Best 12 Marketing Automation Workflows To Try In 2023
Marketing is a crucial investment for any business. However, working in marketing is not a breeze, and it comes with its challenges. There will often be hundreds of assets, deadlines, gathering, and nurturing leads. All of these need a structure and a workflow to increase efficiency.
In this article, we’re going to focus on the best marketing workflow automations to implement in 2023. Some of these automations will help you acquire more leads, while others will simply allow you to focus on what’s important instead of performing repetitive tasks.
Marketing workflow – Improve efficiency
A marketing workflow is a set of steps or activities that your team needs to perform in order to complete a task or an asset. Marketing workflows can be complex and cover more tasks into one, while others can be as simple as gathering email addresses into a spreadsheet.
They can differ depending on the task, the volume of work, and the size of the team. Ultimately, workflows allow marketing teams to be more effective and productive. Now, thanks to the ever-evolving technology, marketing teams can benefit from automating the workflows they’ve created over time.
Let’s see what marketing workflow automation is and how it can help teams work better, faster, and ultimately more efficiently.
What is a marketing automation workflow?
A marketing automation workflow means automation of a certain marketing-related task or activity. It consists of a set of steps that are performed automatically once triggers have been set out in a tool or app. To put it in other words, the workflow goes from one step to another automatically, when a certain action is performed by the user or the marketing team.
There are various types of workflow marketing automations that can be set up. However, some of the most beneficial for marketing teams are those that focus on lead generation and lead nurturing. Actually, 80% of marketers saw an increase in the number of leads after using marketing automation software.
Apart from helping marketers gather more leads and increase the conversion rate, a marketing automation workflow can improve the collaboration between departments and help avoid human errors like forgetting to send a newsletter or adding a lead to the company CRM.
How to create marketing automation workflows?
Workflow marketing automation can be created with a few simple steps, depending on the needs of the team. With the help of tools, apps, and integration, marketers have various marketing workflow automation opportunities. It’s best to have a strategy behind every workflow before you decide to create and implement it in a tool.
12 Best marketing automation workflow examples
1. Marketing team workflow
Let’s start off with the most important workflow that every team should have in place. A marketing team workflow should show what needs to happen with every asset that each team member creates.
One great way to structure the workflow is by dividing the work into simple sections like “Newly assigned”, “In progress”, “In review”, etc. This, of course, depends on the type of assets you are creating and the marketing strategy you have in place.
For a marketing team that focuses on content creation, a tool like Asana or Monday is essential. It’s easy to forget to put a blog article in review or to attach the Google Doc. Everybody forgets or makes mistakes. However, with this marketing automation workflow, you can make sure that everybody on the team stays informed regarding all of the assets and that the content goes from creation to approval smoothly.
Below, you can see a workflow that a content marketing team automated for their content creation process, from content creation to publishing. The workflow is automated in Asana and it contains triggers and actions automated with the help of Asana Rules.
2. Onboarding automation workflow
This is essential workflow automation for SaaS businesses. When a person decides to give your product a try, it’s fantastic. However, you need to make sure that the new user understands and uses the product to its fullest to make sure that they turn from a free to a paying user.
Onboarding is the first interaction a customer has with your product and the first impression matters. To make the onboarding process as friendly and easy to understand as possible, you are going to need a workflow of emails that will provide the necessary information to the customers.
You can easily automate your onboarding workflow with tools like Moosend, Mailchimp, or ConvertKit. When a user registers by entering data on a form on your website, you can automatically send a welcome email. Next, once the welcome email is sent, you can start sending automated emails that are filled with product information the customer needs.
3. Performance analytics workflow automation
Every marketing team knows that monitoring and analyzing data are essential for performance marketing. However, for marketing agencies it might be hard to keep track of all the data, and that’s why this workflow automation comes in handy.
To monitor data and analyze how your ads have performed over a certain period of time, it’s important to have the correct data in one place. With the help of Coupler.io, data collection is easy and automated.
Coupler.io is data automation and analytics platform that allows you to automate reporting and performance analytics workflow.
With just a few clicks, you can connect, for example, LinkedIn Ads to Google Sheets to automate dataflow and constantly monitor your ads performance. Coupler.io supports three destinations, so instead of Google Sheets, you can connect LinkedIn Ads to BigQuery or LinkedIn Ads to Excel if you want to run advanced analytics.
Just starting out with performance marketing and still doing everything manually? Coupler.io also provides data analytics consulting. With over 15 years of consulting experience, Coupler.io’s specialists can help you with data visualization, infrastructure, automation, and business analytics. Here is an example of a marketing analytics report on paid advertising performance created by Coupler.io data experts.
