Marketing has many moving parts, including creating product awareness, generating leads, seamlessly enabling customers to onboard, activating customers, nudging them to take action, and retaining them.
These activities happen concurrently, and sometimes, they have to be proactive and in real-time, sending the right message to the right customer when it matters most. However, the marketer has limited time and is not Superman!
Every message must be relevant, timely, and based on a customer’s actions or inactions. No one wants to receive a welcome email days after signing up or get upsell offers before completing KYC.
It has to be relevant, timely, and personalized for the customer Journey and this is where Marketing automation can help marketers deliver personalized, contextually relevant communication effortlessly.
What is Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is the use of software to automate repetitive marketing tasks and workflows across different communication channels.
It enables marketers to automate various marketing efforts, such as event-based campaigns, customer segmentation, and data analysis.
Across different touchpoints, you can schedule campaigns based on triggers, customer actions, or inactions and track and analyze performance ensuring efficiency and improved engagement.
For example, a welcome email series automatically sends personalized messages to new users after signing up or setting up a customer onboarding flow that gets customers to complete their KYC and take their first value-driven action, leading to the big “Aha moment.”
Marketing automation relies on customer data and every interaction with customers produces valuable data points to deliver timely and relevant engagement for your customers.
Getting Started with Marketing Automation
Imagine you’re planning a trip—there are several things you need to consider and organize before packing your bags.
Now, think of marketing automation as a journey you’re guiding your customers on. Just like a well-planned trip, it requires careful preparation to ensure a smooth and successful experience.
Key Questions to Ask When Setting Up Automation
As you begin creating automation, it’s important to ask yourself a few key questions:
1. What Are Your Business Goals?
Clearly define what matters most to your business and what you aim to achieve with automation. Are you looking to nurture leads, increase onboarding success, improve customer retention, increase sales, or enhance engagement? Understanding your objectives will help you determine which automation strategies will be most effective.
2. Who Is Your Audience?
Understanding your customer’s needs, preferences, where they are in the customer journey and pain points will help you design better automation flows. Tailoring your automation based on audience insights ensures better engagement and results.
3. What Types of Automation Make Sense for Your Business?
Automation can serve various purposes, from welcome emails and onboarding flows to re-engagement campaigns and personalized recommendations. Identify the types of automation that align with your current business goals and customer journey.
4. How Will You Capture and Use Customer Data?
Customer data is the foundation of effective automation. To deliver personalized and timely messages, ensure your automation platform is integrated with your CRMs, apps, and systems. Tracking customer actions and inactions allows you to trigger relevant communications that enhance engagement and drive conversions.
5. When Should Messages Be Sent?
Timing is key in marketing automation. Decide whether emails should be sent immediately after a triggering action (e.g., signing up for a newsletter) or scheduled at specific times. Additionally, consider how often you want to communicate to avoid overwhelming your audience.
6. Are You Human Enough?
Automated emails should feel personal and engaging, not robotic. Maintain your brand’s voice and tone, and craft messages that sound authentic. Avoid overly generic copy and instead focus on building meaningful connections with your audience.
Some Automation Best Practices.
Once you’ve answered these key questions, there are some best practices you must take into consideration while creating your automation :
1. Start with the Basics: Test simple workflows first, such as welcome emails or simple reminders, before expanding to more complex automation.
2. Monitor and Optimize Performance: Track key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion goals to measure the effectiveness of your automation flow. Use A/B testing to refine your approach.
3. Stay Dynamic: Regularly update your automated messages to reflect changes in customer behavior, changes, or new business offerings.
4. Ensure Compliance and Data Privacy: Follow email marketing regulations, such as GDPR or CAN-SPAM, to protect customer data and maintain trust.
Important metrics to track for your Automation
When measuring the success of your automation, keep an eye on these key metrics:
1. Open Rates: Are people opening the messages sent? And are they opening them in time to take action?
2. Click-Through Rates: Once opened, are recipients clicking on links and following the intended path you set for them?
3. Engagement & Activity: Are your automation leading to signups, purchases, downloads, interactions, or other key actions that matter to your business?
4. Bounce Rate: If your messages drive users to your app or landing page, how long do they spend there? Do they explore multiple pages or leave immediately?
