As a business owner or ED at a nonprofit, you’ve got a lot on your plate. And if you run a smaller organization, I imagine you are doing a good percentage of that work that runs your business all by yourself.
Same here.
Keeping our business communications running smoothly and without daily intervention are things I no longer need to spend my limited time on, due to marketing automation. Marketing Automation may sound like a buzzword reserved for large corporations or national nonprofits: but, any size business can take advantage of this tactic.
In fact, advances in technology have made marketing automation for small businesses and nonprofits not only attainable, but a must-use marketing tactic for closing new business and re-engaging with lapsed customers.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation is, essentially, technology that does some of your marketing work for you. Centering on emails, SMS messages, and social media Direct Messages, marketing automation handles communications to customers and potential customers based on a time interval or an action taken by someone in your database.
Examples of marketing automation communications include abandoned cart emails, confirmation emails when someone signs up for a newsletter, birthday or anniversary texts, and re-engagement campaigns with lapsed and lost customers. The “triggers” used to determine when and who receives these emails are set up in your CRM (we use Brevo, but MailChimp and HubSpot offer marketing automation, too), along with the communication itself.
Automating marketing communications is something that can be set up once and optimized when necessary—but for the most part, runs behind-the-scenes while you focus on more important business tasks.
Does Marketing Automation Work?
Email is already a highly-performing tactic for small businesses and nonprofits, generating up to $42 for every $1 invested. Marketing Automation takes this a step further, leading to up to a 544% ROI and positive ROI in just the first year. Automated emails can generate 320% more revenue than their non-automated counterparts, and saves business owners nearly 12 hours/week per employee.
For small businesses, marketing automation is often most successful when onboarding new customers (i.e. “welcome” emails), for re-engaging with cart abandoners, and for encouraging repeat purchases from lapsed or lost customers. Nonprofits can address some low-hanging fruit opportunities like donor thank-yous, event reminders, and fundraising via marketing automation, which can be especially beneficial for smaller teams.
Common Automation Objections
As a renowned AI hater, I understand how the word “automation” can rub folks the wrong way. Marketing Automation doesn’t mean letting AI write your emails for you, though: it simply takes your words and delivers them to the ideal audience at the right time.
Marketing Automation is applicable for companies of all sizes, whether your email list is 100 or 10,000. Screechy Cat Media partners with Brevo, which offers automation as part of all of their pricing tiers, including free. Automation can take a little time to get set up in the beginning, but once that time has been invested, managing it can be done in as little as an hour per month, making adjustments to email content or adding/removing workflows as demand necessitates.
If you don’t feel like you have the time or technical expertise to add marketing automation to your marketing mix, let us know! We provide marketing automation strategy, setup, and optimization as part of our digital marketing services for small businesses + nonprofits.
