Data Gathering — The Key to Successful Automation

Automation is a powerful tool for increasing the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and driving sales. But for most companies, automation can't be based on numbers alone. Think for a moment about the work your sales reps do: most deals they close are ultimately attributable to their relationship with the customer. They are "on the front lines" with leads and prospects, answering questions they have and addressing concerns that arise. Probably more than anyone else in your business, your sales reps have a finger on the pulse of your customer base.

With that in mind, gathering not just numerical data but also anecdotal evidence when developing an automation strategy is vital. Effective data gathering will make a lead's transition from interacting with marketing content to speaking with a live salesperson much smoother and more effective.

Interviewing Your Sales Team

One of the best ways your marketing department can come up with great ideas for content is to periodically interview your sales team. These meetings should be very structured and should take place regularly (perhaps once a month). Marketing leaders can use targeted questions that will help them clearly understand and define what problems leads are facing, and which solutions they are especially interested in. On the other side of the table, sales reps can come prepared with stories of their experiences with leads over the past month, and pertinent details of their interactions.

Here are some examples of targeted questions that sales and marketing team members can explore together:

• What are the attributes of leads who show up more prepared to buy?
• What questions do leads who are most prepared to buy ask on sales calls?
• What content have leads who are prepared to buy already seen by the time they speak with a sales rep?
• What are the 3 questions you wish leads knew the answers to before they spoke with the sales team? In other words, what would salespeople like leads to have been educated about through marketing content before a sales call?

The objective of these questions, from Marketing's perspective, is to develop content that would generate leads who are more primed, more prepared, and more interested in conversations about buying your company's solution.

You can see how powerful such interview sessions could be! Just imagine: if marketing can use the input from your sales team to create an automated strategy that ensures the right content gets to the right leads, it can be a win-win for everyone involved. Add a well-designed lead-scoring system into the mix. It will make it that much easier to keep low-quality leads exposed to marketing materials while allowing your sales reps to focus more of their attention on high-quality leads —i.e., leads who are more likely to buy.

It's true this type of alignment doesn't happen overnight; but once your sales and marketing teams are on the same page and experience wins together, it will build momentum and act as a force multiplier for your company's success.

Shaping Automations is an Ongoing Process

It's no secret that customer behavior can change for all sorts of external reasons — the time of year, the state of the economy, etc. In addition, most businesses don't have completely static offerings. Products and services may evolve. For these and other reasons, it's vital that shaping automations through data analysis become (or remain) an ongoing process. 

Over time, your company will likely develop a variety of sales funnels and campaigns around several central themes. They may revolve around a certain season, event, product launch, or discount. Whatever the case may be, tracking engagement and conversion metrics via your CRM and other automation tools will give you a glimpse into the effectiveness of your content. Then you can decide whether to double down on your current approach or make adjustments for future campaigns.

Also, don't be afraid to test out new ideas! For example, one private jet chartering company wanted to get higher conversions on their marketing spend. By experimenting with highly specific Google search queries, the company was able to achieve up to a 10% conversion rate based on their targeted landing pages.

Develop Nurture Strategies

Every company wants to effectively nurture their leads until they are ready to make a purchase decision — and the type of content your leads interact with says a lot about the type of information they need to finally make that decision.

One powerful, data-based automation strategy you can lean into is sending email content to your leads based on the pages of the websites they visit. For example, one company leveraged its ambassador program to drive conversion rates. But more than that, they developed an automation around that program which was triggered when a lead clicked through a certain number of testimonials and case studies on their website. The data showed that the interest was there; the automated email sequence struck while the iron was hot.

Of course, it's also important to offer the right thing at the right time in the buyer's journey. Lead nurturing strategies can become counterproductive if they result in a lot of wasted time and effort on low-quality leads. For instance, be careful when and to whom you offer free consultations. If that offer is mainly focused on middle-of-funnel prospects, they may only want free information without any serious intent to purchase. The end result may be a lot of free consultations and zero purchases.

The point is, that it's important to adequately qualify leads before transitioning them to direct interactions with your sales team. Automation strategies that take this important factor into account will be most effective for your business.

At the end of the day, you need hard data to successfully automate your processes; but you also need to keep a finger on the pulse of your customer base. Conduct regular interviews with your salespeople. Experiment with different automations. Develop realistic nurture strategies. If you do all these things, you're that much closer to optimizing your sales performance and maximizing profitability.

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A healthy relationship between sales and marketing is vital to an organization’s success. Dive deep into this effective strategy in a new book called Sales & Marketing Alignment. If you'd like more insights on how you can improve your sales leadership, contact us. Or sign up for our newsletter for more valuable resources.​