Campaign automation playbook 3
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This document provides an overview of campaign automation and lead nurturing using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and ClickDimensions marketing automation. It discusses what campaign automation is, the benefits, best practices, and examples of how it can be implemented at different stages of the buying cycle for various industries. The document is intended to introduce readers to campaign automation and provide guidance on building effective automated nurturing campaigns.
Campaign automation playbook 3
- 1. The Campaign Automation PLAYBOOKScoring Big with Customer and Lead Nurturing in Microsoft Dynamics 365
- 2. 2 CONTENTS Introduction • What is Campaign Automation? • Benefits • Ways to Nurture • Who to Nurture • Best Practices Campaign Automation in Action • Banking & Financial Services • Professional Services • Sports & Entertainment • Insurance • Retail • Government Conclusion About ClickDimensions Implementation • Nurturing Throughout the Buying Cycle • Types of Campaigns to Automate • Anatomy of an Automation Measuring Success • Reporting in CRM • Measuring Return 03 22 29 30 09 19 While the ideas and concepts are still helpful even if you are not working with these platforms, all of the examples in this eBook were created using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the ClickDimensions marketing automation solution. If after reading this eBook, you would like more information about marketing automation for 365, please visit www.clickdimensions.com or contact us at marketing@clickdimensions.com. Copyright 2018 ClickDimensions. All rights reserved. May not be reprinted, reproduced or distributed without permission. For inquiries, contact marketing@clickdimensions.com.
- 3. 3 Introduction When the game changes, so must the players. Access to information has changed the way that consumers interact with businesses, which has in turn changed the way that organizations market to their prospects and customers. Marketers must now focus on getting the right message to the right person at the right time, rather than using a one-size-fits- all approach. ClickDimensions helps organizations meet that marketing challenge – and many others – through our top-rated marketing automation and email marketing solution for Microsoft Dynamics 365, as well as informative eBooks like this one. The Campaign Automation Playbook: Scoring Big with Customer and Lead Nurturing in Microsoft Dynamics 365 is here to introduce you to campaign automation, provide best practices for building automated campaigns, show you examples of these nurturing campaigns in action and much more. Let’s play ball!
- 4. 4 WHAT IS CAMPAIGN AUTOMATION? Campaign automation, also known as nurture marketing or drip marketing, involves sending a series of relevant and timely communications to prospects or customers over time. These automated campaigns respond to the recipients’ actions, thus creating a more personalized experience and a winning marketing play. For example, if a prospect that you’re nurturing within a campaign automation does not click a certain link in an email, you might send them a follow up email. On the other hand, if they do click on that link, you might send them a different email or even notify a salesperson to call the individual.
- 5. 5 BENEFITS OF CAMPAIGN AUTOMATION Campaign automation is a sales and marketing MVP. While the specific benefits may vary based on the type of campaign – a lead nurturing campaign can help you close deals, while a customer retention campaign can help you keep them, for example – they all score big points for the organizations that run them. Nurture programs bring value to both marketing and sales teams, and can help to close the gap between them. Marketing can construct a nurture campaign that includes the exact messaging that they want presented to the prospect or customer, and sales can determine the appropriate campaign automation in which to place a prospect based on their level of buying readiness. Automated nurture programs include decision points and actions based on how the recipient interacts with your message, allowing for a highly customized experience. By tailoring your campaign automations to a specific audience and sending your messages at the right time, a nurture program can: • Build rapport with your audiences • Educate leads and customers about your products and services • Increase trust in your brand • Help overcome objections during the buying process • Save valuable sales and account management resources • Convert a higher percentage of leads into paying customers • Boost customer retention rates • Keep your organization top of mind GAME DAY STATS Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%. (Aberdeen Group)
- 6. 6 WAYS TO NURTURE Any “touch” a company makes with an individual could be part of a nurture program. When building your nurturing team, you might include any of the following players: • Email • Direct mail • Social media • SMS/text messaging • Phone • In-person contact However, the real power behind nurture campaigns is found by implementing a marketing automation solution. Using campaign automation, a relevant stream of messages can be sent and a variety of automated actions can be triggered as the recipients respond. A marketer can create a “path” for prospects or customers to follow based on their interactions with the messages. As individuals move down a path in a campaign automation, they receive more customized information. Remember that a nurture campaign should include information that leads or customers want or need. Don’t just send a series of “buy now” emails that don’t provide any value. Think about the type of content that would help your prospect or customer based on where they are in the buying cycle. SCORE MORE To learn more about marketing automation technology, download our eBook, The Marketing Automation Field Guide: Getting Started with Marketing Automation for Microsoft Dynamics 365.
