So you finally took the plunge and purchased marketing automation … six months ago.
By now, you’ve integrated your CRM, set-up a few basic drip nurturing campaigns, figured out how to effectively segment lists and run automation rules — and with the drastic impact you’ve already started to see with this new toolset, it’s easy to fall into a daily routine and stop exploring the extent of your platform’s capabilities.
But think back to those early product demo days, to a salesperson telling you about feature after impressive-sounding feature. They may have made you giddy with excitement or they may have made your head spin, but if you haven’t revisited these features since chatting with a sales rep, it’s time to face your fears and start delving into some of the slightly less basic capabilities of marketing automation. Let’s take a look at three features to stop avoiding.
Dynamic Content
The number one feature to stop avoiding is dynamic content — because with it, your opportunities are endless. By learning how to implement this easy-to-use feature, you can create a more targeted and personalized experience for your prospects on forms, landing pages, emails, and your website. And set-up is simple: based on specific criteria that you set, prospects will see a variation of your content wherever you embed the generated code on your website or email.
Use this feature to prominently display the content on your website that will be of greatest interest to a prospect based on their past activities, or redirect prospects to specific content after a form submission to keep them engaged with content that is relevant to their needs. Set up criteria based on a prospect’s score, grade, or field value (for default or custom fields), and place yourself miles ahead of the competition by creating an incredibly personalized sales experience for each prospect.
SEO Keyword Monitoring
In this day and age, no marketer can afford to ignore SEO. How your website ranks for relevant keywords has an enormous impact on how likely your prospects are to find your product — and therefore on your bottom line. If the idea of becoming an “SEO expert” sounds intimidating and has you avoiding the topic altogether, take the first step and let your marketing automation platform show you how you rank for important keywords in your industry. Drill down further into each keyword to see historical data on your rankings, compare your rankings against those of competitors, and set up a weekly report to keep tabs on things. For information on improving your SEO rankings, check out our recorded webinar, “Unlocking the Mysteries of SEO — A B2B Marketer’s Guide,” or download our free SEO Field Guide.
Lifecycle Reporting
You can only improve the things you measure, so delve into reporting as soon as you have campaigns to report on. Lifecycle reporting can give you a high-level overview of the health of your sales cycle, and is a good place to start. See the number of net new prospects for a particular date range, understand how quickly prospects are moving through your pipeline, and drill down into specific prospects to see their full “lifecycle.” With these insights, you can begin to get an idea of how well your sales and marketing teams are coordinating — and find areas that need improvement.
What are some of your favorite marketing automation features that you’ve discovered as you learn more about your platform? We’d love to hear from you in our comments section!
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