4. Newsletter workflow automation
Creating helpful content for your customers is not enough. Nowadays, it’s all about content distribution. Sending weekly newsletters to your customer base is a must. However, this doesn’t mean you should manually send hundreds of emails weekly.
Mailchimp helps you automate your email marketing workflow, but you will need to constantly provide the content for the newsletters. HubSpot is a better alternative if you already use it for your blog and website. You can automatically send a weekly newsletter after setting up a template and a customer base.
You can simply set up HubSpot to extract information from your most recent blog article and send it to your customer base. This means that you can sit back and relax while your weekly newsletter ends up in your audience’s inbox.
5. Re-engagement workflow
Unfortunately, not all customers are constantly engaged and in touch with your brand’s offers. When users are inactive, or they haven’t opened any of your emails for a while, then it’s time to prepare a re-engagement campaign. Instead of sending the emails manually, you can automate the campaign.
For this type of marketing workflow automation, you can use any of the email marketing solutions like Mailchimp, Woodpecker, or ElasticEmail. Depending on your brand, the products you offer, or the promotions you have available, you can choose to create a campaign to re-engage customers or to allow them to unsubscribe if that’s what they want. For example, here’s a funny and straight-to-the-point re-engagement campaign from Urban Outfitters:
To automate a re-engagement email campaign, you will need to create the email template in your chosen email marketing solution and set a trigger. You can choose unopened emails or unengaged users as triggers. After that, your email will end up in your disengaged users’ inboxes.
6. Lead nurturing workflow automation
There are various automations available for email marketing. Lead nurturing, or drip campaigns are great ways to connect with your leads and maybe turn them from potential customers into loyal users of your product.
You can create a drip campaign to nurture leads you’ve acquired from a freebie like an eBook or a whitepaper. Once a person adds their data on a download form, you can create a drip campaign based on their interest. For example, if somebody wanted to download your guide about churn rate, they might want to receive in-depth information about how to retain more customers and increase revenue.
To automate the workflow, you will need a series of emails that are going to be sent on a schedule. Also, you will need to segment your customers and create a separate audience for the drip campaign. Finally, automate the workflow with a few clicks in your chosen email marketing solution. You can implement this type of campaign in Mailchimp, Moosend, or another email marketing tool.
Leads will receive the emails you’ve created on the schedule you’ve chosen. Make sure to include a call to action (CTA) and all of your contact information, in case the lead wants to learn more or test your product.
7. Feedback collecting workflow
How can you improve your product or services if you don’t know what customers think about them? Feedback is essential for any business, but it is challenging to acquire. Instead of reaching out to each customer for feedback every time they perform an action in your tool or for every product they purchase, it’s best to rely on an automated workflow.
You can set out an automated feedback collection workflow triggered by a specific action performed by the customer. For example, when a customer interacts with customer support, they should receive an automated email where they can leave their feedback.
Also, sending out automated feedback-collecting messages after a purchase is mandatory for eCommerce businesses. This type of workflow automation is easy to set up in most email marketing tools. All you have to do is to create the email template and include a form customers can fill out. Then, choose the trigger which can be “After a purchase” and set out the automated workflow. From now on, when a customer purchases anything on your website, they will receive an email with a form to collect their feedback.
8. Customer review workflow automation
Customer reviews and testimonials build social proof which leads to an increase in customer trust. While customers might love to use your product, they are not eager to leave a review. Most of the time, customers are more inclined to leave a review when they are upset, not when everything works out smoothly.
A good experience with a local business would prompt 12% of customers to leave a review if they see a sign prompting them to. 36% would do so if they received an email asking them to give a review.
Apart from increasing the chances of customers leaving a review, an automated email workflow will allow you to target multiple customers at once, and it’s less time-consuming than reaching out manually.
After a customer is onboarded and has been using your tool for a few weeks or has successfully completed an action in your product, it’s best to send them an email asking for a review. Make sure to include links to review websites like G2 and TrustPilot as well as your Google or Facebook profile so that the customer can select the platform they want to leave the review on.
9. Sign-up workflow automation
If you organize events or webinars, you should have sign-up workflow automation in place. When users are interested in one of your webinars, they can sign-up by filling out a form with their data. You can use their email address to send out updates regarding the webinar and reminders. Also, on the day of the webinar, you can send out the link to the Zoom meeting automatically.
