Top Three Marketing Automations for Any Business

In case you haven’t heard, the tried-and-true method of using third-party cookies to build audiences for retargeting across the web is being retired by major web browsers and applications. A tracking cookie is a small text file attached to a browser that tracks users’ browsing history, location, purchases and website activity. Google Chrome announced it will stop supporting cookie tracking on its browser by 2023. That’s a big deal in the digital marketing world. So, if you haven’t started collecting first-party data, it’s time to start. These three essential marketing automations will help your company automate time-consuming marketing tasks while building valuable first-party audiences for digital marketing in the cookie-less future.

Phasing Out Third-Party Cookie Tracking

It’s been happening for a while now, but it’s finally getting serious. With third-party cookies on the chopping block, digital marketing teams will need to pivot to continue to build their audiences for retargeting using first-party data. These three marketing automations are intended to do just that.

Focus on First-Party Data

Not only are these three marketing automations going to save you time by cutting out the manual labor, they are going to help you build first-party audiences that you will be thanking yourself for building down the line. Keep your marketing efforts on track with or without cookies with these top three marketing automations for any business.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketers use marketing automation software and technology to trigger repetitive or time-based marketing functions to better optimize their time.

51% of companies use marketing automation software. That means 49% of companies are missing out on some serious time-saving marketing techniques. Marketing teams can automate loads of repetitive tasks in almost any aspect of marketing – it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the possibilities. Start with these three automations to build the foundation for more marketing automation opportunities down the road.

1. Newsletter Sign-up

Open a line of communication between your brand and potential customers with a newsletter sign-up form on your website. Newsletter sign-ups will build your company an email list that you can use to retarget on many platforms down the road.

We’ve all signed up for newsletters. Perhaps it was for a 10% off coupon, or you wanted to learn more about a company or industry. Whatever the case, you opted in, you saved 10% and that company now has the right to send you emails or even texts. Newsletter sign-ups work to move companies forward and stay at the top of their customers’ mind.

Getting Started Implementing a Newsletter Sign Up on Your Website

Implement a pop-up newsletter form and an inline form on your site to immediately capture opted-in contact information from website visitors. Make your form catchy and aesthetically pleasing.

Then automate a well-designed welcome email sequence to get in their inbox and keep your brand top of mind. Build and schedule a newsletter with content tailored for your audience to read and interact with. Get help from a team of experts to deliver the best results.

What to do After Your Newsletter Sign Up is Live

Once your audience is interacting with your emails, you can start building out other targeted automations. These automations will be triggered by certain actions within those emails. For example, you can trigger other automations when a contact opens a certain number of emails – this shows the contact is engaged and interested in what you are offering. You can also trigger an automation when a contact clicks on a certain link.

Here’s another example, you just sent a monthly newsletter that included some industry insights, information about an upcoming trade show and a small promotion for one of your products. Now would be a great opportunity to build out an email drip on the key features of that product for the people who clicked on the promotion and haven’t already purchased that product.

2. Gated Content

Lead magnets, freemiums, gated content. These are forms that collect an opted-in email in exchange for some type of free item or limited service. Gated content is meant for truly useful robust content, tools or templates.

How to Utilize Gated Content

Create a piece of content that is truly useful to your customer. This could be an in-depth guide, a deep dive white paper, a time-saving template, or light version of a tool. Whatever it is, put in the extra effort to make it shine. Promote your gated content on your website, social media and if your budget allows, with paid ads.

Once a contact has opted in, use marketing automation to automatically deliver that content directly to their inbox. On your end, you will add another contact to your first-party data list. On their end, they will be happily using your free template or in-depth guide.

What to Do With Contacts After They Have Received Their Gated Content

Depending on your marketing funnel, you can use marketing automation to move this new contact forward (through your funnel). Set up an automation to notify one of your business development employees to schedule a personalized follow-up with this new contact. Or automatically drop them into a lead nurturing drip to entice them to take more intent-based actions.

3. Social Media Scheduling

Finally, build audiences directly on social media platforms by using marketing automation to batch schedule posts so your brand is consistently reaching people in their feed, and your social media pages are automatically gathering first-party data to retarget later.

You and I both know that social media marketing takes a lot of time and effort. After you have created a content schedule that will delight your audience, written copy with the right tone and tenor for your customers, vetted out hashtags, added emojis and produced eye-catching creative – now you need to schedule and post at optimal times on multiple platforms.

Rather than interrupting your day at 9 a.m. for LinkedIn, 11 a.m. for Facebook and Instagram and noon for Twitter by posting manually on social media platforms, get yourself a social media scheduling tool, and let marketing automation post your amazing social media content for you. Automating your branded and well-crafted social media posts will guarantee that you are posting to the right platform at the right time for your audience.

Automate Social Media Content Distribution

Get a social media scheduler. There are many social media scheduling tools to choose from. A few off the top of my head are Later, Loomly, Canva, Falconio, HootSuite, SproutSocial, SharpSpring and MeetEdgar. If you are just posting to Facebook and Instagram, Meta Business has a scheduler ready to roll for any business page.

Batch create your content, then schedule your posts during high traffic times to guarantee your brand is showing up on social media, collecting data and building audiences on each platform.

Does this sound like too much work? If you can’t be bothered to take on the ever-increasing complexity of social media marketing, pass the ball to us, and we’ll get it done.

Build Audiences Natively on Social Media Platforms

Connect your social media pages to your CRM or marketing automation software to monitor you contact’s interactions with your social media accounts. Create marketing automations to trigger email drips, or add points to their score when they interact with your page and posts. Start building audiences on each social media platform natively to include in your paid media targeting. Build out MOFO lead generation retargeting ads to educate your audience about your products or services, set them up with a trial, book a demo, or schedule a quick discovery call. Whatever makes sense in your marketing funnel.

On Track for Success

With these three essential marketing automations for any business, you will be on track to collect valuable first-party data to use for retargeting down the road. Start with these three marketing automations to jump-start your digital marketing efforts and build audiences that don’t depend on third-party data. Contact Kinetic Marketing & Creative in Billings, Montana for assistance in building out a digital marketing strategy, and implementing marketing automation for your company.