- 7. 7 WHO TO NURTURE Nurture programs can work at any level – prospects, leads and customers – so before you take the field with a campaign automation, you need to create a game plan for who to reach and how to best reach them. Campaign automations are not one-size- fits-all; messages must be tailored to suit the target audience. When creating a persona for each campaign automation, consider these questions: • Where is this person in the buying cycle? • How aware are they of our products and services? • What are their needs at this time? For example, perhaps you want to target new prospects in a campaign automation. They are either unaware of your company or know very little about it. They need basic information about your product or service and how it can meet their needs. Messaging for this audience will be very different than what would be sent to a qualified lead that is purchase-ready. BEST PRACTICES As they proceed through a campaign automation, your recipients should be cheering your messages on, not booing them from the sidelines. The last thing a nurture program should do is drive prospects and customers away with annoying emails. When building a campaign automation be mindful of: Content. Create campaign automations that contain information that will be of value to your leads or customers. Make sure that the content in every nurturing email is extremely relevant to the audience. 82%of prospects say lead nurturing content targeted to their specific industry is more valuable. (MarketingSherpa) GAME DAY STATS
- 8. 8 Timing. Schedule messages appropriately based on the type of campaign automation. A campaign for sales-ready leads could have a shorter timeline than one for inactive leads that touches the prospect only a few times per year. Consistency. Nurture programs help to establish trust and credibility. Make sure that messages are consistent with and reinforce the company’s brand. SCORE MORE While consistency is important, every email should not be identical. Consider using different types of emails in campaign automations – perhaps some HTML emails with graphics that highlight an offer, and some plain text emails that look like personalized, one-on-one emails from a salesperson. DON’T FORGET! Look at data from another angle; reviewing lost opportunities can provide good insight into the needs of prospects. What were the buyer hesitations or objections? Address and overcome these objections in your campaign automations aimed at leads. Targeting and Personalization. One of the many benefits of a campaign automation is that messages can be customized based on the interactions a prospect has with the emails. Use this capability to its fullest extent with dynamic content and targeted messaging. Don’t just develop a series of generic emails that are sent over and over again; create personalized experiences. Permission. Ensure that nurture emails – and all other emails you send, for that matter – don’t violate spam rules. For example, the CAN-SPAM Act in the U.S. and CASL in Canada include specific guidance for giving email recipients the opportunity to opt-in or opt-out of receiving emails. Data. Data in CRM can be extremely helpful when creating nurture programs. Statistics such as industry and company size for business-to-business campaigns, or age, gender or location for business- to-consumer, can help tailor the message to a particular audience. Using web tracking data in a system like ClickDimensions, you can gain even more knowledge about prospects. What ads are people clicking on to get to your website? On which pages do they spend the most time? Knowing what content your prospects are most interested in can help to target the message in nurture campaign emails.
- 9. 9 Implementation NURTURING THROUGHOUT THE BUYING CYCLE From kickoff to the final play, through well-planned campaign automations, marketers are able to reach individuals during every stage of the buying cycle. Let’s take a look at each stage – awareness, research, evaluation, purchase and retention/loyalty – and see how nurture programs can have a positive impact on sales and customer retention.
