Did you know that marketing automation is not just about marketing? One of the main advantages of marketing automation is connecting marketing and sales. Especially in the B2B environment, we know that the buying process (buyer journey) is much longer, more complex, and more complicated than in B2C (well, in most cases). First, buyers go through a few different stages during the process, and second, more “buyers”, commonly known as stakeholders, are involved in the buying process. Just imagine selecting and buying a new HR software. There will be an HR Manager / Director / Chief People Officer, CFO, and even the CEO in SMB companies who will probably be involved in the decision-making process.
The buyer journey typically begins with a stage where the potential buyer has a problem, pain, or need and starts looking for a solution. As they progress in the process, they try to find more information about all the options to finally compare product details, pricing, and any other attributes they use to make the final decision between a few options.
Using the same example as above, the company selling HR software's goal is to be found by the buyer in all of those stages and provide the buyer with relevant information to help them make the proper selection. And I think it’s already common knowledge that potential buyers don’t want to talk to a salesperson before they do their research and gather as much information as possible. Or at least most of them.
That’s where automation plays an important role. It can help marketers achieve their goals and lead to the final sale by providing personalised and relevant information and experience to the potential buyer, qualifying prospects to provide sales with valuable insights, or automating internal processes within marketing and between marketing, sales, and customer service. Especially in the SAAS space, where companies want to turn prospects into buyers even without any salesperson interaction to lower the Cost of Acquisition to a minimum by using a self-service model typical for converting free trial users into customers. This process is pretty much impossible without marketing automation. And E-commerce is pretty much built on marketing automation and personalisation.
Now, let’s dive into some popular use case examples in the B2B environment. I will show you examples ranging from very simple automation, which should be done even by solopreneurs and small business owners, to a bit more sophisticated and complex automation, where we use lead scoring and conditional triggers of actions.
1) New subscriber follow-up automation
The goal of this process:
- Increase engagement
- Gather data and qualify the lead
- Move lead down the funnel
Are newsletters still working? That is the question, and I think the simple answer is yes. You can say, people’s inboxes are bombarded with emails, newsletters, etc. However, look at, for example, Lenny’s newsletter, which has over 600,000 subscribers, most of them paid subscribers. How is that possible if we think newsletters are not working anymore? The quality of the content shared and consistency. Simple.
So let’s say you also decide to write newsletters and use the typical subscribe-to-a-newsletter conversion as your TOF (top of the funnel) conversion, through which you build up your reach database. The question is, how can we use marketing automation in such a simple process?
Send a “Thank you and welcome” email to your new subscribers
This is very simple to do, and it’s a must-do!
Once someone subscribes to your newsletter, send them an automated Thank you for subscribing and welcome email. This is a straightforward process; you can even use the free HubSpot CRM or free HubSpot Marketing Hub to do something like this.
But don’t send just a plain thank you and welcome message. I would always recommend adding some recommended articles, videos or any other content the subscriber might be interested in. That way, you can achieve two things:
- You introduce your new subscribers to your other content channels - YouTube or maybe podcast if you are doing one
- You can gain valuable insights and data by seeing what people click on. I would use that information to add subscribers to different groups, which are marketing lists, and then send them more personalised content based on their interests.
At this stage, in addition to sending the auto email, one more process should be automated: adding this new contact to your active marketing list. That way, when you send your following newsletter, all subscribers are already on that list. Again, this can also be done using the free HubSpot CRM.
2) Conference organisation and communication
In this example, we look at how you can use automation to organise an in-person event. It can be a one-day / half-day workshop or, for example, a 2-day conference. Automation can help you save a lot of valuable time and also personalise communication.
The goal is:
- Reach registrations and attendance goal
- Generate new qualified leads and opportunities
Invitation
Email Marketing Campaigns: Utilize marketing automation platforms to create targeted email campaigns promoting the event. Segment your audience based on factors such as location, interests, or past engagement to send personalised invitations, event reminders, and exclusive offers.
For example, if you use Account-Based Strategy, you want to invite people from the target accounts. If you do 1 to 1 ABM, you can even send an exclusive invitation or run an exclusive pre-event session with key people from this account.
You can then schedule automated Email invitations and send different invitations to different groups = lists.
You can also take the automation to the next level using If/then conditions for the automated process. For example, you can set up this process:
Event Registration
Event Registration and Ticketing: You can implement an automated process using online registration forms integrated with your CRM system. If you use HubSpot CRM, you have everything in one tool. You can create a registration page with a registration form inside HubSpot and have all registered attendees in your CRM as soon as they register.
