How Marketing Automation Can Improve Your Conversion Rates

It’s episode 16 of the Visceral Concepts Podcast! Today, join Visceral Concepts Founder Michael McNew as he gives you strategies to use marketing automation to boost your conversion rates.

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Trying to get website visitors to convert can be frustrating. You feel like you’ve done everything possible, but you’re still not getting the conversion rates you want to see. Clearly your competition is doing something right (since they can seem to afford great Adwords placement), and you want to know what else you can do to make your visitors convert.

If you’re not seeing the conversions you want, maybe it’s time to look at something less obvious. Today, we’re going to go over 6 strategies that will help you automate your marketing process and get those conversion rates where they belong.

The Truth About Website Conversion Rates

Chances are your site is doing great. After all, you’ve optimized the sales copy, you’ve chosen a clean, modern site design, and you’ve tested to make sure your visitors can use it. Everything on the page is the best it can possibly be for your site visitors. But why aren’t they converting?

Because most won’t on the first visit.

Only about 2.4% of site visitors will convert the first time they come to your site. That means, in the case of the other 97.6%, the reason they’re not converting has more to do with what’s not happening after they leave. There are a few simple reasons for that:

• People are forgetful. It’s tough to remember a company you’ve only been exposed to once.
• You can’t possibly share all the value your company provides in one site visit.
• People buy based on trust, which requires time to build.

These Automation Strategies Will Boost Your Conversion Rates

Marketing automation is the key you’re missing. It allows you to time your follow-up to the perfect moments for engagement. Using industry leading marketing automation tools and techniques, you’ll systematically improve your conversion rates.

Let’s talk about what you need to do.

Encourage Future Conversions With Targeted Email Messages

Social media is now the way people engage the internet as a whole. Marketers everywhere are focused on it. However, email marketing is still creating huge returns for everyone who learns to use it right.

One of the big reasons it’s getting great returns is because of marketing automation tools. The industry leading software allows you to customize your marketing messages to the individual contacts on your list. Social media can’t do that.

Personalizing your marketing like this can get you 20% more sales. Click To Tweet

Personalizing your marketing like this can get you 20% more sales. That’s a quick shot-in-the-arm for your conversion rate that you don’t want to ignore.

If you want to make it work, though, you need data. That’s how you get the personalization you’re looking for. There are only 2 pieces of data you really need to make this work:

• What product is your lead interested in and why that one?
• Are they just researching the product, or are they ready to buy?

The answers to those two questions are going to allow you to completely customize your marketing follow-up for those leads. You’ll be able to:

• Talk to them in the stage they’re in, getting them the information that matches their interests.
• Guide them systematically to the next step towards buying.
• Customize your calls to action to match what they want and why they want it.

There are tons of clever ways to figure out why they want a certain product or service. For example, you can set up different information about the product that covers multiple “why’s”. Whichever they access will give you a good reflection of why they want it, allowing you to tag their lead profile with it. Saves the trouble of asking for more information on the lead capture, doesn’t it?

Take Advantage Of Behavior-Triggered Marketing

Did you know you can track the pages people visit on your site? In fact, you can track almost everything visitors do on your site. That means you have additional data to fuel your marketing. There are so many options for this function that open up, but I don’t have time to cover that all.

What I am going to cover, however, is a triggered marketing message. When a website visitor views an important page on your site – like pricing – you can automatically send an email to them. Imagine getting a major indicator that they’re ready to buy and being able to reach out to them.

This is a big opportunity to get a glimpse at the way your prospective clients think when they’re nearing a purchase. With that information, you can make important adjustments to your site that can help you consistently do a better job.

It’s also a unique opportunity to reach out and start a conversation with the client at the exact time they’re ready to become a client. Which takes me to my next point.

Time The Pass-off Of Leads To The Sales Team

In sales, I’ve always been told that you never blame the leads when you can’t close a sale. While that might be true, even the best salesmen can’t close a prospect who simply isn’t ready yet.

So why give them unripened leads?

Watching site behavior, along with other indicators you can pick up, you can figure out if a lead is both fit to buy your product and engaged enough to be ready. But what do those two things mean?

• Fit – is the prospective client both in need of your product and able to afford it?
• Engaged – is the prospect consuming content about the product, returning often to the site?

When you find out a prospect is both fit and engaged, they’re ready to buy. So, if you can score those two ideas, you will know exactly when to pass off a lead to the sales team to make contact.

Direct Your Content Marketing By Tagging Your Leads’ Interests

As we already discussed, your leads are interested in your product for specific reasons. Tagging those interests will help you identify which topics your content should focus on. These tags can often be set to add automatically as your site visitors fill out forms or visit certain pages. They can also be manually added as your salespeople get a feel for your clients during one-on-one interaction.

By looking at only the leads who bought, your salespeople can determine which topics most often lead to sales. That’s a big deal, as content can often create tons of traffic and opt-ins that don’t necessarily lead to a deal.

When your salespeople notice that a particular interest that’s gaining traction, they can create content that focuses on those topics to attract more leads. When they do, the content stays responsive to industries building steam.

Build Brand Evangelists Through Marketing Messaging

Word-of-mouth referrals are also obtainable with the same marketing automation you’re using to convert leads.

The best part about evangelists is that they ultimately market your business for you for free. It also tends to be viral and incredibly persuasive. Leads gained by referral are 70% more likely to convert, and that’s a huge advantage for you.

Leads gained by referral are 70% more likely to convert. Click To Tweet

Often times it’s impossible to do research on a product without stumbling across a slew of reviews about it. That gives you a great opportunity to boost sales with incentives. Offering discounts or rewards when someone uses a referral link, for example, both boost sales for tons of companies.

Of course, the core of this kind of advertising is great service. If your product is excellent, providing exceptional customer care is the easiest way to improve the way the customer feels about you, garnering satisfaction. That leads to word-of-mouth referrals.

Once someone buys, it’s simple to drop them into an automated campaign meant to increase positive feelings about the company. Give your customers resources that add value, surprise bonuses, and share with them your customer support avenues. Oh, don’t forget to check in and make sure they’re still happy with your company and your product.

By building their satisfaction with your company they’ll be happy to take advantage of a referral program. They eagerly suggest their friends become your clients because they know that your level of customer service – your willingness to make sure customers are happy and problems are taken care of – is top-notch. They understand that you stand behind your product and that you’re always willing to help when they need you.

Gain Repeat Sales With Up Sells And Cross-Selling

Most of your customers won’t be done with your company after one purchase. Introducing them to products and services that compliment what they already bought can often increase your order frequency.

Think about the last time you bought something online. Isn’t it normal to get an email that puts products you may like in front of you? Amazon’s been doing this for years and, as a result, a good 35% of their sales come from this method.

Using product tags that you’ve added either automatically or manually, you can send out emails that fill in the details conditionally. If they bought a certain product, your automated receipt can share products related to it on their receipt emails. Using the right tools, it’s usually incredibly easy.

Carefully Craft Your Emails To Optimize For Conversion

No matter what, you need to make sure those emails your marketing automation sends out are optimized for conversion. Always include the right calls to action, letting your customers know exactly what you think they ought to do next. With a great plan and a little time, you’ll see a huge increase in conversion.