- 10. 10 Stage 1: Awareness In this first stage, customers are just realizing that they have a business need. They are unsure of which products or services will help them solve their problems. It is important in this phase to make prospects aware of your brand and stay top-of-mind so that when they decide to move forward with a purchase, your company is on their radar. Use social media, online advertising, your company’s website or other marketing channels to capture the attention of new leads. Whether through a contact form, newsletter sign-up or eBook landing page, provide a method for prospects to provide their contact information and opt-in to receive emails. Once a lead has been captured, the first “awareness” campaign automation should contain messaging that provides an introduction to the company and its offerings. This is not the phase for high-pressure sales tactics; you simply want to begin a dialog with the prospect. Introduce them to products or services, provide links to blog articles or offer GAME DAY STATS Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451%increase in qualified leads. (ANNUITAS) to send them a brochure for more information. Stage 2: Research According to Forrester Research, today’s buyers are anywhere from two-thirds to 90 percent of the way through the buying process before they reach out to a vendor. So what are they doing during that time? Research. This is the phase where customers are shopping around. They are learning what is necessary to solve their business problem and investigating potential solutions. Customers typically spend the greatest amount of time in this phase, so a “research” campaign automation may have a longer timeline than others. In this nurture campaign, send email messages that feature content that will educate customers about how the product or service can solve their business problem. Invite them to attend a webinar, provide a link to download an eBook, or direct them to an overview video. By providing the information they need, your organization becomes a trusted resource.
- 11. 11 GAME DAY STATS GAME DAY STATS Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Forrester Research) Nurtured leads make 47%larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (ANNUITAS) Stage 3: Evaluation In this stage, the rubber meets the road. Customers have narrowed down their decision to a few options, and they are evaluating possible vendors. At this point, it is important to build credibility and trust with the customer and overcome any objections – why should they go with your company over the competition? The emails in an “evaluation” campaign automation should contain information that will help solidify your product or service as the best solution. Include links to case studies or white papers, offer to schedule a live demo or provide testimonials from other customers. If it hasn’t already happened, customers should be introduced to a salesperson at this stage. You may also wish to include direct contact (via phone calls or onsite visits) into your campaign automations. Stage 4: Purchase During this stage, customers are making a final purchasing decision. Email messages in a “purchase” campaign automation will have strong calls to action and could include buying incentives such as free trials, coupons or limited-time offers. And don’t forget about service after the sale. A “post-purchase” campaign automation could be used for implementation and onboarding. Sending regular emails to new customers about a product or service ensures that they have a successful start to their relationship with your organization. Stage 5: Retention/ Loyalty You successfully manage customer accounts in CRM, but are you communicating with your contacts on a consistent basis? Campaign automation is a great way to keep current customers engaged with your company and brand. Create a “retention” campaign automation to send subscription renewal reminders. Or use a “loyalty” nurture campaign to educate customers about new features, provide them with valuable content, or invite them to webinars and events. Remember this: marketing automation is not just for marketing!
- 12. 12 TYPES OF CAMPAIGNS TO AUTOMATE While the types of campaign automations you can create for prospects and customers are virtually endless, here are some ideas for popular nurture campaigns – along with where they fall in the buying cycle – to add to your starting lineup: Welcome Campaign When a new lead enters CRM by signing up for a newsletter, downloading an eBook or otherwise engaging with your company for the first time, add them to a welcome campaign. This campaign automation provides introductory information about your company and, based on their interactions with the messages within the campaign, can help you gain a better understanding of a prospect’s motivations and interests. Post-Event Campaign Tradeshows, conferences, lunch and learns, webinars, and other offline and online events are great for engaging with customers and leads alike. While you might send a customer a personal follow up after seeing them at an event, a post-event campaign automation is a good solution for following up with prospects and gauging their interest. These nurture campaigns often work best when they are customized to reflect the event and the information presented there. SCORE MORE Examples of specific campaign automations within different industries are detailed later in this eBook. 01 02 03 04 05 1. AWARENESS Awareness Research Evaluation Purchase Retention/ Loyalty $ Buying Cycle
