How to Increase Conversion Rates Using Marketing Automation

Marketing automation tools are changing the way marketers create and manage campaigns. Research shows that marketing automation usage exceeds keeps rising. Automating time-consuming tasks such as media management can improve marketers’ productivity. Read on to learn how to make the most of marketing automation tools and effectively boost conversion rates. 

What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation technology helps marketers with processes such as customer segmentation, managing customers’ data, and email campaigns. Using these automation tools, businesses can deliver automated messages across email, web, social, and text.  (Source: Salesforce). Marketers delegate repetitive tasks to automation software and are able to reduce the time it takes to manage and deploy campaigns. 

Companies are increasingly adopting marketing automation solutions because these technologies help them achieve business goals, including:

• Generating more leads
• Increase conversions
• Improve customer retention
• Reduce repetitive tasks

Marketing automation is not an isolated process. On the contrary, it affects the entire marketing cycle. You can use marketing automation for email marketing, with software integrations like Zappier, CRM systems like Salesforce and Digital Asset Management (DAM) like Cloudinary. 

Companies implementing marketing automation software experience several benefits. According to recent surveys, marketing automation can boost sales productivity 77% of companies surveyed also experienced an increase in conversion rates while using marketing automation tools. This is particularly useful considering that converting sales leads into customers is one of the main goals for marketers. 

If you’re looking for specific examples, take a look at this post, listing 9 examples of email automation and 11 more examples of B2C automation

How to Optimize Your Website for Conversion Rates

You may notice that your website’s conversion rates are staying low even after optimizing the copy, improving the design, and ensuring the site is user-friendly. Often, low conversion rates are a direct consequence of poor user experience. Below, you can find some tips about optimizing your website experience.

Ensure your web pages load fast

The biggest culprits of slow loading times usually are large images and videos. Optimizing images and videos for the web is necessary to keep visitors engaged. Image optimization is the process of reducing the file size of images as much as possible without affecting quality. Try these free image optimization tools.

Keep it simple

An excess of images and videos can distract the customer from the call to action. By limiting the number of images, you maximize its impact. A simple, clear design will guide the visitor through the conversion path and towards the desired action. A good rule of thumb is placing the conversion elements above the fold so visitors can easily see and know exactly what you want them to do.

Be concise and clear

The benefits of your product or service should be clear to the visitor from the start. Ensure you state right on the page how your product or service can help visitors. Explain what problems it solves and what benefits they provide.

Marketing Automation Strategies for Increasing Conversion Rates

There are a number of strategies you can implement to increase conversion rates by using marketing automation tools. 

1. Personalized outreach

One of the reasons your conversion rates might be low is due to the lack of follow up. For example, not following abandoned cart emails. To create personalized follow-up emails you should collect data about the customer’s interests and what stage they are in the buying process. 

Automating marketing can be done using email and campaign management tools. You can use these tools to gather customer data and use it to deliver personalized content. The personalized message can drive the customer to the next stage in the buying cycle through calls to action. The result is increased conversion rates. 

2. Segmented email campaigns

Using segmentation to target your audience with a personalized email is a must. Segmented email campaigns have more click-through rates than unsegmented ones. You can use automated email marketing tools to help you segment by interests and preferences. Automated marketing tools can collect data about email history, online behavior, and website activity, and then send users personalized offers. 

You can also segment visitors according to other criteria such as engagement level. For example, sending re-engagement content to lagging customers. Automation tools can also enable you to segment by purchase amounts, sending high-end and upsell offers to customers that spend more. 

3. Set up triggers

Most marketing automation tools let you set up triggers to respond quickly to user behavior. Triggers are conditions you configure according to criteria that initiate action by the marketing automation platform. For example, you can set up a trigger to send special offers for related products when a visitor clicks on a product image. 

4. Use the omnichannel approach

Omnichannel marketing is the practice of providing a better user experience regardless of the device or platform the customer is using. A single, unified marketing approach helps deliver the message to the customer, while also providing brand consistency. 

You should integrate the email campaigns, CRM system, and social media to the marketing automation tools. Tools like Zapier can help you integrate and automate the processes of the apps you use for your marketing processes. 

Apps integration provides you with a streamlined process, ensuring the consistency and timely action of content delivery. In addition, integrating with automation software can help you leverage user behavior, translating it into actionable information. 

5. Build an efficient workflow

To truly leverage marketing automation you need an efficient workflow. That is why you should carefully outline the customer journey. Defining different workflows for the different stages of the customer lifecycle can help you ensure no stage gets overlooked. Some examples of workflows you can configure with marketing automation include:

• Pre-purchase workflow—you can set welcome messages and guidance content to encourage customers to make their first purchase. 
• Follow-up—you can set up automated emails asking for reviews and feedback. You can also follow-up abandoned purchases, and set up a message reminder. 
• Loyalty program—you can increase customer retention by setting up a workflow that automates rewards and perks. This can also encourage upsells and additional purchases. 
• Content workflow—the content workflow should include the delivery of relevant content to customers throughout the entire omnichannel. 

Wrapping Up 

Marketing automation tools are regularly used by most lead generation marketing agencies. Marketing automation makes workflow more efficient and helps improve conversion rates. The automation process seems like a complex task, but its benefits surpass the efforts. With the right marketing tools, you can leverage actionable information to increase conversion rates. 

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Author Bio:
Gilad David Maayan is a technology writer who has worked with over 150 technology companies including SAP, Samsung NEXT, NetApp and Imperva, producing technical and thought leadership content that elucidates technical solutions for developers and IT leadership. LinkedIn profile

Photo Credit: Image by Tammy Duggan-Herd from Pixabay