5. Unsubscribes: Are too many people opting out after receiving your automated messages?
6. Conversion goal: Every automation has a conversion goal, the goal you want to achieve with your automation. How often do users meet this goal and in what timeframe do they meet it?
Tracking these metrics in real-time helps you identify what’s working and where you need to make improvements in your automation.
Examples of different stages of the customer journey that can be Automated.
Automation can significantly enhance the customer experience and foster lasting relationships throughout the entire customer journey. Here are key stages where automation can make a difference
1. Awareness Stage
The awareness stage is when potential customers first learn about your business. It comes before acquisition, where users take the first step toward trying your product—such as signing up for an account.
Example of Automation for the Awareness Stage:
Content Drip Campaign: Set up an automated email series that delivers valuable educational content to new leads or subscribers helping them understand your product and its benefits to get them to sign up for your app.
2. Consideration Stage
People at this stage are qualified marketing leads who have shown interest in your product. Your marketing automation should focus on providing valuable information that helps them make an informed decision.
Example of Automation for the Consideration Stage:
Lead Nurturing Workflows: Set up automated workflows that deliver personalized content based on a prospect’s interests and behavior. This could include case studies, testimonials, or product demos.
3. Customer Onboarding Stage
The onboarding stage begins once a prospect signs up and becomes a customer. This is a crucial phase where you guide new users in understanding and successfully using your product or service. Effective onboarding helps improve customer satisfaction, engagement, and long-term retention.
Examples of Automation for the Onboarding Stage:
1. Welcome Email Series: Send an automated sequence of emails introducing customers to your brand, key product features, and support resources.
2. Onboarding Email flow: Set up an automated sequence of the different steps and actions new customers have to complete to get them fully set up to get value from your app. Example is KYC completion flow to make sure customers get the right information and nudge to complete their KYC and adopt one of your key features that would help them get value from your product.
3. Product Tutorials & Walkthroughs: Automate emails or in-app messages that provide step-by-step guides, video tutorials, or FAQs to help users get started.
3. Customer Engagement & Reactivation Stage
This stage focuses on nurturing ongoing relationships with existing customers and re-engaging those who have become inactive.
Examples of Automation for the Customer Engagement & Reactivation Stage:
1. Event-based messages – Sending messages based on customers’ actions and inactions. An example will be an email triggered to customers who have not funded their wallets for a period of time or notifying customers of a low balance on their accounts.
2. Exclusive Offers: Providing special discounts, early access to new products, and loyalty program rewards to valued customers.
3. Win-Back Email Campaigns: Send targeted emails or push notifications offering incentives (e.g., waived fees, discounts, or bonus rewards) to inactive customers.
4. Dormant Account Reminders: Automated push notifications or emails, reminding users about their inactive accounts and new feature updates, encouraging them to log in or take action.
4. Retention Stage (Building Loyalty & Engagement)
The retention stage focuses on nurturing and deepening existing customer relationships, fostering loyalty, and encouraging repeat usage of your product, turning customers into fans.
Customer retention is important for long-term business success. It’s significantly more cost-effective to retain existing customers than to constantly acquire new ones.
Examples of Retention Stage:
1. Account Activity Updates: Set up automation for monthly round-offs, customer usage insights, or personalized reports to customers.
2. Personalized Product Recommendations: Suggest relevant features based on past behavior or interests. For a finance app, an example would be investment opportunities, loan options, or insurance plans.
3. Celebrating milestones: Set up date-based automation to send personalized emails or push notifications to customers on important dates to celebrate personal milestones like birthdays or business-related milestones such as account anniversaries or feature usage milestones.
One more thing
A successful automation strategy starts with well-defined goals. Identify what you want to achieve, whether it’s increasing onboarding completion rates, reactivating inactive customers, generating more leads, boosting sales, or improving customer engagement. Equally important is selecting the right marketing automation tool—one that provides the necessary features and integrates with your existing systems for better results.
Bunce makes it easy to handle customer data effectively, segmenting audiences, and automating key touch points across the customer journey. Enabling you to track customer interactions and optimize campaigns based on real-time data.
Want to learn more about how we can help automate your marketing process and increase your product growth? Sign up for a free trial here.