Once you’ve kicked off an initial marketing automation software implementation, ongoing maintenance and management are key to getting the most out of this resource. Here are 9 ways to optimize your marketing automation software once you’ve gone live (and a bonus file at the end):
1) Review the commonly consumed content by people who convert to buyers, assigning higher value scores to prospects when that content is consumed. Further, consider building it into an automated drip campaign, especially if there is a consistent sequence of content consumed by your buyers.
2) Analyze drip campaign stages for high metric-based performance e.g. CTR or unsubscribe rate and adjust your campaigns accordingly. If there is a piece of content that people commonly unsubscribe from, remove it immediately. If there is a email that has a high CTR, optimize the respective landing page.
3) Monitor and disable inactive automation rules. Outdated automation rules may be conflicting with how you want your software to function. Be sure you are doing a schedule maintenance on automation rule behaviors and removing ones that no longer serve you.
4) Confirm that new prospect notification rules take in account when there is newly published forms/landing pages and when new people on team that require notifications. Having instant notification go to the required parties is essential to getting the most out of your tool.
5) Assuming you have the Google Analytics connector enabled, be sure that the campaign URL builder is filled out for all respective content and custom redirects, allowing you another analytic view of content consumption and visitor behavior.
6) Build a testing protocol for quality control. Example items to QC are: emails include dynamic field insertion, forms work and submission notifies respective parties, landing pages are checked for spelling, grammar and working links, page actions are properly being applied, automation rules work properly, etc.. Create an internal list of test users and a test plan template.
7) Implement dynamic segmentation liberally for highly targeted campaigns and ease of suppression. Examples include:
- segmenting users by location (city, state, zip) so that targeted messages can be sent if you are going to be visiting an area
- segmenting by industry/vertical for customized content
8) Use embedded personalization to deliver the highest targeted website and email messages. This can be complex, but here is a step-by-step example:
- Create a rule that applies a tag called “whitepaper_request” to a prospect who submits a form for a download request
- Design a personalization script that looks for that tag on an existing cookied prospect and replace that whitepaper download call-to-action with an alternative call-to-action. Note: in the personalization design, the default will need to be the original whitepaper call-to-action code.
- Insert the code provided from the personalization script and replace it on your site where the current static whitepaper call to action resides.
9) Create a shared implementation map/checklist and historical change document. Consider using something like Google Docs, with a form and spreadsheet integration so that each change will be entered into a form and tracked in the corresponding spreadsheet, allowing all of the necessary change details to be documented.
Request an Excel download for a basic implementation checklist with status tracking:
