With more businesses taking to Marketing Automation Platforms to underpin their modern marketing approach, many are finding it difficult to unlock the full value of these technologies.

In fact, 41% of marketers agree they’re not currently leveraging the full potential of their marketing automation solutions. Similar industry stats show this is likely true for many different aspects of your digital marketing strategy. We recently returned from speaking at DigiMarCon Toronto where much of the content from other speakers echoed this theme.

Kevin Butler of Goose Digital talking about marketing automation

As a Marketing Automation agency, we see first hand how many marketing teams struggle to get their platform situated strategically and at the centre of their modern marketing program. However, we also talk to many marketers that have not adopted a methodology to plan, execute, and measure their digital initiatives.

In our session, Kevin Butler walked through 5 other ways to create value using Marketing Automation by going beyond Lead Generation. As we know, not all marketing teams are principally focused on ‘lead generation’ and with the role of marketing now stretching to include the end-to-end customer experience, it’s clear marketers must look to their Marketing Automation Platforms to power all stages of the customer journey and beyond.

Kevin Butler of Goose Digital talking about customer journeys in marketing automation

So how can marketers effectively plan their marketing automation funnels? Well, it’s clear that putting yourself into the customer’s shoes is a great place to start.

Powering Your Customer’s Journey

Take your standard marketing funnel of Awareness, Decision, Action, Expand – let’s keep it to 4 levels. Taking a ‘Customer Journey’ led approach to planning your Marketing Automation critically forces marketers to describe what their customers need at every stage in the funnel.

For example, if you’re trying to renew an existing customer on an annual license – a classic customer success marketing use case – ask yourself what are the preconditions, requirements, and steps for that process to happen successfully? If you found out that you needed 1) a Happy Customer 2) someone Using the Software Monthly and 3) for them to complete a Digital Renewal with a Credit Card – then you would start mapping out that customer journey and look for ways marketing automation can support that process.

Continuing with that example, your customer journey may include a marketing automation approach like this:

  • Is Our Customer Using The Software?
    An automated program that monitors user activity in the software, in the event of limited or no usage, send a drip to drive product engagement. If little to no user engagement still exists, drive alert to Customer Success team. If engagement meets or exceeds your definition, exit this part of the program.
  • Is Our Customer Happy?
    High utilization doesn’t necessarily mean your customer is satisfied. An automated program monitors customer feedback status and less than an 8.5 Net Promoter Score, drives an alert to Customer Success. User is entered into a follow-up automated program to gather feedback after the Customer Success call when the agent tags their call complete.
  • Ready For Renewal!
    An automated campaign that runs to ‘happy users of the software’, inviting them to renew 60 days before the end of their contract. These messages are personalized and drives a straight through renewal process using landing pages that quickly process a credit card renewal without requiring additional steps. Failures of this process create 2 -3 follow-ups, and afterwards drive an alert to Customer Success for follow-up.
  • Renewal Success!
    After a successful renewal, customers are added to an automated program that includes thank you messages from the team, information about the company culture and product – all things to make your customer feel great about their decision.

This customer journey includes several decision points, user tracking, personalized email messages, and trigger points to the team to support the process. Ultimately we are looking to drive increased customer renewals at a lower cost, leveraging our Human Resources in the most effective way possible.

Everything Is a Customer Journey

The example in this blog is just one journey for a customer. Your customers have a number of journeys they must go through in a standard marketing funnel. By planning your marketing automation strategy using a Customer Journey led approach, you’re more likely to align your solution to your customers needs, thus using your marketing automation platform strategically.

Do you need help strategically using your Marketing Automation Platform? Contact Us today and we can explore creating Customer Journeys for you!