Used by many companies, workflows are at the heart of marketing automation and lead nurturing strategies. They are the ideal tool to allow Marketing & Sales teams to free up time while optimizing prospecting work.
You do not know where to start ? We give you all the secrets to create effective workflows !
What is a workflow
A workflow is a solution that allows you to plan and automate marketing actions such as sending a newsletter. These actions are triggered automatically from an element called “trigger”.
The objective of workflows is to enable Sales & Marketing teams to save time in managing their daily tasks through automation. For instance, workflows allow you to send a welcome email as soon as a registration form submission is registered.
Before you start configuring your workflows, you must have defined 3 key elements:
- Your target: the customer segment you want to address via this workflow
- The objective: the one you want to reach thanks to this workflow
- The journey: broken down into steps
How to create your workflows
Workflows are made up of 3 elements :
- A trigger
- Conditions
- An action
1 The trigger
This is the event that will trigger the action. It is generally an action performed by your prospects or customers, but it can also be data such as a date.
For example, the trigger can be the scheduling of a new appointment or a birthday.
2 Conditions
These are the conditions that make your workflows intelligent. They allow you to create branches to your workflows based on predefined filters. These branches allow you to send content that will be most relevant to your target based on their profile.
3 Action
Actions are the steps your prospects and customers will go through once they enter your workflows. They constitute the key stages of your scenarios. Actions can take many forms, such as sending an email or SMS or adding a note to the customer file.
3 examples of workflows to set up for your marketing automation strategy
1 The welcome workflow
Easy to set up, the welcome workflow is triggered when a visitor to your website has filled out a contact request form, subscription to the newsletter, etc. He automatically sends an email. The email sent is the first contact with your visitor, so it is very important in your conversion process.
Why set up a welcome workflow :
- Make initial contact with your potential customers
- Check the validity of the information provided in the form
- Present all of your offers and services
- Share your online booking link to get more appointments
2 The workflow linked to an event
Created to facilitate the work of Sales & Marketing teams when creating an event such as a webinar, a workshop, a trade show but also private sales or any other event specific to your activity, this workflow promotes your event by inviting your contacts to register.
The advantages of event-related workflows :
- Invite your existing contacts to register for the event
- Enrich the customer database with new contacts
- Automate the sending of reminders
Agendize also allows you to create workflows based on the birthday of your customers to send them promotional offers.
3 The follow-up workflow
The follow-up or reactivation workflow makes it possible to deal with the batch of inactive contacts by communicating to them various contents corresponding to their profile. The trigger is often the time since your contacts last interacted with one of your content. If at the end of the workflow no new interaction has been recorded then the contact will be deleted.
Reminder workflows are also used following the abandonment of a basket. In this case, an email is sent to the customer to remind him that he has a pending basket. A promotional offer can be attached as well as a link to make an appointment to respond to the obstacles encountered during the purchase.
Why create a follow-up workflow :
- Assign grades to inactive contacts using lead scoring
- Transform inactive contacts into loyal customers
- Understand and respond to customer irritants
- Propose a telephone, video or physical appointment to answer any questions
4 tips for creating effective workflows
Defining a specific objective
As with all strategies, it is essential to define the objective sought when creating a workflow. To do this, ask yourself what you want to achieve. It can be downloading content, subscribing to a mailing list, booking appointments, setting up a lead nurturing… The SMART methodology can help you define your objectives.
The objective allows you to define the trigger but also the different stages of your journey in order to avoid conflicts between workflows or infinite loops from which your contacts cannot escape. For example, it is useless to register a prospect who has just made an appointment to a workflow for which this is the objective. To avoid this type of pitfall, it is necessary to add conditions: if/else.
Build different scenarios
Not all of your contacts and customers are alike. This is why it is essential to categorize them by list according to relevant criteria for your activity: gender, geographical location, maturity of the lead, average amount of expenses... These criteria are essential in order to allow you to send communications relevant to your customers. Otherwise, you risk losing credibility and seeing your contacts unsubscribe from all of your communications.
If you haven't already, creating behavior-based contact lists is a surefire way to effectively target your audience and get them into the right workflows.
Testing Workflows
Creating workflows can quickly become a headache with so many branches. To do well, begin to materialize the latter in writing so as not to miss any essential steps for the smooth running of the latter. Remember to test them before putting them online to detect any potential errors.
Update workflows
Check the statistics of your workflows a few weeks after activating them. The data are objective and reliable values allowing you to improve your strategies. If you get:
- Too low click-through rate: modify the content and improve your CTAs
- Too low open rate: check the deliverability of your emails and modify your subject line
- High unsubscribe rate: review the sending frequency
You now have all the necessary elements to create effective workflows and thus develop your marketing automation.
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