7 Automations You Have To Have To Save Your business in 2020

Automation saves businesses. It is no longer the promise of increasing wealth, decreasing costs, and thicker profit margins. As competitors already implemented automation, it is about the survival of the fittest.

​Who would want to bankrupt his own company? That's crazy.
 
To ensure you have a competitive edge on the market, below are the seven key marketing automations your business has to have to survive.
​

1. Nurturing sequences with quality reading materials

​Your competitors found a way to send email sequences made of thematic email streams & social media content that arises the right feelings with their audiences. In traditional advertising there was the rule of 14-touches or the need to repeat a message 14 times in order for it to be understood and perhaps even remembered.
 
In digital marketing it’s not so much different.
 
If you want to reach the 14th number of ad exposure manually, you would have to squander a huge amount of resources and close your shop as you wouldn't be able to afford it. That is why you have to automate or you will never be ‘top of mind’ for the consumers that matter. They will remember your competitors more.

Nurturing can be done in many ways and forms, not just by email. So be wary of the channels and messaging you choose not to alienate your clients with too much of any channel and any message. Find your balance. After you identify your balance don't stop there. But, adjust it to the evolving markets, channels, and clients.

​​2. Autoresponders that are meaningful and add value 

Repeat after me, “Ninety percent of what your clients may ask from your business is repeated’. Having to repeat the same messaging is time-consuming and lowers work satisfaction. It creates depression.
 
There are some people who even commit suicides because they have to repeat the same things over and over again. This's not a joke.
 
You would be saving lives and business if you find the right questions to answer whenever a new contact sends an email to any of your public addresses. For instance:

​The main autoresponder messages for your info@yourbusiness.com
The main autoresponder message for Privacy Policy at privacy@...
The main autoresponder message for your customer service cs@..etc. 

You've got the idea.

3. ​CRM communication flows that are easy to work with

​Having your sales CRM crew aligned with your marketing crew is one of the main talking points in today’s business. With automation this gets easier. As automated communication sequences across multiple channels get embedded in your organisation, triggering such a sequence to a qualified contact or a lead should come with a push of a button or even without any buttons It can be 100% automated.

​Furthermore, you can today watch what happens to each email or SMS or phone call right from your CRM dashboard and add automated decision-making trees for each of the action recipients undertake.

4. Event triggers 

The automated sequences can be activated also when there is no manual work to classify them in the CRM or elsewhere. You can trigger sequences whenever an event happens. Examples:
 
1. Congratulate birthdays and other special events
2. A user interacts with a specific page or sends an email with specific keywords inside
3. You could score the communication touch-points and qualify users who are most or least active and send automate workflows etc.
4. Win-back sequences of past clients who haven’t been active for a certain period of time, etc.

It is important to have the event triggers properly attributed not to send too many emails to people that are NOT relevant to them.

​No matter the communication medium or the message, make sure that all your touches are meaningful for your targeted audience and add value for them, not just for yourself.

5. ​Lead sourcing automation  

​This is the most overlooked marketing automation element by 95% of marketing automation consultants. Sometimes you have to ‘automate’ living people too, but this is not what is meant here. Outside of the normal lead harvesting processes established at post-revenue organisations the lead sourcing automation pertains to the sample processes below but not limited to them:

• Strategic tools that harvest leads automatically based on consumer behaviours online and offline.
• Lead harvesting snippets that show you who visited your websites based on their corporate domains.
• Integration with social media so that everyone who likes or shares or comments on the corporate post enters a lead qualification channel if they didn’t before.
• Integration with branded chatbots that streamline data directly into the CRM and its funnels.

Here I would also add a potential for lead scoring automation, where ‘rough leads’ gathered with these processes are automatically scored and then put into the CRM funnels only if they can be promoted into a ‘sales qualified lead’ SQL.

​​6. Branded and friendly Chatbots ​

You want to be able to serve people at each touchpoint in a way that is profitable and creates loyal clients. Branded chatbots are the answer to streamline the communication processes throughout the organisations while enhancing consumer loyalty and brand recognition.
 
Chatbots can send images, songs, and even videos from your customer service representatives.
 
They can customise messages to fit the recipient or even use natural language programming (NLP) to respond that learns from all your past interactions with your client base. ​

​If you are a large organisation with a lot of data from real customer service representatives, NLP would be a blast to have and relatively easy to be set up by any serious marketing automation consultant.

​7. Automated reminders 

Business is rarely about the superior intelligence and the creative genius of a few marketing consultants. It is about the hard and smart work every day that requires consistency and just being there caring about employees and clients.
 
This 'seventh element' is something everyone can set up themselves with a simple Google Calendar reminder that repeats at certain days or dates.
 

1. Quarterly reports preparation dates
2. Birthdays of key employees or clients
3. Tax and important investor calls’ reminders
4. Crucial initiatives’ weekly meetings
5. Business strategising monthly meetings, etc.​

So, you have to have the right approach that will outlive the marketing consultant hired to help your business thrive. And you probably already have the determination, resilience, and the vision to grow your business to ever-higher levels. That’s why most will read this article to its end.

But if you can still not afford an external marketing automation consultant to help your executives and yourself set up your marketing automation, it probably means you may lack the 7th element from the list above.
 
So do acquire it.
 
Or, if you already have the 7th, do inquire today how AVR can help you automate and streamline your business processes.

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