According to HubSpot, 76% of companies reported using automation in 2021 and 68% of B2B marketers with an ABM program use it, too.
That’s not surprising considering the massive potential marketing automation has to grow your business over time. It creates efficiencies in your processes that compound year over year and save an incalculable amount of time and labor.
Here are a few tactics you can implement using B2B marketing automation through an educational, nurturing-based lens:
Often when we think about marketing automation, we think about sending automated emails. But it goes far beyond traditional email workflows — marketing automation platforms can also be used for lead scoring, data entry, multi-channel campaigns, and more.
“Nurtured leads result in a 47% higher order value than non-nurtured leads.”
When it comes to B2B marketing, having a record of all the interactions a lead has had with your business makes it easier to qualify them and improves the handoff from marketing to sales.
CRMs such as HubSpot have predictive lead scoring, which can assign a number based on user activity, such as:
This number, called a lead score, indicates how warm a lead is and how likely they are to make a purchase. Once a lead reaches a certain lead score, they can either be enrolled into an email nurture sequence or handed off to the sales team for follow up.
31% of B2B marketers use newsletters to nurture leads.
–Content Marketing Institute
Email nurturing campaigns are a staple of B2B marketing automation. These are a series of emails that are automatically sent to a contact when the trigger criteria is met.
A trigger can be anything from reaching a certain lead score to downloading multiple content offers. You can craft a series of emails that speak to their interests and purchasing stage, such as in the example below:
Lead nurturing emails are designed to educate and inform your leads about your company and solution. This helps to build trust and give your leads the confidence they need to take the next step in their buyer’s journey.
Companies with robust omnichannel strategies retain 89% of their customers.
–Mackenzie corp
Reaching users goes far beyond your website. That’s why many marketers use an omnichannel approach to find where their audience spends their time – think Google AdSense, social media, YouTube pre-roll ads, and even traditional mailers.
If you’ve got a corporate catering business, for example, you can set up an ad campaign that appears on common event-planning sites and other related keywords. This tactic is often used to increase brand awareness and bring new visitors to a website.
You can also use marketing automation for SMS outreach if your contacts have opted in. This is useful for sending reminders or notifications and asking for feedback.
“Chatbots saw a 92% use increase since 2019, making it the brand communication channel with the largest growth.”
–Drift
The best way to boost your chances to engage with a prospective customer is to have quick response times. In our instant gratification world, it can increase engagement exponentially – especially during a first impression.
Chatbots can be immensely helpful in B2B marketing automation if you compile commonly asked questions that you can field better through a helpful popup on the corner of your site.
This automation can emulate or appear to be a person until someone is available to answer a message. It will send a ping to available team members anytime someone messages the chatbot, giving you the chance to start a conversation with your site visitors and learn more about their needs and preferences.
Marketing automation comes in many shapes and sizes, but no matter the size of your business, you can utilize some form of it to elevate your everyday interactions with leads. Whether that’s nurturing a relationship through email or lead scoring to bucket and curate content to be as personalized and helpful as possible, automation is one of the most cost-effective ways to maximize efficiency and enable your employees to focus on higher-level strategy.
To learn more, download our Growth Stack Guide to see how all of these elements compound over time, giving you the ROI you’ve been wanting in your business.