- 13. 13 Warm Up Campaign According to Gleanster Research, half of all qualified leads aren’t ready to purchase immediately. Without campaign automation, these leads can fall off the radar entirely or won’t receive follow up until after they have decided to go another route. A warm up nurture campaign is an effective way to keep your company top of mind until a prospect is ready to buy and to help educate them along the way. 79%of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. (MarketingSherpa) Competitor Campaign A competitor campaign uses campaign automation to send out a series of messages to prospects, telling them the benefits of using your product versus that of competitors. This can be accomplished in a few different ways, but you will want to avoid bashing competitors, as that can turn off recipients. Your nurturing messages can focus on how you stand out from competitors as a whole or you can name drop a particular competitor, if you’re aiming to convince that competitor’s customers to make the switch. Customer Onboarding Campaign Depending on the nature of your business, new customer onboarding might be a very manual and personalized process. While you don’t want to take away from that experience, an onboarding campaign can help enhance it. Using campaign automation, you can send new customers a series of messages regarding training opportunities or other helpful information they will want to know as a new customer, and even discover which new customers need additional personal attention based on their interactions with messages. GAME DAY STATS
- 14. 14 Cross-Sell or Upsell Campaign Existing customers are a great source of new sales, and often require less effort to close than new leads. Cross-sell and upsell campaigns can help educate your customers about other products or services in your lineup that might be of interest. To avoid alienating your customers, be sure to tailor the messages within these campaign automations so they speak to the audience’s preferences, rather than sending general sales pitches. Promotional Campaign Much like new offerings, new promotions are a great way to engage your audiences and increase sales. Using campaign automation, you can tailor your promotional campaigns to the individual audience. So if your company is having a big sale on It takes an average of 10 marketing-driven “touches” to progress a lead from the top of the funnel to revenue generating. (Aberdeen Group) a particular product, for example, you might offer prospects a larger discount to help drive the sale or opt to sweeten the deal for your existing customers in an effort to retain them. Launch Campaign If your organization is getting ready to roll out a new product, service or initiative, a launch campaign can help you spread the word. These campaigns can target customers or prospects, though it may be most effective to have different campaign automations for different audiences, as the messaging may differ slightly for each. Launch campaigns can either start before launch to build excitement or after the product or service launches to announce its availability. Customer Retention Campaign After all the hard work it takes to earn a customer’s business, a customer retention campaign can help ensure that you keep it too. The structure and timing within this campaign automation will vary greatly according to your industry. For example, an organization that relies on annual renewals may only run this nurture campaign yearly, while a business that sells to customers throughout the year may rely on retention campaigns more frequently. GAME DAY STATS
- 15. 15 Re-Engagement Campaign At any given time, your CRM is filled with prospects that never became a closed deal or one-time customers that have since moved on. While you won’t win back every customer or wake up every lead, re-engagement nurture campaigns can help get the conversation going again. Through campaign automation, try offering these individuals helpful pieces of content or exclusive discounts, or both, to rekindle the relationship Thought Leadership Campaign Thought leadership campaigns can work well for individuals at any stage of the buying cycle. These campaign automations can help you soft sell prospects and retain customers, all while establishing your organization’s expertise within your industry. Content marketing is an essential part of thought leadership campaigns, as each message in the campaign automation should feature white papers, eBooks, infographics, webinars or other helpful content. SCORE MORE For more information about creating compelling content, download our eBook, Hooked on Content: Developing a Successful Content Marketing Strategy with Microsoft Dynamics 365.
- 16. 16 ANATOMY OF AN AUTOMATION Once you have determined the type of nurturing campaign you want to build and you have created the emails that will be a part of it, get ready to take the campaign automation ball and run with it. Let’s take a look at an eBook nurture campaign that we use here at ClickDimensions for an overview of the features and functions of the campaign automation builder. Triggers look for actions taken by an individual – or your team, in the case of the manual add trigger – that either adds them to a campaign automation or moves them through it. Triggers and actions can be organized into series or placed directly onto the campaign automation canvas depending on your preferences and the complexity of the campaign.
- 17. 17 ANATOMY OF AN AUTOMATION Each series contains actions that allow you to send an email, create a task, generate a CRM workflow, notify a salesperson and much more. Timers within the series allow you to create pauses of a set number of days between actions or schedule an action for a particular date.
- 18. 18 The decision node is used in campaign automations to determine which path a participant will go down based on specified criteria. In this example, the criteria is the prospect or customer’s region of the country. ANATOMY OF AN AUTOMATION You can create positive and negative paths for each trigger within a campaign automation. Clicking into the trigger will allow you to set the parameters for each path.
