All the hype around the effectiveness of implementing marketing automation is real. Have you considered implementing it in your association but don’t know where to start? You’re not alone. While the benefits of marketing automation can be obvious – it can revolutionise how you interact with your audience, streamline your marketing efforts, and enhance your overall organisational performance – introducing a new system might be a complex task that requires thoughtful planning, integration, and onboarding.
So, how do you get started?
Let’s explore the steps necessary to craft a successful marketing automation implementation strategy.
Step 1: Strategic Planning and Goal Setting
Before starting your marketing automation journey, it’s essential to lay a solid foundation through planning and goal setting. A clear understanding of what you aim to achieve with automation will guide every decision and ensure that your efforts are aligned with your association’s overarching objectives.
Begin by identifying the specific challenges you want to address and the outcomes you want to achieve. Consider the following common problems and desired results:
Automation can significantly reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks, such as data entry and email follow-ups, allowing your team to focus on more strategic initiatives.
By automating member communications and tailoring content to individual preferences, you can enhance member engagement and increase satisfaction.
Automating processes can help minimise human errors, ensuring consistent and accurate member interactions.
Automation enables you to gather and analyse data more effectively, leading to better insights and smarter decision-making.
Personalised communication and timely interactions through automation can help improve member retention and foster long-term loyalty.
By defining these goals, you can ensure that your marketing automation strategy is focused and effective, delivering measurable benefits to your association. This clarity will also help in selecting the right tools and workflows to address your specific needs, setting the stage for a successful implementation.
Step 2: Engage the Right Stakeholders
Although marketing automation primarily focuses on marketing activities, successfully implementing marketing automation requires collaboration across multiple departments, each playing a vital role in the process. Involving the right stakeholders ensures that the system is effective and meets the needs of your entire organisation. Here’s how to engage key teams and align their efforts:
As the primary users of the automation system, the marketing team’s input is crucial. They will be responsible for defining workflows, segmenting audiences, and crafting content strategies. Their insights into member behaviour and preferences will drive the automation processes, ensuring that campaigns are targeted and effective. Involving the marketing team from the outset ensures that the system is tailored to achieve the association’s communication goals.
The membership team is vital in serving existing members and driving brand loyalty. By automating member interactions and personalising communication, the membership team can enhance member experiences and improve retention rates. Their feedback is essential for developing workflows that cater to the needs of current members and foster long-term relationships.
The IT department plays a critical role in integrating the automation platform with existing systems. Their technical expertise is vital for ensuring a smooth implementation and maintaining system performance. Involving IT early in the process helps identify potential challenges and ensures that the necessary infrastructure is in place for seamless data integration and security.
Executive buy-in and support are crucial for the success of any project. Management can help secure the necessary budget and resources, ensuring the automation project aligns with the organisation’s strategic goals. Their involvement provides oversight and ensures that all departmental efforts are coordinated towards achieving the desired outcomes.
This collaborative approach leads to a smoother implementation process, maximises the effectiveness of the automation system, and ensures alignment with your organisational strategy.
Step 3: Understand the Customer and Team’s Journey
Yes, we talk a lot about the member journey in our blog, and that’s because we believe it is the pinnacle of successful marketing and is our favourite tool for many different purposes, including automation setup. Understanding the member journey allows you to create targeted, meaningful interactions that enhance engagement and satisfaction. Here’s how you can leverage the member journey to set up effective marketing automation:
Begin by mapping out the entire journey of your members, from initial awareness to long-term engagement and involvement. This involves identifying key stages and touchpoints where members interact with your association, such as joining, participating in events, and renewing membership. Understanding these interactions helps you see where automation can enhance the experience by delivering relevant and timely content.
Once the journey is mapped, pinpoint the critical touchpoints that influence member satisfaction and retention. These touchpoints could include welcome emails for new members, reminders for upcoming events, or renewal notices for existing members. By focusing on these moments, you can ensure that your automation efforts are strategically placed to make the most impact.
It’s not just about the member journey; understanding the internal workflows of your teams is equally important. Aligning automation with how your teams operate ensures that the system supports their activities and enhances efficiency. By mapping out team processes, you can identify where automation can alleviate repetitive tasks, reduce manual work, and allow staff to focus on high-impact initiatives.
Analyse the journey to identify any pain points or barriers that may hinder member engagement. These could be moments where members feel disconnected or experience difficulties in accessing information or services. Recognise opportunities where automation can streamline processes, provide timely communications, and offer personalised content to address these challenges.
With a clear understanding of the journey, you can design automated workflows tailored to each stage. For example, when a new member joins, an automated welcome series can introduce them to your association’s benefits, key contacts, and upcoming events. For members who haven’t engaged recently, a re-engagement campaign can remind them of the value your association offers. Personalised workflows ensure that your communications are relevant and meaningful, fostering deeper connections.
By leveraging the member journey to guide your automation setup, you can create a seamless and engaging experience that meets members’ needs at every stage. This approach not only enhances member satisfaction but also drives loyalty and long-term success for your association.
Step 4: Identify Tasks for Automation
Once you have a clear understanding of the customer journey, the next step is to identify tasks suitable for automation. Use time-tracking tools to evaluate how much time is spent on different tasks, and apply the 15-minute rule: if a task is repetitive and takes longer than 15 minutes, consider automating it.
