Marketers are increasingly using automation tools to make marketing campaigns and outreach efforts more efficient. In fact, up to 51% of companies use some form of marketing automation. One of the core elements of any marketing campaign is lead generation. The process of attracting, nurturing, and converting leads can be time-consuming for business marketers.
So, why should you automate your lead generation process? Let’s look at various ways you can improve your marketing strategy by automating this process:
Automate Your Email Marketing
If you’ve not yet started automating lead management, start with your email marketing process. Email automation easily integrates with your CRM system so you can store customer data automatically. You can group potential leads and target them with more relevant content and offers. Email marketing automation makes it easy to streamline your custom journey.
They feature intuitive interfaces that offer key details about each lead, including subscriptions, sign-ups, email opens, downloads, and other valuable information that marketers can use. Email marketing automation is easy to set up and saves you a lot of time. It also makes it easy to communicate and engage with visitors, qualified leads, and existing customers.
Offer Incentives to Convert Leads
In an increasingly competitive market, businesses face one big challenge – converting leads that interact with their website or other customer touch-points. However, a closer look at the customer journey reveals that not all leads convert. Leads may interact with you regularly but lack the incentive to make a purchase.
That can be in the form of abandoned shopping carts or regular visits to product pages with no buying decisions. These warm leads may show interest in your services or products but aren’t moving forward in the sales funnel. Offer them incentives – send them an offer for a discount, offer free shipping, or a free trial. Automating this process ensures you don’t miss any leads.
Make Use of Push Notifications
Smart marketers implement the latest lead conversion strategies to improve their marketing efforts. Push notifications are one automation strategy you can use for lead generation. These notifications can be used to target users that frequently visit your website or even regular customers. The push notifications appear each time visitors use their browser.
Of course, users can choose to opt-in to your push notifications or not, allowing you to send them relevant content, incentives, or even freebies until they decide to convert. Push notifications have a click-through rate of around 4-6%, so take advantage of that to see whether it has a positive impact on your lead generation efforts.
Integrated Chat Bots to Increase Your Social Reach
Automated chatbots are becoming popular each passing day due to one reason – they improve engagement and convert leads at a higher rate than most marketers would expect. Using chatbots is indeed successful – the open-rate on Facebook messenger alone can reach up to 88%. Chatbots are the perfect way to engage both new leads and cold leads.
If you’re considering automated chatbots for lead generation, make sure that the message conveyed is relevant to the user and the customer journey. Every lead generation message needs to connect with the user to make the desired impact.
Re-Engage With Cold Leads
Most markers find it hard to re-engage with users who once showed interest in their products or services but never returned. Your business probably has a database of contacts – both active and dormant. What are you doing to reach out to cold leads? Automating your lead generation process can help you identify such leads and create content that re-engages them.
Start by sending them an exciting offer that relates to products, services, or topics of interest. Be strategic in your timing to reach out. The more you try to reconnect, the higher the chances of converting cold leads to potential buyers.
Conclusion
Don’t hesitate to automate your lead generation process. As more businesses rely on technology and clever automation, marketers can improve their marketing strategies and increase conversions.
