Technology, when used well, essentially serves to make our lives easier. And one of the smartest ways to use it to our advantage is by automating processes that, if carried out manually, would take much longer.
In marketing, this functionality also applies, and if you think that this only applies to large companies like Google, Apple or Facebook, know that all the power of marketing automation is within your reach!
Automating marketing actions is a practice that brings numerous benefits. The first is to save the time of those who work in the area, freeing professionals for other activities that cannot be carried out by machines. Let’s think about a very common channel: email marketing. Imagine how long it would take to send personalized messages to 100 leads per day, if the shooting was done one by one!
With a marketing automation tool, this action can be done in a few minutes, much more efficiently. And you don't need to be a big company to have access to software of this type. It is affordable for small and medium-sized institutions as well.
Furthermore, with a suitable tool (such as the HubSpot), you can automate the process to send emails at the most appropriate point in the purchasing journey for that lead. This is just one example, but before talking about other automation possibilities.
Discover the exciting insights awaiting you in this post:
See more advantages of using this technology in your strategy:
Automation increases conversion
One of the features of marketing automation software is the personalization of messages. These programs record the lead's interaction history with your institution's website with information such as: profile data collected in the form fields (name, email, age, city, profession,...), which pages they visited, which materials downloaded, which emails you opened and clicked on, among others. From this history, it is possible to send messages with personalized content.
But what does this have to do with conversion?! All! Personalization is one of the marketing trends and it is directly responsible for increasing conversion, according to Neil Patel, a marketing specialist who is on the Forbes list of the 10 best professionals in the field. He cites Amazon as an example.
Considering the consumption patterns of its customers, the American giant is able to customize offers on the website, showing what the person will be most likely to buy. This way, the sales possibilities will be greater.
The same logic applies to educational institutions. If you send a personalized email or SMS talking about a certain higher education course, for example, knowing that the potential student visits that course page a few days before, the possibility that they will sign up and enroll will certainly be greater. In other words, marketing automation means greater conversion and consequently more revenue.
Automation allows the business to scale
Carrying out personalized actions without marketing automation is possible, but only for a small number of leads. As your business grows, automation will be necessary for you to achieve scale your initiatives without having to increase the team and, necessarily, without having more personnel costs.
As we said at the beginning of the text, sending emails to 100 people a day (or even more) is very difficult without the appropriate technology. Imagine if, for each registration made on your website, someone had to manually send a confirmation email to the candidate.
Or if a professional on your team sent a reminder about the exam to all those taking the entrance exam, one by one, the day before the test. It could even send it to a list, without personalization, but the delivery and effectiveness of the message would certainly be much lower (in fact, if you don't already have this type of entrance exam reminder automation, you are certainly missing out on a lot of potential students).
SEE THESE CONTENT ALSO:
- Marketing automation: 5 tools that will impact your results;
- Automation: how to make a sales flow? The 5 Practices!
- CRM and marketing automation for all stages of the funnel.
Automation shortens the sales cycle
The marketing automation it's a way to actively engage with your leads, making them move faster through the sales funnel stages. As a result, the time between the first demonstration of interest in the product and the purchase (sales cycle) will be shorter.
If a potential student accessed your institution's website, downloaded material and accessed blog content about degree X, you already know that he is interested in this course. If there is still a month or two before classes start, he has all that time to decide whether to enroll or not and, during this period, if you don't maintain any contact with him, the chance of losing him will be very high.
In a month or two, he may change his plans and leave graduation until the next semester, simply forget the enrollment date or, worst of all, decide to study at a competing institution.
On the other hand, if from the first demonstration of interest he is included in a marketing automation flow and periodically receives more information from that course, it is quite possible that he will enroll before the deadline, which would be up to three months for the course. start of classes. In other words, you shortened the sales cycle and gained efficiency in your process.
What actions can be automated?
With software like Hubspot, you can easily automate actions such as (1) scheduling social media posts; (two) lead nurturing (personalized email blasts considering the person's conversion context and interaction history), both to speed up the sales cycle and post-sales, for student retention, for example; (3) lead scoring (scoring to classify leads as hot or cold depending on the profile and interaction); among others.
A common question from institutions is how much Hubspot costs. The software has a free version, but automation is only available from the professional version. Before we talk about value, it is worth emphasizing that, considering the advantages of marketing automation, the cost/benefit of hiring the tool is very good and the price is affordable for small, medium and large companies. Packages can be consulted on the HubSpot.
Do you want to see the number of enrollments at your institution grow? Schedule a conversation with us.
Portugal