All you need for this automation is to connect your website with your email marketing solution. When people fill out the sign-up form you’ve added on the landing page of the event or webinar, they will automatically receive reminders and the link for the meeting along with a password if the event is private or if they paid a tax to see the webinar.
Additionally, when the webinar is done, you can automatically send the attendees a recording of the discussion so they can listen to it whenever they want to refresh their memory.
10. Download content workflow
This is one of the most basic marketing automation workflows, but it’s essential for those who want to capture leads with the help of free content. You should take advantage of high-quality content like eBooks and guides and gate this content.
If people are interested in finding out more they will be willing to download the guide and you will have their email addresses as a result. This comes with many opportunities for your business. By having a list of email addresses you can create and send out various types of campaigns.
To set out this automation, you will have to connect your website (or landing page) to your email marketing solution like Mailchimp or Moosend. When a person fills out the form to download a content asset, you will automatically send the content to their email address.
11. Upselling/Cross-selling workflow automation
If you have a SaaS business, then you’ll know that it’s hard to keep track of customers needs and wants. With hundreds of customers that pay a subscription to use your product, it might be challenging to know when each customer needs an upsell or cross-sell.
Customer success software or CRMs are powerful tools that offer you a complete overview. For instance, you can use a tool like Custify to automatically reach out to customers when they need to change their subscriptions.
Let’s say that you have a client who is paying for your “Basic” subscription which only allows them to track 10 client accounts. What happens when they reach 9 client accounts? That’s the perfect moment to send an upselling email.
You can also automate this workflow for cross-selling. For eCommerce businesses, a cross-selling strategy works wonders. For example, when a customer purchases a certain product, you can send them automated emails with recommendations based on their purchase.
12. Referral workflow automation
Last but not least, having a referral strategy in place can help you gain more loyal customers while engaging existing clients. People referred by a friend have a 37% higher customer retention rate and are 4 times more likely to buy. (Nielsen)
After you’ve created your referral strategy, which should include an incentive for the referee and the referred friend, then it’s time to build the campaign. Choose a referral tool like ReferralRock to implement the campaign. Most of the referral tools integrate with email marketing solutions so it’s easier to automate the whole referral process.
Apart from the obvious advantage of gaining more customers, implementing a referral program will show your current customers that you care about them and you are thankful for them.
Best marketing automation and workflow management integrations
If you’re ready to automate some of your marketing workflows, we’ve got you covered! Here are some of our favorite workflow automation and online marketing reporting tools that you can test out for your team or marketing agency.
Coupler.io
Coupler.io is a data automation and analytics platform. With this solution, you can automate your marketing reporting or analytics yourself using a web app to create ETL pipelines. At the same time, Coupler.io provides a data analytics service for advanced reporting and performance analytics workflow automation. This lets you engage a team of data experts to contribute to automating workflows for your marketing activities or even set them up from scratch.
HubSpot Marketing Automation
If you work in marketing, you’ve probably heard about HubSpot before. This CRM provides great tools for both marketers and sales teams. HubSpot’s Marketing Automation tool comes with user-friendly visual boards where marketers can create and edit their conditional workflows.
Asana
Asana is an easy-to-use project management tool that every marketing team should test out. The tool comes with various “Rules” that allow you to automate an entire workflow with just a few clicks. It helps you save a lot of time and you don’t need to have a technical background to understand how to set up workflow automation.
Moosend
Moosend is an amazing tool for SaaS businesses that want to automate their drip campaigns. This email marketing automation tool is also a great solution for eCommerce businesses that want to set up a cart abandonment series of newsletters for their users.
Keap
Keap is a helpful automation tool that can be used even by small marketing agencies or solopreneurs. You can use Keap to set up complex decision trees that depend on which lead magnet someone signs up for, the types of newsletters they’ve opened, or other custom data you choose to use.
Pardot
Pardot is a Google Analytics integration from Salesforce. It directly integrates with Salesforce’s CRM to harness all available data and helps align the marketing and sales teams.
Now that we’ve established what marketing workflow automation is and which are the best tools and integration for automating workflows, let’s take a look at the most important workflows marketers should automate.
Automate marketing workflows
Automating your marketing workflows comes with many benefits, including:
- Improved clarity and consistency
- Increased work satisfaction
- Reduced risk of error
- Increased productivity
As you’ve seen in this article, automating your marketing workflows doesn’t have to be a challenge and you don’t even need to be able to code to implement these workflows. Nowadays, there are hundreds of tools that will allow you to automate your marketing workflows within minutes.