When someone registers for the event, you can send an automated confirmation email with event details and ticket access instructions. You can also include “Add to calendar” in this email.
DD Tip: I would also set up an automated email notification to the Contact / Account owner, especially for those target accounts, so that the account owner is informed about who from their prospects/clients will attend. The same can be done for key people from target accounts who didn’t register by a particular time before the event. You can even create a task for the account/contact owner to follow up and invite them personally.
Depending on how long before the event someone registered, you can also set up automated nurture emails or even SMS messages that will:
- Provide valuable content related to the event topic, share speaker profiles and agenda updates, or highlight key benefits of attending. This will keep people excited about your upcoming event.
- Remind people about the upcoming event - emails like …”The event you registered for is already in one week, one day, etc. You can use these emails to inform people how to get to the venue, where to park, and what the day will look like.
All of those can be set up and run automatically. You can even personalise messages to attendees based on their interests and preferences (using any information you already have in your CRM). To provide a more customised experience, you can also tailor communications to different segments of your audience, such as speakers, sponsors, or VIP guests.
Post-Event Follow-Up
You can automate post-event follow-up emails to thank attendees for their participation, gather feedback through surveys, and share resources or recordings from the event. This is an excellent opportunity to nurture relationships with attendees and continue the conversation beyond the event.
Analytics and Reporting
Leverage marketing automation analytics to track the effectiveness of your event marketing efforts. You can monitor metrics such as email open rates, click-through rates, social media engagement, and registration conversions to measure ROI and identify areas for improvement in future events. Use automation to segment attendees based on whether they attended the event or how much they have engaged with your pre-event and post-event communication.
Lead scoring for prospects can be a great way to get more qualification data for your sales team.
3) SAAS - From free trial to paid subscribers
Now, this process can get a bit complicated, and I must say that the actual process can depend on many attributes: business strategy, marketing strategy, and plan.
One very simple self-service scenario can be:
- Bring potential clients to your website
- They sign up for a Free trial of your SAAS product
- You try to get them from the free trial to become a paying customer (some companies like HubSpot, ClickUp, or Asana, for example, use the freemium model = you can use their product in a limited version for free forever. Other companies would use something like a 14-day free trial or 7-day free trial, for example, Jasper.ai)
Because we want to use a self-service model to convert free users to paying customers, we need to use automation and personalisation at their best. This means we need to gather and use data and insights about
- The potential client = someone who signed up for a free trial or freemium product.
- How is that potential client using / not using our free product or trial?
This information is critical in setting up the automated processes and communication, which should ultimately help convert the prospect into a customer. And we need to be able to combine those two types of information to achieve the best results.
So, where and how can we use automation to help us achieve the desired targets? We will use the free trial example.
After the Free trial sign-up automation
The goal of this process: Ensure people who sign up for the free trial start using and testing the product = reduce churn at this stage of the journey.
This situation is similar to the previous example with newsletter sign-up; however, this step should be more complex.
Send a welcome Email
You want to send the new subscriber an auto email welcoming them to the platform and providing key basic steps and recommendations of how the new user should start using the product. Ideally, you want to include links to videos with onboarding tips on how to start using the product.
Add to Marketing List
Another automatic step is to add this new subscriber to a dedicated marketing list and mark it as a Marketing Qualified Lead in your CRM (or whatever stage you might use). This is all done automatically in the background.
Email sequence
After sending the first email, you can set up an automated email sequence, which can include sending emails with these kinds of information:
- Email 2 - Highlight the most useful features
- Email 3 - Showcase case studies = how other similar people and similar companies use the product
- Email 4 - If you are not sure, book a personalised demo with an expert
- Email 5 - Your free trial is about to expire -> upgrade
- Email 6 - Your free trial has expired -> do you need more information/time?
Of course, you would set up some delay between each message, as you don’t want to send too many emails within a short period of time. The number of days you offer the free trial also depends on how many of those emails you would send and how often.
+1 Use marketing automation to look after your customers - new customers onboarding
The goal of this process: Increase customer retention and reduce churn rate
First, I must say that customer service is one of the most critical elements in running a successful business in any area. That’s why our plus one is about utilising automation and personalisation as soon as someone becomes our new client. New customer onboarding is one of the most critical elements of the entire customer journey.
