Marketing Automation: An Easy Workflow with Big Results - iContact
- Updated on: 2017-07-12
- Read original article here
Right message, right time, right customer — that combo is the lodestone of marketing automation. Sending automated, timely, and relevant messages can be just what you need to get more sales, more leads, and more success from your email marketing efforts. But when I talk to my customers about marketing automation, they seem nervous and a little worried. To some of them, automation appears daunting and difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, it isn’t.
Marketing automation is flexible: you can start out with an easy, simple workflow and build up to more complex automated messaging at your own speed and based on your needs. Just thinking smarter about what you are sending and how you are sending it can have a major impact on your results.
One of our iContact customers, US Pharmacopeia, is an excellent example of how a simple workflow can be a game changer for an organization.
Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, US Pharmacopeia is a scientific non-profit that creates standards and fosters partnerships that are critical to constructing and reinforcing the foundation for quality in health and healthcare. The nonprofit had been using traditional email tactics to communicate with their contacts, but wanted to better equip prospects, customers, and partners with the product information they needed (e.g. reference standards, pharmaceutical monographs) faster and more easily.
Digital Communications Leader, David Mills, decided to incorporate workflows as part of USP’s communications program. Creating a simple nurture workflow (a series of automated messages going out at timed intervals) allowed the organization not only to target their subscribers better, but it got the company thinking more about the content they were sending. As a result, they created a more customized experience — a simple four-touch drip campaign over a 14-day period:
US Pharmacopeia’s automation campaign was not complex: Four emails, four instances of valuable and targeted content, 14 days. Yet, the benefits of this more focused strategic approach are many and evident in the campaign results:
Kudos to US Pharmacopeia for taking such a smart approach to email marketing automation. As you can see, marketing automation doesn’t have to be daunting, difficult or elaborate, and it delivers a number of benefits. As is the case with USP, using automation can get you thinking about improving the quality of the content you are sending to your subscribers.
If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to rethink batch and blast — it’s a thing of the past and so are its results. Take your first step with automation, start easy, and think more about using workflows to take a more strategic approach to your marketing efforts.
You can read more about US Pharmacopeia programs to improve public health on their blog and you can follow them on Facebook, Twitter (@USPharmacopeia) and LinkedIn.
Interested in iContact Pro? Talk to your Strategic Advisor or one of our sales reps to find out more. You can learn more about nurture drip campaigns in our guide, Creating a Lead Nurturing Campaign That Works.
