8 Marketing Automation Money-Making Moments

The Role of Technology In Sales,  Marketing, and Business

You’re reading this on a device with some sort of computer chip and screen, partly because, in 1440, Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press.

You’re reading this (probably) clothed, partly because, in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.

You were (probably) notified of this post because of a notification you received on a social media platform invented sometime since the turn of the 21st Century.

The point is that technology will always advance and evolve, which leaves you with three options:

1. Fear it.

2. Hide from it.

3. Embrace and leverage it.

I vote for the third option, at least when it comes to sales and marketing automation for your business, so let’s take a look at how you can do just that to grow your sales.

Automate. Integrate. Dominate.

ChatGBT and Machine Learning and AI and Skynet becoming self-aware is all the rage today…but is it new?

“Hey, Siri” has been out since October 4, 2011.

“War Games” came out in 1983.

Keap (Infusionsoft) has been around since 2001, and I became certified on their platform in 2008.

HubSpot was founded in 2006, and I became certified on their platform in 2014.

Back in 2013, Salesforce saw the sales and marketing automation writing on the wall and purchased ExactTarget for about $2.5 billion, and they had already acquired Pardot.

So for well over two decades, small and large businesses alike have been rapidly deploying processes to automate and integrate tools for their sales and marketing so they can dominate their industries.

Dehumanize Your Business

“But Wes, don’t these tools dehumanize me and my business?”

Kind of.

However, by sharing more of your story and delivering compelling stories rich with insight, entertainment, and education, your best prospects and customers won’t care, as long as you send them relevant information at the moment of relevance, i.e., it has the right tone and cadence for your industry and the solution that you sell.

Humanize Your Business, i.e., Do What Doesn’t Scale

When you have the proper systems doing the proper things properly, it frees you up to do what doesn’t scale, i.e., send that personal touch via personal video email (as Ethan Beute shares in both of his interviews on The Sales Podcast), a handwritten letter, a phone call, a text, or even dropping by for a visit or meeting them for coffee, lunch, or happy hour.

When you’re not frantically jumping from sticky notes to whiteboards to the backs of envelopes to Google Sheets to email, trying in your never-ending effort to keep deals on track, you have more time to be a human!

You Really Can Do It All

When your business, regardless of its size, has the right sales and marketing automation tool with the proper triggers and sequences, you really can follow up with every prospect, customer, referral, and testimonial at the perfect time, every time.

(But finding the right CRM with the proper multi-step, multi-media sales and marketing automation features at a fair price is a whole ‘nother story, but I digress.)

But where do you start, and what do you automate?

Look at whatever you do two to three times per day or four to five times per week.

Document it.

Now automate some or all of those things.

These are usually time-critical tasks and business functions, such as…

• Drip sequences are sent to leads who need email, SMS, phone calls, and even direct mail pieces sent at the appropriate times over days, weeks, even months, or a year or more.

• Scheduling appointments and sending reminders.

• Sales funnels/pipelines that need to be updated based on prospect activity, inactivity, and stage moves.

• Order fulfillment, etc.

Good tools allow both internal and external triggers to put these automated workflows into motion, and the more mundane, the better.

For example, you discover the birthday of someone, and you want to add them to a happy birthday reminder sequence.

Trigger: the birthday field is filled in.

BOOM! Forever and a day, that person will get your Happy Birthday sequence.

Another example: a Contact Us form is submitted on your website, which is the trigger.

BOOM! They are sent a scheduling link to pick a time to speak, but you set an internal timer that assigns the contact to a sales rep with a task to contact the prospect if more than one hour or 12 hours or a day goes by without them booking and confirming a meeting.

Sales and marketing automation is not about having tech and robots and AI doing the jobs of humans.

It’s freeing up time so your humans can actually be humans and connect with your prospects and customers more like humans!

Sales and marketing automation is like seasoning your meals.

When you use the right amount at the right time, it enhances the experience…but put in too much or try to hide an imperfection or a mistake with it, and you’re dead in the water.

Myth 1: Automation replaces human interaction, making your business robotic and impersonal. Truth: Automation in small businesses means using technology to streamline and optimize repetitive tasks. By automating repetitive tasks, employees actually have more time and freedom to focus on personal outreach, creative projects and strategic work. Here are some common examples of how it works: • By automating appointment setting for sales pitches, a sales team is able to spend less time going back and forth on availability and more time preparing for the pitch itself. • By automating marketing and sales follow-up emails, a consultant spends less time answering emails and has more billable hours available to work with clients. • By automating past-due invoice follow-up, a small business entrepreneur is able to stop chasing clients for payment and instead focus on developing strategies to grow the business. Not only does automation allow for more freedom and flexibility, it also helps small businesses create results that would otherwise be impossible with a small team. Here are some examples from Keap customers: • By automating requests for reviews, independent pharmacy Avalon Pharmacy was able to go from 20 to over 500 Google reviews. • By using automation tools in their nonprofit from the start, Wrap Ukraine with Quilts has been able to send over 20,000 quilts to refugees with only two full-time staff members. • By automating multiple processes in his business, Lifeonaire founder Steve Cook was able to take three months away from the business — his first sabbatical in 20 years.

