even more effective.

Tip # 2. Focus on Building a List (Instead of Buying)

The sheer number of email subscribers is just a vanity metric. 

Having hundreds of thousands of names on your list won’t matter much if those people have no interest in buying from you. That’s why buying contacts for your list is almost never a good idea. 

What you should do instead is to build your list organically. Doing so ensures that your list is full of qualified leads who genuinely want to engage with you.

To build a good list, focus on your landing pages, social media, and email outreach. Ensure that your leads can qualify themselves before they decide to sign up. 

This way, you can focus your marketing resources and efforts on those who are truly worth it.

Tip # 3. Leverage Dynamic Content

We all know that putting out high-quality content is critical to marketing success. But you shouldn’t create just any kind of content for the purpose of checking this box. 

Publishing content irrelevant to your audiences is about as bad as not creating any at all.

Of course, you can’t encompass all your segments with the same content type. That’s why you’ll want to use dynamic content to personalise your marketing.

Dynamic content changes according to your audience’s interest. It follows predetermined rules to show relevant information to each of your segments. 

This means you don’t have to manually search for specific categories of viewers and put out the right content. All you have to do is set your criteria and the content will change automatically.

This tool alone can make your campaigns much more impactful. So if you haven’t already, you’ll want to adopt it as soon as possible.

Tip # 4. Segment Your List Into Different Audience Types

Automation relies on the idea that there’s not a one-size-fits-all audience. With this, you need to split your audience into different categories and nurture each of them separately.

You can do this based on many factors. 

For example, you can segment according to the lead source. A lead that comes from a referral is worth much more than a stranger who saw your ad on social media. You can’t treat both of them the same way, as they’re not in the same stage of the buying cycle.

You can then further segment your audience based on buyer persona, search behaviour, and many other criteria. 

This is where it pays to start simple and then break down your segments further along the way. Because the better your segmentation, the more effective each strategy will be.

Tip # 5. Use Split Testing to Determine Effectiveness

How do you know which emails or sequences perform the best?

While there are quite a few ways to determine this, split testing is among the best. It’s commonly referred to as A/B testing and allows you to directly compare two messages to see which one is superior.

Split testing lets you gather important data about your campaigns. It compares the most important marketing metrics to let you make informed changes. You can then tweak your designs, messages, and even your offer based on the results.

Better yet, split testing allows you to break each email down to its key components and see what you need to tweak. You’d be very surprised by the difference that a tiny change to the pre-header can make. 

The more you test your campaigns, the more you can perfect them.

More Sales, Less Effort

Hopefully, you now understand the value of automation. It’s truly one of the most impactful aspects of high-performing campaigns. It saves time and money while making each campaign more effective.

If you haven’t already, now would be the perfect time to start focusing on automation. Follow the tips that you saw here to optimise your campaigns and maximise their impact.

Sure, it may take some time to fully automate your marketing. You’ll also likely make quite a few mistakes along the way. But once you figure out the system, you’ll see that all the effort was more than worth it.