6 Actions to Consider When Automating a Marketing Task [+ Infographic]

For each marketing process step you need to go through, keep these considerations in mind:

1. Start with the end goal in mind. What do you want to achieve? AND what do you want the prospects or potential customers to have as their result?

For example, if I am to create a Pop-Up Exit Intent form, I want to obtain the prospect’s contact information and identify who is interested in my message.

Additionally, with the same Pop-Up Exit Intent form, I want to help prospects and potential customers by providing them valuable information that would help make some element in their personal or business life better.

2. Think about the user journey. Yes, the design and technical elements are important, but so is guiding the user through the journey from their perspective. What are the mini-steps they need to go through?

For example, if they submit a form, do you want them to receive a confirmation message? If so, what does that message look like? Do you want them to be re-routed to another page – like a “Thank You” page with additional information? What are the details of that page – what does that page look like from a content and design element?

3. Receiving the result. Recall there were actions that you wanted to achieve, right? Result for yourself and for your prospect or potential customer. How do you want that to be performed? Do you want the prospect to receive an email fulfillment message with links or attachments?

For example, if you are inviting the prospect to training or webinar, you might want to have an email sent with an access link and passcode.

What about for yourself and your business? Do you want to receive a notification message that someone opted-in to your blog or signed up for a funnel event or purchased an offering?

4. CRM lists and tags. What list and tag do you want the prospect to be linked to in your CRM application?

For example, if the prospect opts-in to your blog, what list and tag do you want them to be associated with in your CRM application to keep the communication engagement going with leads?

5. Call-to-Actions (CTAs) to consider. Are there any call to actions you want the prospect to take, like clicking on a banner to take them to a specific page or sign up for an offer, or event? For marketing funnels do you want to have one-time offers, upsells, and downsells with additional call to actions?

For example, after the data is captured for the Pop-Up Exit Intent form, still focusing on the user journey, do you want the visitor to take another action after they have been rerouted to another page? Like in our example above, post “Thank You” page, consider having a call-to-action form for another value benefit or banner that drives another action.

6. Internal triggers. Do you need notifications or actions triggered to your workload management system? Do you have tasks that you want others to be notified about when a new item is created? How about an action to trigger when a status changes?

For example, if someone signed up for an offer, what internal actions do you need to take place to make sure the order was processed? In my scenario, if someone purchases a book from my product page, there are internal notifications that are sent to make sure the signed physical book is delivered to the address on the order form. The internal system’s statuses are automatically changed when different actions take place. And vice versa, we have different actions taking place when the status changes. It depends on the internal triggered action we want to take place.