In this digital age, consumers have information at their fingertips and the ability to research products and services on their own.  In addition, they are being bombarded by marketing messages continuously.  It can be tough for marketers to build a sound strategy that will not only rise above the noise, but will also effectively message the right people at the right time, in the right way.  Marketing Automation can help segment your audience so you are able to personalize your content to them.  By having the tools to target your audience, and by using those tools effectively, you can ensure that your marketing automation efforts are successful.  However, trying to get your marketing automation strategy right can be tricky.  Jamie Lewis at Marketo has written a good article listing 4 pitfalls you should avoid when building your strategy.

TheAGA needed an easier, smarter way to manage member email sends, one that allowed for message customization, the use of different templates, provided meaningful metrics and integrated fully with its AMS. These enhancements would allow the AGA to serve its members better while eliminating the need to constantly upload address files and manually run reports just to get basic metrics, like open rates. 

AGA chose HighRoad as the agency to put together a marketing stack that would allow them to connect their association management database to their email marketing platform. Following implementation of their integration, AGA's deliverability soared and their staff labor time fell. As AGA freed up time from pulling and uploading lists, the VP Communications got to thinking about how they could do more with email. He turned to his staff to collaborate on thinking about new ways to deliver highly relevant content to members so that anything extraneous fell by the wayside--an important consideration when serving a membership of physicians and scientists.

“One of my first projects for the AGA had to do with personalization,” said Aaron White, senior director of digital communications strategy for the AGA. “We were looking for ways to specialize better, narrowcast more. We’ve been sending the weekly enewsletter for 10 years, every Thursday, to every member, and every member got all the same content. So if you’re a member, for example, from Germany, you really don’t care about CMS rules for Medicare reimbursement – but you got that article because everyone has the same newsletter.”

Making the move to marketing automation may sound like a daunting task – not only do you have to prepare yourself and your team to commit to this framework and approach, but you probably also have to build a business case to explain how a Marketing Automation Platform is different from your current Email Marketing Platform to your executive team – a team that doesn’t quite live and breathe digital marketing practices as you do. So how do you 1) determine and assess your readiness to make that transition to marketing automation and 2) approach building the case for it?

Images are a powerful tool that you can incorporate into all forms of your content.  Images are powerful because they evoke emotion.  Those emotions can then motivate desired behaviors by your audience, such as registering, downloading, purchasing, or any other behavior you are trying to drive your audience towards.  This month's Inbound Lunch Bunch discussed how to use images in different formats and across multiple channels in the most effective ways.  So if you missed our July Inbound Lunch Bunch: Using Images To Attract Customers, and would like to learn more, it is now available On-Demand through HighRoadU.

The infographic below, created by our partner Salesforce, answers common questions about the returns companies are getting from their marketing automation investment.  Take a look at some marketing automation statistics from industry analysts and a quick overview of features and benefits of automation tools.

Marketing automation software is being utilized today by a growing number of organizations.  This is because they have come to realize that implementing marketing automation allows them to more effectively market on multiple online channels including email, website, and social media.  So if your organization is considering the move to automation we have a great article, written by Lynn F. Anderson at Act-On, that you should read.  The article suggests 6 steps to take first, to help ensure the smoothest implementation and the quickest success with your marketing automation transition.