We can again use the SAAS example as automation can play an essential part in increasing the customer retention rate and reducing the famous unfamous churn - a key metric all SAAS customer service/customer success teams constantly watch.
One of the biggest reasons, if not the biggest, why churn happens is that people don’t use SAAS products to their full potential. Once they purchase the software, it can get a bit overwhelming. Where do I start? How do I use the product for what I need to accomplish? Do we need to adapt or change our processes to utilise the new tool? So many questions to answer.
Enters automation.
From Sales to Customer Success
As mentioned above, customer service/success teams become the owners of new customers at this stage, and it’s their goal to look after them. They will have the KPIs and metrics they need to achieve, such as retention rate, churn rate, revenue churn, customer engagement rate, or MRR, and automation can help them achieve them.
Our examples of automated processes are very simple yet highly valuable.
If you use tools like HubSpot CRM, you can create an automated process (using their powerful workflows) to assign a new customer (and the key people from that company) to a particular customer success member. That way, the customer success team is informed, as it becomes their responsibility to look after the customer and ensure they use the solution to its full potential.
You can also use the same workflow to create an actual phone call follow-up task with the new customer scheduled within a particular timeframe since they signed up.
Create an automated Email Sequence
Email 1 - Welcome and introduction about the product they will be using
This step is very important. With a simple welcome email, you can automate and highly personalise the initial experience for your new customers. Not only do you welcome them, but you should also use this message to encourage them to start using the key features of the product relevant to their specific needs and situation - personalisation. At this stage, your CRM should have enough data that you can use to personalise this first message and provide new customers with the most relevant tips.
Email 2 - Highlight some features you know would be valuable to use for the particular customer
This email can go a bit deeper than the first one and can also be used as a reassurance or reminder to ensure your new customer starts using your solution. Of course, you can again use a more sophisticated approach and add If/then rules to this automated sequence.
Email 3 - Case study showcasing how some other companies benefit from using the solution
Who doesn’t like a real example of someone else already using software and how they benefit from it? This can be one of the most important emails in the sequence, as it can inspire many new users. Again, don’t forget to use your valuable CRM data to determine what info and examples can be relevant to your new customers. Don’t provide a start-up using the basic level of your product examples about how an enterprise organisation uses your top-level plan. At least not at this stage.
You want to be as relevant as possible. You don’t need big names to prove the solution suits all your new clients. It can have a rather negative effect as new users can see it as too complicated.
Email 4 - We noticed you are not using these key features / you haven’t set up this yet
This is a step where you need data and personalise this message as best as possible. Of course, you need to get data from your product linked to your CRM to segment and customise the message.
Lunch an in-product onboarding tour
This is another critical step for any SAAS product to ensure new subscribers use the solution to its full potential. Tools like Userpilot, Walkme, Intercom, or Product Fruits are excellent tools for such needs. Although this is more of a product automation, it still plays an important part in the entire customer journey, which can increase customer retention and reduce churn.
Internal notification to the marketing team and adding to a marketing list
I always want to be informed when a prospect turns into a customer for a few reasons. One of them is to celebrate. Yes, to celebrate as getting new customers is what we aim for in marketing. Another reason is to add the client to a pipeline of potential customer success stories.
Adding new customers to a dedicated marketing list is another process you can automate. You would do something like this because you can trigger a workflow for new clients based on this. You also have a list of all clients ready in case you want to invite your clients to a special event just for clients.
For example, in one company, we ran regular user groups for our clients, where we introduced new features and had one of the customers present how they use our solution so that other customers could get valuable examples. We also introduced or highlighted some features customers should be using, but we knew they weren’t.
How to use automation to its full potential
These were just a few simple examples of how marketing automation can benefit you by streamlining your processes, saving time, and providing a personalised customer experience throughout the buyer journey. As you can see, automation can be leveraged in all stages of the buyer journey.
Two important things I would like to highlight in the end.
1. Make sure you create a plan and start with simple processes.Using mind-mapping tools like Miro, draw.io, Lucidchart, or any other ones to design the process is a great way to start. However, it can get complicated once you start doing more complex automation, using the If / then conditions, delays, etc..
2. Define a goal you want to achieve by doing some kind of automation.Tools like HubSpot can help you as when you set up an automation workflow in HubSpot, you can define a goal for the particular workflow. That also helps to automatically remove anyone from the workflow once the goal is reached.