Myth 2: Automating my communications will take away the human touch and leave clients feeling neglected. Truth: Automation can improve the customer experience by ensuring prompt and accurate responses to inquiries. For example, instead of struggling to keep up with a high volume of website inquiries, a small business can set up automation to immediately respond to requests with an FAQ email and automatically create a task for a team member to reach out personally. In addition, audience segmentation allows you to give customers a more personalized experience, at scale. For example, Amit Kakar, owner of Avalon Pharmacy, segments his customer list based on their medical condition, such as diabetes, hypertension, etc. This means patients get emails that are more relevant to their specific needs.

Myth 3: If part of the process needs to be manual, I can’t automate it. Truth: Even if some parts of your process require human intervention, you can still automate tasks and communications surrounding the human components. For example, in the sales process you can automate all the steps surrounding sales outreach: 1 Automated: New lead welcome email 2 Automated: Task created for salesperson 3 Manual: Salesperson calls new lead 4 Manual: Salesperson enters notes and changes pipeline status 5 Automated: Pipeline change triggers nurture email sequence 6 Automated: Task created for salesperson to follow up again 7 Manual: Salesperson calls and leaves a voicemail 8 Automated: Send “Left you a voicemail” text message 9 Automated: Send “Let’s schedule a time to talk” email 10 Automated: Call booking and confirmation 11 Manual: Call with prospect 12 Manual: Call notes entered into CRM 13 Automated: Call follow-up email 14 Automated: Offer email and text messages Notice how, out of 14 tasks, nine can be automated. And the remaining five are the points in the sales process when human interaction is most important. The automated steps are repetitive tasks that aren’t an optimal use of a talented salesperson’s time. In addition to removing repetitive tasks for employees, automation can: • Increase consistency of messaging, since it’s all pre-written • Customize messages to recipients without human intervention • Ensure every step happens in the right order and with the right timing • Reduce dependency on humans to respond right away and move processes forward • Provide a consistent and predictable experience for prospects, clients and employees

Myth 4: Automation is only for marketing. Truth: Small business automation can be used for all your processes — anything repetitive that needs to be done quickly and consistently every time. For example, many small businesses use automation to finalize a sale and transition the new client from sales to customer fulfillment, automating processes such as: • Quote approval • Invoice payment • “Welcome and next steps” email • New client appointment scheduling For any process your team does over and over, ask the question: How can this be automated? Myth 5: Automation is time-consuming and is only for big companies. Truth: While it’s true that you do need to have an established business, the time to start automating is actually at the small business stage. Automation won’t create new business for you, but once you find yourself working long hours to keep up with all the leads and orders, that’s when automation comes in. If your goal is to grow into a large business, then automation is essential. You can’t grow effectively without it, because the only way to generate additional revenue without a corresponding increase in overhead costs is to become more efficient with your existing operations. Keap co-founder Scott Martineau explains this in more detail in his video on Lifecycle Automation. Even if you don’t want your business to become really big, the reality is you can’t enjoy a high quality of life as a small business entrepreneur if you have to work long hours to make sure everything is getting done. For small businesses that want to stay small and lean, automation is the accelerator that allows them to have a big impact with a small team. Here’s how one Keap customer expressed it: “Now that I’ve automated my onboarding processes, my actual work time is spent doing what I love to do. I’ve gotten so many hours back, I’ve been able to spend more time on parts of my business that I really never got to spend time on before. I’ve also gotten so much time back to spend with my husband and toddler, which is ultimately the life I dreamed of when I wanted to become an entrepreneur. And Keap helped me get there.”

— Alex Zsoldos, First Dance Charlotte wedding dance studio

Myth 6: Automation will make my employees feel like cogs in a machine. Truth: Implementing automation can actually make your business feel even more human by reducing the workload and stress on your team. When employees don’t have to spend hours on repetitive tasks, they can focus on building relationships with customers and creating innovative solutions. It’s actually the act of doing the same thing over and over that makes employees feel like cogs in a machine. When you remove those tasks and instead assign your team members tasks they enjoy, are good at, and that make an important contribution, you make their work more fulfilling.

Myth 7: Automating tasks will take work away from my employees and lead to layoffs. Truth: Layoffs are necessary when the revenue of a business can’t support overhead. Because automation reduces overhead costs by making your processes more efficient, it actually provides more job security, not less. And let’s be real: There’s always more work to be done in a small business! When you automate repetitive tasks, you’ll find plenty more high-value work for your employees to do. And your business will most likely flourish when your team is working on the growth projects they don’t have time for right now. In short, automation is not about replacing human workers with machines, but about enhancing and scaling their abilities and improving the overall performance of your small business. By freeing up time and resources, automation allows small businesses to focus on what truly matters: human connections and creativity. To see for yourself how small business automation can optimize your processes and free up your team’s potential, start a 14-day free trial of Keap’s CRM and marketing automation software today.