Broadly speaking, we consider Marketing Automation to be the automation of the marketing actions that we carry out from our company through tools or software that allow us to create automatic conversations with our users wherever they are, whether on our website or in our app.
This type of tool will allow us not only to save time and money when sending push notifications or emails to the users of our app or mobile game, but will also allow us to increase personalization.
The ultimate goal is to take advantage of those moments in which each user, individually, is more likely to perform the action that we define (access the app, make a purchase, etc.). In short, keep our users active.
To design a good marketing automation strategy, we must:
- Have registered users in our database.
- Define events in all channels based on which we will send different content.
- Defineour "Triggers" and "Actions".
- Create a content “pool” as extensive as possible and differentiated by channel.
The Importance Of User Registration
The starting point in any marketing automation strategy is to have registered users in our app, mobile game or web. To do this, we must consider what data may be relevant and what data is not to avoidsaturating the CRM with unnecessary data and facilitating data analysis and automation of communications.
Another important point that we must consider in the registration process is the channel. Have you registered through our app? In that case, the most logical thing would be to send a push notification. However, if the registration has been done through the web, it is best to use email as a communication channel for these first automated communications.
The registry must be "cross-channel”, so that we have a single database regardless of the number of channels or digital assets we have. This would be interesting in those companies that have several mobile apps or games, where in many cases, the records are independent and, therefore, we lose the ability to carry out cross-selling actions.
Definition Of Events And Actions
It is important to have this controlled through events in our app or mobile game, as well as in the rest of digital assets. The objective is to know the behavior of our users in a global way and to be able to define automated communications that provide us with the best possible results.
For example, let's say we have a home food delivery app, and we also have a web page where we talk about different types of food. One of our clientsaccesses the page on Monday morning to read a recent article on vegan food that we have published. Later that Monday, he returns to the vegan food page.
For this situation, we could do the following:
- Trigger: 2 accesses to the same content in less than 24 hours
- Action: Send push notification
- Delay: 3 days
- Content: Fancy vegan today? Enter the app and place your order!
- Destination: Deeplink to a listing of vegan restaurants in your area
Once the notification is sent, in addition to the surprise factor that he will experience when he sees a communication that is very much in line with his behavior, there are many possibilities that he will tap on the notification. Therefore, the destination of that push, through a deep linking, should take him to vegan restaurants. Considering that he has indicated that he is interested in this type of food, through our content that he has consumed, and that we are analyzing his behavior, the probability that he ends up ordering a plate of vegan food is much higher than if we had sent him a generic notification (of restaurants in general) with a deeplink directing him to a list of restaurants of all kinds (meat included). It is because of that, that in defining a good communication and marketing automation strategy, we must always base ourselves on the user's behavior, to offer him/her what is more in line with him/her.
Definition Of Triggers And Actions
Based on the previous example, we see that for the automation to be effective, we must define what we will consider as a “trigger”. Perhaps this is the most important part when it comes to a good execution of a marketing automation strategy, defining what we will consider the user should do to send them a relevant message, when we should do it, what message we should send and its destination.
Content Pool
For this strategy to be effective, we must have content prepared and adapted to each of the channels available to our business. Each channel has its own language and limitations. Sending a notification is not the same as sending an email. In the same way, we will not obtain the same data from one communication or another.
That is why we must have a quantity of content previously segmented and focused on each of the previously defined actions.
Finally, in this case, quality is as important as quantity. We must have not only interesting content or adapted to each event, but also quantity, that is, several versions of the same message.
Data Analysis, Rules And A/B Testing
Finally, we should not think that an automation assumes that we can configure it once and forget about it until we see that the accesses to our app plummet. We must always analyze the data and optimize the configuration until we find the best solution. Once we have a correct configuration, we will always have to continue adding content, seeing new options and continually analyzing. Although automation saves us a lot of time, this does not mean that we can forget that on the other side of our app, there are users who change, and our app should change with them.
Conclusion
When working on a communication strategy using a marketing automation tool, we must consider the behavior of our users. The better we know our users (how they behave in our app, website or mobile game; what content they consume; what pages they visit; what products they look at, etc.) the easier we can reach them and, therefore, the more refined our response will be to offer them a solution to what they are looking for or what interests them. Hyperlink InfoSystem can assist you with a top marketing strategy.
