How can Marketing Automation workflows fix your data?
In this series of articles we look to challenge preconceptions about Marketing Automation. Does it actually save time and money? Is it over expensive for what it does and do Marketing Automation tools live up to the hype. Up next, using HubSpot workflows to keep contacts data accurate.
How can marketing automation workflows fix your data?
Chances are the first time your company encounters marketing automation is with HubSpot. HubSpot have a free CRM. There are naturally limitations as with any free system but the free CRM is a solid introduction to HubSpot. If this system has been in place at your company for some time your commercial teams will likely have favoured chasing the next big deal rather than keeping contacts and activity up-to-date. Data Integrity has fallen by the wayside.
When you upgrade to the HubSpot Marketing Hub and start to use marketing automation you’ll be looking to demonstrate return-on-investment for each marketing channel quickly and better understand where to invest marketing dollars. The primary HubSpot reports for demonstrating the impact of marketing activity and the level of engagement with contacts are the Contacts Lifecycle Funnel and Contacts by Lifecycle Stage. These show how effective marketing is at creating qualified leads, pushing contacts through the sales funnel and generating qualified leads.
Typical contact lifecycle:
- Lead
- Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
- Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
- Opportunity
- Customer
However, your old data from HubSpot CRM has been updated manually and as such is vulnerable to human error. Your sales team do not have the same attention to detail as you and their performance is not measured by the same performance indicators. Inaccurate data will undermine marketing automation and render return-on-investment reporting useless. There is help at hand.
The HubSpot Marketing Hub comes with workflows.
Workflows are designed to save time and money and are the cornerstone of marketing automation. Each workflow starts with an enrollment trigger like when a contact completes an online form and/or downloads a white paper and is followed by a series of actions like a follow up email or a notification to the sales team to book a call-back.
Typical marketing automation workflows:
- Welcome email to new subscribers
- A series of onboarding emails to qualify leads
- Follow up downloaded gated content
- Re-engage old contacts
Workflows can be used to build data integrity, build confidence in reporting and make the HubSpot Marketing Hub more effective in meeting business objectives. In fact, marketing automation workflows working in conjunction with mandatory database fields bring new levels of accuracy to prospect databases.
By using workflows to compare data across the contacts database it is possible to automatically sanity check important contact records. For instance, if a contact has committed to a meeting then they are nearer to the bottom of the sales funnel and as such would be an Opportunity rather than a Lead. By creating a workflow that supports this logic you will know that every relevant contact is firmly in the Opportunity bucket and needs to be qualified in or qualified out by a member of the sales team.
There are thousands of ways automation can keep your data accurate
As a marketing team you will be responsible for defining the marketing automation logic and rules as part of onboarding HubSpot Marketing Hub for your business. Chances are this logic will evolve as you uncover the possibilities of marketing automation but, you are in the best position to use marketing workflows to maximise data integrity. Get to work!
Recommendations
- One of the easiest examples of using workflows to keep data accurate is by supporting lead scoring. You may want a contact with a lead score between 50 and 100 to be at the Lifecycle Stage MQL. By creating this logic as a workflow you will ensure the accuracy of the data.
- It is important to make sure every qualified lead is followed up. If there is no activity logged or scheduled against a marketing qualified lead send an automated email to the commercial teams to make sure the contact is engaged and activity recorded.
- If information is missing like the source of the data notify the contact owner that they need to complete the missing records. This makes your return-on-investment per channel reporting robust and accurate.
Summary
Every business is different and as such every set of rules that govern the data will be different however by understanding the key performance indicators of your business and setting appropriate marketing objectives you can use workflows where appropriate to deliver a new accurate and reliable data.
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This weblog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my opinion. Challenge me, disagree with me, or tell me I’ve lost it in the comments section, but I reserve the right to delete any comment - so keep it nice.
I have managed every role of the modern marketing team with an entrepreneurial outlook and approachable digital thought leadership. Harnessing the power of data to grow businesses with Marketing Automation, Business Intelligence, Presence Marketing and Content Marketing.
Resources
13 Email Workflows You Should Be Using in Your Marketing Automation
SEO & Content Strategy in HubSpot