What exactly is marketing automation, and how important is it?

According to invespcro, companies using marketing automation are reporting 80% more leads and 77% better conversion rates.  That’s impressive all-day-long in my book. But honestly, if you have a good automated strategy, you’ll produce more leads because you’ll be more consistent with your follow up, that’s common sense. So instead of discussing the obvious, let’s talk about a new technology that takes marketing automation to a whole new level, programmatic marketing.

What is programmatic marketing?

By definition, programmatic marketing is a pre-configured marketing strategy ready to be triggered by an action. Sounds boring right? It’s similar to marketing automation, but instead of working with known leads, it uses new technology to discover “unknown leads.”  It finds consumers that have shown interest in your products and services, or similar products and services. And when I say, “have shown interest,” I mean they are either shopping at your competitor’s brick and mortar stores, or they’ve visited your website anonymously. Neither audience has taken the next step in contacting you, but both are interested in what you have to offer (even if they don’t know it yet). These “unknown leads” are very strong candidates to receive marketing messages, so let’s make it happen. But first, let’s start with how we discover this hidden audience.

How do you get info about my competitor’s shoppers?

Great question, and the answer is right in front of you. Of course I’m making the assumption you’re one of the 96% of people in the US that owns a cell phone (statistic based on study from Pew Research Center). And thanks to the socialization of mobile devices, consumers abandon security to allow friends and family to know where they are with location services and GPS tracking turned on. DirectMail.io’s technology locates these shoppers and cross references it with our extensive database and voilà!  For every 100 people that visit your competitor, we are able to pull data on about 30. And we’re not talking within a 3 mile radius of your competitor, we’re tracking down to a 3ft square zone. Pretty powerful stuff. Imagine what you could do with that data?  Guess what, we did, and it’s marketing automation on steroids.  But we’ll get to that later, we’re still talking about data because we target more than your competitor’s customers, we also collect data on your anonymous website visitors.

Why track anonymous website visitors?

According to Wordstream, the average website conversion rate is 2.35%. That means that over 97% of website visitors don’t convert. For every 100 people that typed in your url, or clicked on your ad, less than 3 gave you information. That seems like there is a lot of missed opportunity.  But what if you could grab the information from that 97% and send them marketing? Not just any marketing, but something personal with their name or even about the product they looked at specifically? Enter the PiXL, the smartest way to track anonymous visitors to your site. Not only do we track, we use filters and extensive data sets to uncover the hottest prospects. We simply set up a proprietary code on your site that ties into our PiXL technology. That data feeds into the DirectMail.io platform and marketing automation starts.

Is the DirectMail.io PiXL better than cookie or IP address tracking?

On the surface, all three have a similar goals to know who is on your website, but clearly one stands out to provide a better tracking solution for your clients. With that in mind, we can break down the three strategies to show why PiXL is the obvious choice when trying to remarket to anonymous website visitors.

Probably the coolest benefit to the PiXL is the ability to customize the data that is collected. Within the system, you can suppress visitors who have already purchased, or filter down visitors to focus on those that best fit your customer profile. True traffic can be hard to determine in today’s world, but with PiXL you have the ability to select an unlimited amount of filters. This allows you to create an audience of anonymous visitors that have a certain income, geographic location, or any search criteria you want. Essentially this is really good targeted data, but without a strategy or marketing plan, this data means little. It’s like that ice cold beer that sits in your fridge waiting for you to drink it. Just sitting until you take action. That’s why the DirectMail.io Programmatic Marketing program is the ultimate in marketing automation, because we’ve already put together the strategy for you.

Marketing automation on steroids.

Now that we have some really great data, the key is to act quickly. The old saying, “strike while the iron is hot” is never more true than when it comes to marketing leads. It’s important to deliver marketing while your product or service is top-of-mind to the consumer, that’s why as soon as the data is received, the marketing is initiated. Facebook and Instagram ads appear immediately, emails are launched within 24 hours and a personalized direct mail offer will be in the consumer’s mailbox within 72 hours. We quickly reach this valuable audience using an omnichannel marketing approach.

Omnichannel marketing is basically the same thing as a multi-channel marketing campaign, except all of the channels are synced together, making the consumer shopping experience seamless. Although this turn-key strategy is initiated with direct mail, email, Facebook, and Instagram, it can also include several other channels cohesively. Each channel is tied into one of seven different response channels including SMS and Voice. Our Voice technology is a very fun toy that captivates consumers because it allows consumers to respond using Amazon Alexa or Google Home. The different response channels allow the target audience to respond using the channel they are most comfortable with. This gives you great insight on the best way to follow up.

Another response channel included in this turn-key program is a custom landing page. What is powerful about landing pages and the use of personalized URLs (PURLs) is that it brings the consumer into a focus lead tunnel that can ask them simple survey questions, allowing you to gather important insight. The other exciting part is our viral social share feature. This one-click option allows consumers to endorse your offer to their friends and family via their favorite social network and email. We often use an additional incentive, like a contest, to motivate them to share. We’ve seen campaign response triple in size when a good offer is on the table.

Marketing automation that benefits consumers.

Every technology has been built to create convenience for one person or another. From a marketer’s perspective, it’s very exciting to think we can market to these “hidden” individuals with no effort. Because honestly, once it’s set up, you just sit back and let it roll.  But if you think about this from a consumer’s point of view, they were visiting your website or buying your exact product from somewhere else. Obviously they have an interest, and you’re providing them with extra motivation, savings, or something else to compel them to try your product. It’s not like you’re convincing them to buy a treadmill that will eventually be a place to hang clothes. You’re identifying them as someone that has an interest in your product.

To learn more go to our Programmatic Marketing product page…but if you’re ready to see a demo, click here.