I just want to share with you a common misconception that often come from clients that I speak with about this industry – that marketing automation is all about saving us time with sending emails.

The reality is email marketing and sending emails is a critical part of the system. It’s very important for us to automate emails because that’s what takes most of the time. So, yes, automating some of the processes helps.

I’m not going to deny that that’s a big part of marketing automation – BUT it’s not all about sequences. The real trick is to know the starting point of those sequences – which brings us to the five cornerstones of marketing automation.

These elements are the ones that are going to allow you to send the right message at the right time to the right person.

Five Cornerstones of Marketing Automation

1. Contact Information

Name, email address, job position and address. If you have these and as much information as you can get from that contact, that would make the experience a little bit richer. So, for example, if you have a segment that is only for marketing managers and you want to share that message just to the marketing managers, then knowing their positions would help reach them more effectively.

2. Opens

We know that we need to track opens on our emails, so we know that they’re actually opening the right emails. So tracking open rates, tracking dates, when was the last time that they were in place, which essentially becomes about engagement, is very important.

3. Clicks

Basically anyone can open an email, but, did they click? So, by clicking, they’re going somewhere else that you want them to go. So you just need to check that the place that you want them to go is the right place and how they are engaging with that.

4. Website Visits

How many times have they visited, for example, the checkout, the page for any comments or how many times they check out your services page for services businesses – these can and should be tracked. This also includes how many times they went into the contact form page and if they filled it in and engaged with the page.

5. Purchase Data

So you can still run segmentations from purchase data as in when they buy first time, they buy three times, they buy five times, they buy over five, ten times. If you’ve ever done any business coaching or you’re a coach yourself listening to this, you will know that one of the ways to grow a business is to increase the repeat transactions. So again, having that data as in purchase data is highly important from a marketing automation perspective and to grow your business.

Conclusion

If you have all these five elements, then you’ll be having a wealth of data to be able to run different marketing automation campaigns.

From there, you start your journey into other things. ActiveCampaign is an awesome platform to be able to do that, and it allows you to track each one of these elements perfectly.

So, if you are not in ActiveCampaign or need a hand with that just let us know over here, I will definitely be happy to help. And if you are not part of our group, please join our group. Looking forward to see you there!

PS: When you are ready here are 3 ways we can help you:

1. Join the Marketing Automation Mastery Group: It’s our Facebook community where smart business owners like you hang out to learn how to leverage technology to better run their businesses. Click Here

2. Work Privately with me on a Personalised Automation Day Workshop: if you’d like to work me on a personalised workshop for half-day or a full-day send me a message with the word “Workshop” and we’ll send you all the details. Click here

3. Work with me and my team personally in our Marketing Automation Mastery Program and be a Case Study: If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to Plan, Implement and Launch your Proactive Response System just reply to this message with the word “MASTERY” in the subject line… tell me a little about your business and what you’d like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details!. Click Here