6 quick wins when you first sign up to marketing automation

Marketing automation systems are powerful, intelligent and the bedrock of many businesses' marketing strategies, but getting to learn and understand them takes time and dedication. Not becoming overwhelmed by everything your chosen product can do right away is important. Here are six things to concentrate on first when implementing a marketing automation system in your business.

1. Add the tracking code to your website
   All marketing automation systems require you to add a piece of code to your website to help track your visitors' behaviour. Make sure this in place and working before implementing any marketing campaigns. Failure to do so will mean you will miss out on valuable user data such as the pages your contacts have visited, lead scoring attribution and campaign tracking.
2. Upload your existing data (properly!)
   Make sure that all of your existing data is uploaded correctly. There is a temptation to upload only basic field information, such as name, email and company name. This is a mistake. Marketing automation lets you easily segment your data into different lists based on specific user information, such as industry or turnover band. You never know when your manager might ask you to run a campaign to a specific set of leads or customers.
3. Integrate your web forms
   Any decent marketing automation system, such as Constant Contact or Pardot, will allow you to integrate your existing web forms. Getting this done at the beginning is important because you will want to start to capture leads without having to manually upload data straightaway. It will also mean you can reap the benefits of lead scoring straight away.
4. Create your email templates
   One of the big benefits of marketing automation is its ability to send personalised and dynamic emails. However, before you can send any emails, you need to have an email template in place.
   The majority of businesses migrating over to a marketing automation system will have used a traditional email service provider (ESP). If this applies to you, be sure to grab the HTML from your email template. Constant Contact, Pardot and others allow you to upload and use your existing templates.
5. Connect your Google AdWords account
   Most marketing automation systems allow you to connect your Google AdWords account. The major benefit here is that previously Google AdWords would only tell you the number of conversions from your paid search campaigns, now you can identify exactly who they are!
6. Setup a simple automation

Build confidence by setting up a simple automation sequence, like an email notification to the sales team when a lead score is achieved or when a form is completed. This will help you get a basic understanding of automations and workflows, which should in turn, give you the confidence to try more complex automation sequences.

If these six things are taken care of first, then what follows will make much more sense and will save you time later on.

As many of our existing clients will know, we offer a comprehensive onboarding process that takes care of these things for you. If you want to find out more about marketing automation, download our free guide here. Alternatively, if you’re already clued up on marketing automation, but are not quite sure what system is right for you, download our free comparison tool of the top six players in the market.