11 Types of Campaign Automation Strategies

Campaign Automation, also known as nurture campaigns, are an effective way for brands to connect with their audiences while also increasing the efficiency of their marketing teams. But what types of campaigns should you automate? And how can you use campaign automation strategies to achieve your marketing and sales goals?

Here are 11 campaign automation strategies to help you achieve your goals:

1. Welcome campaign. When a new lead enters your 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. Email marketing is essential for welcome campaigns, find out more about email marketing here.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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 are aiming to convince that competitor’s customers to make the switch.

5. 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 detract 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.

6. 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.

7. 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 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. This type of personalization is essential in marketing. In fact, 70% of marketers who use personalization saw a 200% ROI increase.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

Happy Marketing!

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