Automation. That single word is enough to strike fear into those people who claim it’s on a one-way crusade to remove every single working person on the planet and create an AI hierarchy. Of course, that’s not the case. Automation, in fact, helps businesses run more efficiently by taking away menial tasks for employees’ and helping businesses grow.
This can be the case for marketing automation in the construction sector. With an endless list of Barbour ABI contacts to reach out to, wouldn’t you much rather leave it to a more than capable bit of software? If that’s the case, and you are ready to take your Barbour marketing emails to an all-new automated height, you’ll want to know how exactly to use it to get the best results.
The common misconception when using marketing automation for Barbour ABI subscribers is that the aim needs to be something huge. “We need to increase sales by 25% in the next month!” This just isn’t what automation at this level is designed to do. Marketing automation isn’t a like-for-like replacement for your sales team. Instead, it works alongside them to help make their job much easier. When using marketing automation, Barbour ABI subscribers should set much more achievable objectives. Things like ‘having X contact forms completed’ or ‘Y newsletter sign ups’ provide a steppingstone for the automated system and your sales team. Having the wrong objectives is the biggest problem subscribers face. They go in expecting automation to overhaul their sales team - when in reality - it’s there to do the menial tasks.
Automation is globally renowned for the 4Ds. This means that its implementation is suited to work that is dangerous, dull, dirty or dear. When it comes to contacting your Barbour ABI database, sending emails is usually the best way to make a cold outreach, however sending thousands of emails can be a hugely time-consuming and costly task, taking up resources that would be better used elsewhere. This makes it the ideal solution for automation and something which can save you hundreds of hours.
The final stage is action. This is an automated email with a ‘call to action’ included and matches your earlier objective. Once this has been completed you now have leads your sales team can talk to. Marketing emails should also be personalised, using the first name of your contacts. This helps create a greater relationship with the customer with studies from HubSpot suggesting that 41% of consumers switched businesses due to a lack of personalisation in marketing. Instead of writing 1,000 personal emails, marketing automation helps you write one email, and send it with carefully considered personalisation to 1,000 of your contacts.