Marketing Automation has the potential to change the way in which you achieve digital outcomes. It enables communications teams to be more strategic and to deploy communications that serve and influence their audiences over the longer term.
by Sadie Burgess
Begin with the end in mind
There will never be a shortage of technology and solutions for communications professionals to try, but the focus should always be on the outcome that communications technology can deliver rather than the technology itself.
In November 2022, I had the privilege of speaking at the LGcomms Academy. One of the delegates explained that they had presented results of a resident survey to senior council stakeholders. The survey revealed that residents overwhelmingly chose email as their preferred channel to receive information from the council. Yet the senior team’s reaction to this was to ignore the survey and instead focus on the creation of a TikTok channel. The aim of the TikTok channel? To engage residents. An intangible, unmeasurable goal.
Unlocking the potential of any given marketing technology should start with a clearly defined digital outcome. We will use foster caring as an example to demonstrate this concept:
“Our objective is to improve resident engagement” – Not good enough
“Our objective is to improve resident engagement with content about fostering” – Still, not specific enough
“Our objective is to encourage more residents to become foster carers” – More tangible, but not measurable
“Our objective is to generate an additional 20 foster care applications within three months” – That’s more like it!
Beginning with the end in mind is about having a clear goal with a measurable result and timescale. This helps you to establish meaningful criteria for success that you can account for. Note that the above objective stops at the point of the foster care application. Beyond this point, other existing processes and procedures will result in the final goal of turning a proportion of those applications into actual fostering placements.
This is still useful for defining a budget. We should be able to tell what the normal conversion rate is for foster care applications and this in turn gives us an idea of the potential ROI for a campaign with this objective.
This is where automation beats determination. Instead of having to manually create a newsletter every month, a set and forget sequence of automated communications can be used to drive attention and interest in a topic for a sustained period. It may not be new content, but it is still relevant to someone who is interested in understanding more about a service.
Causing big shifts in behaviour is possible, but more challenging. Nudges in the right direction tend to be more effective and this is where a good understanding of the natural customer journey can be used to plan an automated journey.
Let’s continue using enrolling new foster carers as the example:
Exercise
Write down all the things that someone may want to know about Fostering on post-it notes and put them on a wall in a logical order of when they would want to know each element. Then consider the cadence of the decision-making process. How quickly would they get to the point of submitting an application. Get a clear picture of the journey and use it to base your guided flow:
1. Trigger action – Attend fostering event
2. Wait one day
3. Email with event follow up information
4. Wait three days
5. Email with guide about becoming a foster carer
6. Wait for interaction, then wait two days
7. Email with case study and objection handling information
8. Wait for interaction, then wait two days
9. Email with details of financial incentives for becoming a foster carer
10. Wait two days
11. Email with link to application pack
12. Alert team to any contact that accesses application pack
Behaviour change marketing is all about identifying barriers to change and increasing motivations to encourage positive steps, which makes it a good fit for long-term email automation campaigns. Email automation campaigns give you the ability to communicate with an audience on an individualised level over a short or long-term. With email automation campaigns, you can also choose the cadence (frequency of contact) and length of your campaign.
A long-term automation campaign deployed to your audience allows you to keep your programme front of mind, while incrementally feeding messages that lower the barrier, increase intent to change, and motivate the individual towards your desired outcome. Even better, automation campaigns can be built to easily (and automatically) tailor or pivot the message the person receives based on their engagement (or lack thereof!) with your initiative.
Manage your measures
Before you go off and write your emails, you will want to map out how you will measure each phase and the overall effectiveness of the automation campaign. For each phase of your long-term automation, choose an appropriate key performance indicator (KPI) that demonstrates an individual’s completion of one phase and progression onto the next.
NB When building your automation, the first two stages need to be substantial – general rule of thumb is 40% precontemplation/awareness, 40% contemplation/interest, 20% preparation/desire. Map out your key messages within each phase and develop your content.
Now that you have defined who you are targeting and desired outcomes, knowing where they are on the hierarchy of change, it’s time to map out the messages for each email and the order in which they will be deployed.
As you define the key messages, think about them building upon each other and keep the messaging motivated to where that person is in the hierarchy. Think back to COM-B focus on capability where you will likely focus on education and motivation where the focus will likely be more emotive and social proof-based messaging – but make sure with every touchpoint you clearly answer your reader’s primary question “what’s in it for me?”.
The UnAwards Winners Masterclass
We are delighted to be one of the sponsors of this year’s UnAwards Winners Masterclass – and, if you were lucky enough to attend, you will have seen some of our AI-generated movie posters.
The Anderson Family
A story about the help, support and benefits of fostering
Now playing on e-shot
How one man, despite his fears, found out everything he needed to know about fostering from an automated series of emails designed to improve his understanding and develop his interest in becoming a foster carer. And how he found true happiness as a registered foster carer.
Take your seat and grab your popcorn
We have created a series of email templates to help you bring to life our fostering example in your district. Including five basic emails for you to build on and the flow of an automation for you to emulate – running immediately post a “meet the fostering team” event.
Find out more information and download the campaign assets here: https://pages.e-shot.net/masterclass/the-anderson-family/
Sadie Burgess is marketing manager and ISR at e-shot
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