Marketing automation solutions like Infusionsoft will help you close more leads, generate repeat sales, and grow quickly without growing your staff. These benefits can not be realized, however, if mar­keting fundamentals are neglected. In this entry, we’ll cover eight ways to help you maximize your marketing automation experience.

The best strategy to maximize results from your software is to develop a strong foundation based on your expertise and the leverage your software to execute your plan.

Here are eight steps you can implement to better leverage your automated marketing solution to create and deploy campaigns that will move your prospects through the buying cycle from first contact to close.

1. Visualize and plan. The reason many campaigns fail is that they are rushed. Take the time to visualize what you want to accomplish then identify your budget and timeline. Careful planning will produce better results, reduce expenses, and increase return on investment.
2. Segment your target market. Not every prospect will be interested in every offer. Identify and tag the prospects you want to include in your offer based on their demographics, behaviors, and the past marketing responses. By filtering through the offers you share with prospects, you will increase response rates and decrease your unsubscribe rate.
3. Use messaging that resonates with your target market. Prospects experience a range of business pains and have different motivations why they buy. Your messaging should speak to those pains and motivations; a one-size-fits-all approach will not be effective.
4. Share valuable content. Sharing valuable content, such as white papers or industry tips and tricks, is an effective way to tout your expertise. It helps to establish trust and develop a relationship that may eventually result in a sale.
5. Include a call-to-action. The call-to-action should always advance the sales cycle. Early in the relationship, it can be as simple as visiting a landing page or downloading a white paper. Later, it should require more commitment such as attending a demo or talking with a sales rep.
6. Deploy messages across various channels. Infusionsoft allows you to send messages across multiple channels, including e-mail, fax, direct mail, web pages, and voice broadcast. Take advantage of these features to reach out to prospects in various ways.
7. Be patient. It takes an average of 7-9 marketing touches to convert a cold prospect into an engaged lead so don’t give up too early. Keep at it and you will see results.
8. Analyze and adapt. You can learn a great deal from your previous campaigns. Analyze e-mail and direct mail response rates as well as landing page conversion rates to determine which messages are most effective with your target market. This analysis may reveal several trends that will allow you to fine-tune messaging and offers.

By applying a few simple rules, you can significantly lift the response rate of automated campaigns and improve ROI across the board. Good luck!

[Image credit: juhansonin on Flickr]

You might also like these blog entries:

• Email Is Not a To-Do List! (Tutorial on Email Tagging)
• Let’s Talk about Spam & Deliverability
• Launching Your First Campaign