We’ve all heard the admonition that if we want to succeed in today’s business climate it’s critical to “work smarter, not harder!” That’s great advice, but how can you actually do it? Some of that “working smarter” involves a little bit of “working harder” to set up some work flows (automated tasks) that will continue working for you while you move on to other tasks.
One area where you can save yourself some time (and avoid missing out on opportunities as well) is to create email workflows using a marketing automation tool. Here at TMR Direct, we’re HubSpot partners, so we use HubSpot workflow tools to create personalized workflows (really a series of emails) that are automatically triggered by certain events, such as a contact submitting a form on our website. But you can set up email workflows based on any contact information in your marketing database, such as: page views, clicks, downloads, contact properties, social media clicks or some combination of criteria.
Here are a couple of examples of how I set up workflows for my clients.
For Active Prospects
- I set the parameters that a lead has at least three visits, 30 page views or two emails clicked (see attached for image of this).
- I then set up a workflow to have an email sent to the client (and me) as an alert when someone is added to the list. This signals to me that a prospect is interested even though the sales team may not have contacted them, yet.
- This is a good time to reach out to this person. And even if the attempt to contact him or her is not successful, it’s good to be aware that this lead is still interested.
For Leads with Twitter Handles
- I set the parameter to Follower count greater than or equal to 10. (This weeds out the unused profiles. You may want to set your parameters higher.)
- I then set up a workflow to have an email sent to the client (and to me) as an alert when someone is added to the list.
- I then follow this person on Twitter.
Those are just two workflows that I like to use with my clients. You may want to set up workflows based on other criteria or segments of your database such as keywords or leads coming from a referral site. Or you may choose to segment your emails based on which pages of your website a prospect visited.
If you have additional questions about workflows and how they can help you to work smarter, shoot me a note!