In general, you should automate tasks like the following:
- Repetitive tasks
- Manual tasks
- Things with high volume
- Processes prone to human error
- Time-sensitive tasks
- Updates
While automation can streamline many processes, it’s important not to automate tasks that require a personal touch, such as complex problem-solving or personalised member interactions that benefit from human empathy and understanding.
Step 5: Research and Select the Right Tools
Selecting the right marketing automation tools is a crucial step that determines the success of your automation strategy, however, we hope you noticed, it’s only number five in our list! Never start your business process with selecting a technology! Here’s some tips from us on how to approach marketing automation technology selection:
Begin by evaluating your existing technology stack to identify tools and systems that are already in place. Determine which tools can be leveraged for automation and how they integrate with other systems, such as your CRM / AMS, and email marketing platform. Understanding your current capabilities will help you make informed decisions about additional tools needed.
Based on your automation goals, identify the key features and functionalities required from a marketing automation tool. Consider aspects such as email marketing capabilities, workflow automation, audience segmentation, analytics and reporting, and integration options. Prioritise tools that offer scalability to accommodate your organisation’s growth.
Once you have shortlisted potential tasks you’d like to automate, contact your current vendors to learn about tools available in your current system. Only if you have confirmation from them it’s not possible to set up in your current system, explore adding other tools to your stack.
By carefully researching and selecting the right marketing automation tools, you can build a robust system that supports your organisational goals and enhances member engagement.
MemberBoat can help you identify potential areas of automation and find the best automation software for your tech infrastructure, map out automation processes and set up templates. This may include such tools as emails, chatbots, Messenger and more. If you’d like to know more, you can schedule a meeting with us.
Step 6: Design and Implement Automated Workflows
Designing automated workflows is the heart of marketing automation. Implement, monitor, and continually refine these workflows to ensure they are effective and aligned with your organisational goals.
Data Integration and Clean-up
Data is the lifeblood of any marketing automation system. Integrate data from various sources, such as your CRM system, email marketing platform, and membership database, to create a consolidated data hub. Clean your data by removing duplicates, ensuring email addresses are correctly formatted, and validating member information. Proper data integration and clean-up ensure your marketing automation system operates efficiently and supports data-driven decision-making.
Content Creation
Content is a pivotal aspect of marketing automation. Determine the volume and types of content required to fuel your automated campaigns. Consider the different stages of the customer journey and the specific needs of various member segments. Develop a content creation plan that aligns with your automation strategy and leverages existing content while identifying gaps that need to be filled. Analytics can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of your content and inform future strategies.
Step 7: Training and Adoption
Ensure a smooth implementation by leveraging the training and resources offered by your software provider. Training should be comprehensive, accessible, and ongoing. Consider the following strategies to support training and adoption:
- Initial Training: Provide foundational training for all team members using the platform, ensuring they understand both the “how” and the “why” behind the processes.
- Ongoing Education: Continuously offer training resources and opportunities for further education, such as webinars, workshops, and updated documentation.
- Champion Advocates: Identify individuals within your organisation who excel at using the platform and empower them to train others.
- Open Communication: Foster a culture of open communication, encouraging feedback and questions to address challenges and concerns.
Step 8: Test and Optimise
Marketing automation is a continuous journey, not a final destination. It requires regular testing and optimisation to ensure its effectiveness and alignment with organisational goals. Here’s how to approach this crucial step:
Start by reviewing your automated workflows on a regular basis to ensure they are functioning as intended. Check that triggers are activating correctly, and that members are receiving the right messages at the appropriate times.
It’s essential to conduct periodic checks of your technology setup to ensure that all systems are integrated correctly and operating smoothly. This includes verifying data flow between your CRM, email marketing platform, and other systems. Regular testing helps prevent technical glitches that could disrupt member communications or impact data accuracy.
Use analytics and reporting tools to track the performance of your automation campaigns. Key metrics to monitor include open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and member engagement levels. Analysing these metrics provides insights into what’s working well and where improvements are needed.
Content is a critical component of your automation strategy, and it’s vital to keep it fresh and relevant. Schedule regular updates to review and refresh your content to ensure it aligns with current member interests and organisational goals. This includes updating email templates, revising automated messages, and creating new content that reflects changes in your association’s offerings or focus.
Gather feedback from your members and internal teams to understand their experiences with your automated communications. Use this feedback to refine your strategies, address any concerns, and enhance the overall member experience.
Embrace a mindset of continuous improvement by regularly experimenting with new ideas and approaches. Test different messaging, timing, and segmentation strategies to discover what resonates best with your members. Use these insights to refine and optimise your automation efforts continually.
Marketing Automation: The Bottomline
Implementing marketing automation can help you enhance member engagement and streamline your marketing efforts. By following a structured approach that includes strategic planning, engaging the right stakeholders, understanding the member journey, designing workflows, providing training, and regularly testing and optimising, associations can harness the power of automation to deliver personalised, meaningful interactions. This proactive approach not only improves operational efficiency but also strengthens member relationships, driving long-term success and positioning the association for growth in an increasingly digital landscape.
MemberBoat is a digital marketing agency dedicated to helping professional associations, industry bodies and other membership organisations embrace emerging digital marketing tools, create a more commercial mindset and simplify their journey to digital transformation.
