Mary West, Client Implementation Specialist at Pardot, has worked extensively with clients, and will be sharing her insights, best practices, and tips for those using marketing automation in their day-to-day jobs.
The first of the year is a great time to revisit your marketing drawing board and challenge yourself to be more strategic, effective, and memorable in the year to come. Because continually thinking outside-the-box can be challenge, we have a list of four ideas to incorporate into your marketing processes to help you take your everyday practices just one step further this year.
One: Use a “chaser” email in a drip campaign.
A chaser email is a follow-up email sent shortly after the original message was sent. It can recap what was just sent, or it can provide some additional information on the same topic. One tactic that yields great results is using a chaser email that looks like a reply. The subject line might contain “RE: Previous Email’s Title,” which makes it look like it is a reply to the last email sent. The body of the message can contain the same original content; however, consider adding a line at the top saying something like “Hey, I wasn’t sure if you saw my original message. I saw this [fill in the blank] and thought it might be helpful for you.” This allows you to follow up in a personal way (as well as give someone an additional opportunity to engage), but the style feels a little less formal.
Two: Use a custom redirect to determine most effective ad size.
Custom redirects are a small but mighty tool. And determining link click traffic on external sites is a powerful way to use a custom redirect. One effective way that we have seen these being used is when determining effective ad size. Setting up three custom redirects for three different-sized LinkedIn ads would allow you to see which of those three sizes or placements is yielding the most traffic. After a period of testing, you could move forward knowing that you’re using the most effective ad size for your audience.
Three: Increase personalization through variable tags and dynamic content.
Because there are so many messages being sent to consumers, it is important to make your marketing messages as relevant and personal as possible. Each email, landing page, or website provides an opportunity for a personalized prospect message: a familiar logo, a more advanced piece of content for a prospect with high engagement, case studies comparing your tool to the tool a prospect might be using, location-based messaging, or messaging relevant to a prospect’s buying cycle stage. You’ve been collecting valuable data for months or even years, so leveraging it in all ways possible will yield a highly effective marketing campaign — especially compared to those vendors with static and potentially irrelevant content.
Four: Use a page action to identify a shopping cart page visit.
A lot of companies today incorporate some type of product offering on their sites. But because most marketing automation tools do not manage the monetary exchanges that take place, it can be hard to know that a prospect made it to that stage of the buying cycle. Using a page action (a page action is a way to run an action based on a prospect hitting a specific page) to note the buying progress on a prospect record can be vital for the type of correspondence a marketing or sales team would want to respond with.
What are some of the ways that you’re taking your marketing strategies a little bit further in 2014? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments section.
Image source can be found here.