- 19. 19 Measuring Success In campaign automation as in sports, while it’s important to put players on the field, you also want to measure how many points they score too. One of the most important steps in implementing a campaign automation is tracking the results and measuring its success. Especially if your organization is new to using nurture marketing campaigns, it’s critical to find out how they are affecting lead conversions and overall sales. GAME DAY STATS 47%of B2B marketers say they either close fewer than 4% of all marketing-generated leads, or they don’t even know this metric. (Forrester Research)
- 20. 20 REPORTING IN CRM Reporting is easy using ClickDimensions marketing automation tools combined with CRM. All marketing data – email deliveries, opens, clicks, etc. – is stored within Dynamics 365 so the information can be used to generate dashboards and reports. For example, here at ClickDimensions, we created a performance chart that displays monthly email statistics for each of the emails within an eBook campaign automation. We are able to see at a glance how each email within the campaign automation is performing, and can drill into the data to see which emails are successful. Once you find out what is and what is not working within each campaign automation, don’t be afraid to make changes to your nurture campaigns “mid-stream.” If you find that a particular email is performing poorly, change your message. Small tweaks along the way could result in large dividends.
- 21. 21 MEASURING RETURN It is important to measure the effectiveness of nurture campaigns to determine if they are having a positive effect on your marketing efforts. There are many ways to accomplish this task in CRM, but for one of our ClickDimensions eBook campaign automations, we decided to add a custom checkbox field to track all contacts that had been nurtured. The field is checked using a CRM workflow that is added as a series action within the campaign automation. Now, using this field, we can run queries to see not only how many leads or contacts have been nurtured during any given time period, but also how many opportunities were created where a lead had been nurtured, and how many new accounts include nurtured contacts. Comparing the results to a similar group of leads that were not nurtured, we can measure the effectiveness of the campaign automation. For example, during the same time period: Prospects (Leads) Qualified Leads (Opportunities) Lead Conversion Rate Without nurturing 312 19 6.1% With nurturing 352 33 9.4% Qualified Leads (Opportunities) Won Opportunities Close Rate Without nurturing 19 4 21% With nurturing 33 11 33% Using the ClickDimensions campaign automation builder, you can see the number of active leads or customers going through each step of the automation with just one click. This same comparison can be made with closed business: Adding a nurture program should require very little – if any – additional spending on lead generation and customer engagement. So, for nearly the same budget, you are now converting more leads, closing more sales and retaining more customers!
- 22. 22 Campaign Automation in Action Time out! Before you get into the game yourself, take a moment to sit on the bench and gain some inspiration and insight from other automated campaigns. The campaign automations for example companies on the following pages show how a variety of nurture campaigns could be used in different industries.
- 23. Banking on the Customer Experience Knowing that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression on new customers, Aubergine Bank & Trust created a thorough onboarding process for new checking account holders. Using the ClickDimensions campaign automation builder, the bank created an automated welcome campaign aimed at nurturing these new customers, while also assigning follow ups based on customer interactions. BANKING & FINANCIAL SERVICES Example Scenario Within the campaign automation, Aubergine Bank uses wait timers and user notifications to ensure that emails are sent at the right time and that customer interactions with the emails are responded to by the right department and in a timely manner.
