Have you heard of marketing automation? It's the new school of marketing, which helps busy small businesses attract, convert, and retain customers.

One of the highlights of marketing automation is it's ability to complete all of these steps while saving you time. Ready to find out how?

As a small business owner, you know better than anyone that time is precious. 

Between identifying, communicating with, converting and retaining contacts, marketing alone can eat up a hours of your day. When you also need to be handling administrative and sales tasks, there simply isn't enough time to do everything well.

Thankfully, the marketing industry has evolved. As customer demands and informational needs have grown, so has the capability of the modern day marketer.

Marketing automation is a methodology that allows you to be found by and engage with potential customers, without pulling you away from your other essential duties. When you're wearing the hats of marketer, sales rep, and more, this opportunity is invaluable.

Marketing automation utilizes a contact management system and email marketing to track lead behavior and execute a series of pre-outlined actions depending on that leads activity. This transpires through each stage of the buying cycle.

Here are a few situations where it can save you time:

When someone subscribes to your email list

Hopefully you're already giving people the opportunity to join your email list. Besides segmenting this list for marketing automation, you may be using it to send out newsletters, blog digests, promotional offers, etc.

One critical opportunity you may be missing lies in the first email you send to a new contact. When someone joins your list, marketing automation can trigger the delivery of a pre-written (but personalized) email thanking them for subscribing, and offering other ways for them to engage with your brand.

This could direct them to your blog (to learn more about your business), offer them a promotion (like a free consultation) or simply provide them with helpful resources (like an eBook download).

Here, automation takes a new contact from a stranger to an engaged individual who is engaging with your business.

When someone clicks through an email, and converts

Ah, what a wonderful feeling! If you're sending out emails, you're likely tracking whether or not people are actually opening in and clicking through on them. 

Whatever you're directing them to (a content download, a free assessment, etc), you should know whether or not they're actually converting on it. And if they are? Automation can step in to take that conversion one step further.

Here's an example: let's say you send an email to your new contacts with a link to a general, Top Funnel content offer they might enjoy. When someone downloads that offer, your automation can trigger the delivery of another email with a related, middle of the funnel offer. If they download that one? Automation can send them a bottom of the funnel offer. And so the cycle continues.

The beauty here lies in that automation can nurture an individual all the way from consideration (top of the funnel) to purchase ready (bottom of the funnel) - without you having to lift a finger. As you're plugging away at your daily tasks, quality leads are being engaged and converted right up until the point they are ready to make a purchase.

That's where you come in.

When someone clicks through an email, but doesn't convert

Us marketers love when people click our emails. We really love when people make it all the way through the subsequent conversion. What we don't love so much is when that conversion drops off.

I received an email recently from an online education center, inviting me to purchase any of their courses at 50% off. Being the penny pincher that I am, I jumped on the chance to save some cash and clicked through to the site.

That's when I realized that even at 50% off, these courses weren't attainable for me. I hit the exit button. Life went on.

The next day, I got a personalized email from the site asking if I had any questions since I'd browsed the site but didn't make a purchase.

The next day, I got another one.

These automated emails weren't pesky. In fact, they were helpful. The signature was of a real person, and he offered his time to chat with me if I had any questions about what I could expect from the courses.

So, how did they do this? Simply put, they tracked who clicked their email VS who made a purchase. Everyone who fell into the non-purchase category got a few friendly emails to incentivize the purchase.

This was automation, but it was personalized automation. If I hit reply to that email, it would have gone to a human. Then, when I had identified myself as a high quality lead, that person would have been happy to invest time in speaking with me.

Until then? This brand is (smartly) letting automation do the work.

When someone is ready for a demonstration or consultation

This scenario is precisely what we discussed above. When someone is actively looking to make a purchase, it's easy for us to identify them. They sign up for free trials, they request consultations, they watch demo videos. And when a lead is in that bottom stage of the funnel, it's time for you to step in and close the deal.

The trick is managing the people who are coming into your bottom funnel. How can you keep a steady stream of these quality leads coming in? How can you know the exact moment when they're ready to purchase?

Of course, the answer is automation. If you're effectively nurturing leads through the initial funnel stages (as mentioned above), people coming into your bottom funnel will be educated and prepared for the kind of conversation you want to invest time in.

These leads understand the need they're looking to fill, they're familiar with your industry, and they know about your offering (all thanks to the killer content you've been delivering to them). 

Automation tracks leads who have become purchase ready, and provides up to the minute reports on who you should be reaching out to now. Even better, it keeps a record of their interactions with your brand, which is valuable information for you to have when closing the sale.

When someone is not ready to purchase, and never will be

Of all the ways to spend your time, the worst is on a lead who is never going to buy your product.

Maybe they're just doing research, maybe they're spying for the competition, but either way, they are never going to make it on to your "Customers" email list. 

So why waste time chasing after them? 

Via automation, this "lead" can acquire all of the information they want about your business. On the other end, you can track what content they're downloading and note that they're never reaching that final purchase ready stage. Thus, you won't be spending hours in sales pitches that lead to $0.

Which of these categories is eating up the most of your time? If you've been considering automation, now is the time to start down the road to more effective lead management and conversion.

Tick tock.