Long ago all marketing was personal, from door-to-door salesmen to businesses you interacted with.  Then digital communications became more prevalent and mass marketing techniques took over.  The infographic below explains why it's time to get personal again.

Marketers are busy people.  It seems you can never get everything done on your to-do list.  There is a solution and that solution is marketing automation.  Marketing automation is software that helps you execute your tasks in a faster and more efficient way.  In addition, marketing automation allows you to personalize your marketing efforts in order to generate better quality leads.  But once you have the software how do you use it to best serve your needs and to deliver the results you're looking for?  We found this article at Hubspot "What Is Marketing Automation-A Beginner's Guide".  Written by Alyssa Rimmer, the article explains in greater detail what marketing automation is and how to effectively use it.

Marketing Automation allows you to segment your audience by using the data you already have about them.  You can then personalize their experience with your organization.  The infographic below shows a basic outline of how marketing automation can personalize the sales cycle.  Marketing and sales teams can then target leads faster and more effectively.

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.”

Transactional email is a personalized email that is system triggered in response to some type of online transaction by a subscriber with your organization.  Transactional emails are an excellent way for you to increase engagement with your subscribers by offering them personalized content and offers based upon their previous transaction.  Multiple surveys have shown that this type of email is far more effective in engagement,  result in greater brand loyalty, and deliver higher ROI. Unfortunately, according to Experian, only 40% of all marketers are sending transactional email.  If you are in the 60% of marketers who are not yet utilizing this type of email, Kevin George at Marketo, has written a great article that you should read.  In the article, Kevin lists some best practices when developing a transactional email campaign and six types of transactional emails you can send to your subscribers, based on their unique behavior.