- 24. Converting Knowledge into Leads As a longtime accounting industry leader, Chapman Wright Accounting Services wanted to demonstrate their expertise and experience in the area of tax law, so they created a content marketing nurture campaign aimed at their prospects and clients with an interest in this practice area. The campaign automation features several emails that promote tax law content including blog posts, a white paper and a webinar. PROFESSIONAL SERVICES With event connectors to WebEx and GoToWebinar, as well as Eventbrite and Cvent for in-person events, ClickDimensions allows Chapman Wright to bring event, registration and attendee information automatically into Microsoft Dynamics 365 for greater insight into who registers for and attends their webinar. Following the webinar, Chapman Wright wanted to gauge the attendees’ opinions on the event, so they used ClickDimensions to easily create and send a survey. When a respondent completes the survey, all of their responses are linked to their CRM record. Example Scenario
- 25. Scoring with Your Biggest Fans Looking ahead to the end of the next baseball season, the Springfield Sharks wanted to increase their renewals among season ticket holders. Using the ClickDimensions campaign automation builder, the Sharks marketing team created a nurture marketing campaign aimed at these loyal fans. SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT Inside the campaign automation, the first message is scheduled to send shortly after the end of the 2016 baseball season so the Sharks can get ahead on renewals for next year. When an email recipient clicks on the renewal link in one of the messages, a member of the season ticket sales team is notified and a task is created for them to call that individual. All of the marketing activity — including the campaign automation, emails and refer-a-friend form submissions — are linked to a CRM campaign record, allowing the Sharks to measure the success of their season ticket renewal efforts. Example Scenario
- 26. Ensuring Customer Retention Mountain Mutual Insurance wanted to tap into their existing intelligence about their policyholders in order to turn important life events or demographic information into customer stickiness. Using the ClickDimensions campaign automation builder, their team created a nurturing campaign aimed at auto policyholders with dependents that would soon be of legal driving age. INSURANCE The campaign automation includes several emails, all made with the ClickDimensions drag and drop email editor. This easy-to-use tool also allows for personalization, which the Mountain Mutual team used to add each policyholder’s name, their dependent’s name and their auto policy number for a customized email experience. In addition to their new driver campaign, Mountain Mutual also wanted to increase customer retention by showcasing the option to bundle auto and homeowners coverage for big savings. With ClickDimensions, there’s no limit to the campaign automations the company can create for cross-selling, new customer onboarding, lead nurturing and more. Example Scenario
- 27. Creating Personalized Shopper Experiences Aster department stores has long been known for delivering a first-class in-store customer experience, and wanted to extend that experience to their online marketing efforts, especially for their most loyal customers, members of their Garden Club rewards program. Once customers earn a certain number of reward points, they are added to a campaign automation to receive Garden Club discounts and promotions. RETAIL Aster uses emails, forms and landing pages within ClickDimensions to nurture Garden Club members with exclusive offers within the campaign automation – no HTML coding required! The company also utilizes ClickDimensions’ event integrations with Eventbrite, Cvent and other popular systems to manage Garden Club events. Example Scenario
- 28. Serving the Public Interest The Finn County Department of Public Health (FCDPH) has long been known for educating the public on matters of public health and safety, but wanted to streamline that process and make their communications more effective. Using ClickDimensions, the FCDPH marketing team created a campaign automation for their new Home Safe Home awareness campaign. GOVERNMENT The campaign automation includes several emails, all made with the easy-to-use ClickDimensions drag and drop email editor. Using the social media links and social sharing features within the editor, FCDPH can also easily connect their email and social efforts. Using the ClickDimensions content pack for Microsoft Power BI, FCDPH is able to analyze data and share insights with data visualizations and dashboards to better understand the performance of their Home Safe Home campaign. Example Scenario
- 29. 29 Conclusion Campaign automation is a marketing game changer. It allows organizations to inform and educate prospects, effectively qualify leads and develop trust with customers. Nurture campaigns can provide a uniquely customized experience for prospects and leads alike, without requiring additional time and resources from various departments within your organization. Nurturing should be a part of your overall marketing strategy, not isolated from it. In order to be effective, it should provide a seamless experience throughout the buying cycle. The biggest key to successful nurturing is relevance. The timing, messaging and calls to action must vary based on the needs and readiness of the audience. Through specific, targeted campaign automations, marketers can improve conversion rates, produce better-qualified leads and more effectively engage with customers, ultimately scoring with increased sales and revenue. Excessive celebration is allowed!
- 30. 30 About ClickDimensions ClickDimensions is the only marketing automation platform that is exclusively created for and natively built in Microsoft Dynamics 365. Our solution brings together email marketing, campaign automation, web intelligence, surveys, web forms and landing pages, social marketing and more to help organizations attract more leads, close more sales and more effectively engage customers – all from the comfort of Dynamics 365. To learn more about getting more out of Dynamics 365 with a powerful and user-friendly marketing toolkit, visit us at http:// clickdimensions.com, read our blog at blog.clickdimensions. com or follow us on Twitter at @ClickDimensions. Copyright 2018 ClickDimensions. All rights reserved. May not be reprinted, reproduced or distributed without permission. For inquiries, contact marketing@clickdimensions.com.