059: Marketing Automation with ActiveCampaign [Email Marketing Series #2 of 6]

It’s Episode #2 of the 6 part series we are doing on Email Marketing. Today we are talking with Kelly O’Connell. She is the Principal Product Manager for ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation software platform that started as an email marketing platform and quickly moved into automation focusing on segmentation and optimizing customer journeys. They focus on small/medium size businesses. My first introduction to ActiveCampaign was years ago at a time when it offered more than what my clients needed. But now… it is what I use and is what I highly recommend. We use it in virtual summits automation because there is so much power in that. ActiveCampaign is one of the ones at the top of my list because you can use it as simple or more in depth as you like. There are alot of great tools out there, but it’s important to find one that works with you. Segmentation within your list with ActiveCampaign Everyone has gotten used to that batch and blast mindset where you send a message out to a large list of people. This is still incredibly valuable in many ways. But... "Your message is going to resonate more, get more engagement, and you are going to convert more if your messaging is really relevant, personal, and targeted."-Kelly O’Connell That doesn’t just mean “Hey, FIRSTNAME” you have to go a little deeper. When approaching your messaging you have to figure out things like what are they doing, not doing, how are they engaging with you, what are their interests, what do you know about them? Using all of that to segment and say this group of people is a little different than that group will help you figure out how to position your messaging and CTAs that will resonate more with them because you are speaking to them directly. It will make them more inclined to take action and continue moving through your funnel. There is a lot that happens after someone converts passed their first purchase. You have to make sure that you keep providing an optimized journey passed their first purchase. If you treat someone right after they get their first purchase they are more likely to send people to that offer, complete the work, and then come back for more. Strategies for After First Purchase Someone that comes in and downloads a freebie then purchases the first product that next product that we nurture them to may be completely different person to person. It’s not always a clear path or same path for each person. We have to think about all of the things we know about that person to lead them along the funnel. One thing you can do after purchase is ASK FOR FEEDBACK! KEEP THE CONVERSATION GOING! It’s important to help people see the value in what they just purchase and nurture them to adopt that. Do you know that they have used it, consumed it, completed it? Knowing these things will help you keep the conversation going. This is something that is a difference between big and small businesses. Big businesses are tracking you all over the internet and blasting you with sales. With a smaller business, you have the ability to nurture the relationship you have with people. Reasoning behind site tracking Site tracking is one of those things that goes overlooked a few times. We’ve gotten so used to knowing what people click on and where they open and using that as behavioral segmentation capability. There are people that come to our website every day and consume information, but this shows they are curious. So you can track every page and you can see how many times they have looked at these pages. How far into your sight are they getting? This is an early indicator of what they are interested in. This allows you to create a more targeted welcome message when they do give you their email. Automations/segmentations recommended to start with to learn about people on their list Start with a welcome series. That’s not just an auto-responder message. This is a TRUE nurture series. This is the most engaged they are going to be with you. You use this opportunity to get more information about them. The other big thing you need to do is include a “human touch”. This is starting a human relationship by using an automation by encouraging someone to email you back during the welcome series. We have recipes, prebuilt automations, that you can import into your account a few are built around email engagement. So you can see how often are they opening and clicking and how long has it been since they have done that. In 3 months, this gives you an idea of the engagement with your list. All you have to do is go into automations and you click start a new automation and there are a on of them in there. It takes you through prompts to help you use the work that ActiveCampaign has done and put it in your business quickly and efficiently. Find out who your engaged list members are. More information is more information! ActiveCampaign also has event tracking that can show you things like how far did someone get into your video. When we do Virtual Summits, we use this event tracking on the videos for the Summit. This tracking information tells us how to nurture people who are participating in the summit. Being able to find ways to make your automation move into your interactive is like a super power in email marketing. Backend in ActiveCampaign Automation often concentrates on the content delivery to contact which it’s great for, but sometimes you want to know if something happened that might set you up for success later. You have the ability to have it send you an email when something has happened. As a result you are able to engage more with them and create more of that human touch in automation. ActiveCampaign has the ability for you to send an email directly to someone from ActiveCampaign. This means the emails will be better timed. And the ability to send directly to someone from ActiveCampaign means you don’t have to lose tools, but still allow you to connect one-on-one with a contact. It provides a new way for you to contact outside of their automation. ActiveCampaign does have a chrome extension that will bring all of your contact info from gmail into your chrome extension to work in ActiveCampaign. Biggest Benefit of Fully Embracing Automation of ActiveCampaign It allows you to grow. Not everything has to be perfectly done right away. Having infrastructure in place gives you data so that when it comes time you can start branching off. It allows you to think think through things like if this person goes this way then I can offer them this. It allows you to grow what you offer your clientbase. Putting the first steps in automation allows you to easily think through what’s working and what’s not and be able to easily make changes. ActiveCampaign affiliate link https://techofbusiness.com/activecampaign Connect with Jaime: Instagram: @techofbusiness Twitter: @techofbusiness Facebook: @yourbiztech LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeslutzky/ Email: [email protected] Connect with ActiveCampaign: ActiveCampaign Slack Channel Tutorials and courses Podcast: The ActiveCampaign Podcast Email: [email protected]