Before we begin, we remind you that this article is part of a series on the best practices of Inbound Marketing. In the first article, we explored the importance of data and the relevance of integrating different systems, such as a CRM and a CDP. If you haven't had the chance to read it yet, we invite you to discover it by clicking here.

This time, we will focus our attention on the work of the department of sales and marketing, we will see how to streamline processes by implementing key automations, to gain efficiency and productivity.

Automation is much more than sending emails. If you keep reading, you can see how you can automate processes, communication, data quality, customer relationships, and so on.

Automate tasks, meetings, and emails

With automation, you can work much more efficiently and focus your energy on more relevant tasks. And with automation platforms that are well integrated with other systems in your technology stack, the sky's the limit when it comes to what you can automate.

Send reminder notifications to employees, assign a contact person to a customer, create a follow-up task, create budgets, fill in data fields, send emails, etc., all automatically depending on the triggers that you configure.

Sounds really good, right? Let's take a closer look three elements of process automation that are becoming increasingly popular.

Example: A friendly reminder to the sales department

Let's go back to our example from Article 1, in which our sales representative spoke with a contact from CRM system. They had a good talk about marketing automation and the seller created an offer with information about the offer and potential revenues.

As part of our automation, we've set up a workflow that sends a reminder email or notification to the seller when the deal has been inactive for two weeks, so you don't forget to follow up on the contact.

This ensures that you never “abandon” potential customers and increases the chances of closing a sale, since it is always clear who is responsible for the follow-up and is automatically reminded.

Another type of notification may come from filling out forms, such as a “contact” form on the website. In this example, we can set up a workflow that automatically sends a notification to the sales department with the contact information and the form that the person filled out.

If the website is integrated with the CRM system, the salesperson can log in and see all that information in that contact. This provides the sales department with a golden opportunity to use this behavioral data in their Next dialogue with the contact and it can create the basis for new conversations based on specific actions and interests that we can decipher from the online behavior of the contact.

Example: Let your prospects and contacts book their meetings themselves

In the previous article we talked about The friction points, and booking meetings is a classic sticking point for all parties involved.

Most of us have experienced sending emails back and forth, checking the calendar and then having to book again because it didn't work for everyone.

The meetings, especially the first ones, are part of the customer experience and the process should be as simple as possible. When using your automated CRM or other software such as Calendly, allows the customer to book an appointment on their calendar. You can configure it so that they can only choose the times that suit you, and then the customer is free to choose when it's best for them.

This can be combined with your automatic notifications, who send you a message informing you that you have been summoned for a meeting and a reminder the day before so you can prepare. The automatic booking of meetings not only improves the customer experience, but it also prevents your employees from having to spend time and energy coordinating.

In addition, studies suggest that more and more people are feeling more comfortable booking a meeting themselves, for example, through a website, on the initial phase of a relationship, instead of picking up the phone or contacting a company directly.

Example: Automating internal and external emails

The automation of email can be used in many different ways, both in marketing as in sales. As already mentioned, this can be the automation of notifications sent internally, but also external communications.

Using workflows, you can send both marketing and sales emails to your contacts based on events and behaviors. A simple example is sending a thank you email after filling out a form. But there are also more advanced options, such as lead nurturing campaigns, people-based flows, tracking flows, etc.

If we take the example of a contact who books a meeting with a seller through the website, we can use simple automation to send a thank you email to the contact when booking a meeting.

It may contain information about when the meeting will take place, a link to teams and information with articles or relevant blog posts on the topic.

Later, the seller receives an email notification informing them of which contact booked the meeting and when it is.

In addition, we can see in the CRM system automated that the contact is an inbound consultant and has shown interest in marketing automation, so the contact will be automatically segmented as part of our marketing person through a workflow. We can use the person's information to segment contacts into specific flows.

Here, the marketing team can develop specific content for each person, so that contacts only receive emails about topics that are relevant to them (full workflow in the following image).

The entire process described above is automated and does not require any action once configured. The three elements we've covered are the use of automation and data enablement for increase employee productivity and efficiency while providing a better customer experience.

Keep your data clean and up to date with automation

The ability to enrich and personalize the customer experience depends to a large extent on the quality of the data. You need data to segment, personalize and automate experiences, and the Inaccurate data end up a great experience.

Something as simple as an email in which your name is written with a lowercase first letter and the rest in capital letters will make you see the company as unprofessional.

Automating data quality is one way to avoid these types of errors and is an area that has received more attention in recent years.

This involves a new set of workflows that, for example, format your data fields in a certain way such as: capital letters, setting the date format, updating phone numbers, etc.

This is especially important when your business starts to scale, it has more points where data enter the automated CRM system and more systems that your team works with.

Your teams depend on the fact that the information from your Automated CRM is correct and they must be able to trust that it is reliable. Automating these processes means that your teams can use the data in their CRM with confidence and not hesitate if their segmentation lists or personalization efforts are lost.

As mentioned in the first part of the series, the best automated CRM systems are those that are can integrate with other systems and software. Companies often use many different systems, especially when they start to grow.

On average, small businesses use 102 different systems/applications, medium businesses use 137, and large companies use up to 288 different systems (Blissfully 2020).

Therefore, it is important to be able to integrate and send data between different systems, to be able to keep all your updated data. By creating a bidirectional data integration, data can flow automatically from your applications to your CRM, but also in the opposite direction.

For example, you can use a system like MailChimp to send your marketing emails, but use automation HubSpot like your CRM system.

If a contact unsubscribes from all their emails in MailChimp, that information must be forwarded to your CRM automation platform so that other teams in the organization don't send them individual emails when the contact has already been excluded.

Customer support and chatbots

In the last part of this article, we'll discuss automation in relation to customer service. More and more resources are being spent on how to carry the last part of the customer experience to the automation process.

Do you remember the frequently asked questions (FAQ) that the sales department encountered in its dialogue with customers? We ended up turning them into FAQ pages so that we can track your performance in the system.

The development of a “knowledge base” it's already a good step towards a more automated self-service solution, but in reality we also have the option of creating calls “Snippets”.

A snippet is pre-written text that employees can insert into emails and chats using a hashtag.

For example, sellers are often asked about the price of their products, we can create templates or Snippets with all the relevant information, which you can insert by typing #precio.

It can be used in many different situations, such as follow-up email at meetings, discussion points, company presentation, product functionality/price and, of course, by the customer service team to answer frequently asked questions.

Los Chatbots are another option for automating some of the customer service processes and lighten your team's workload. Chatbots can be a great help when the office is closed or employees are busy.

You can create bots to help you qualify leads, schedule meetings, answer frequently asked questions, and more. In systems like HubSpot, you can develop chatbots without coding, and all the conversations are saved directly in your CRM system, so you can consult and review them later.

There are a wide range of other software products that can help you quickly create an effective chatbot that can help the customer support team in their work, for example Pipedrive, Zendesk, Facebook Messenger and others.

Let's see how, for example, AGM Abogados uses its chatbot for frequently asked questions about immigration procedures for qualify the inquiries of your potential customers:

At Novicell, we value the power of automation as a driver of efficiency and excellence in the customer experience.

We design our services with a clear approach: integrating automation to enhance and perfect your sales and marketing strategies. From managing contacts and notifications quickly to simplifying meeting scheduling, our automated CRM solution is designed to overcome your challenges and ensure that your data is always up to date. Do not hesitate to contact us to discover how we can be your strategic ally in the digital field.