A Solopreneur’s Journey Into Marketing AutomationMARKETING AUTOMATION HUB 1

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That looks like math. Ew. You may be squirming already.

Let’s look at the pieces of the equation.

• Marketing’s hard. Automation’s mysterious.

• Marketing relies on psychology. Automation relies on technology.

• Marketing’s for creative peeps. Automation’s for digital dweebs.

The sum, of course, is marketing automation. It sounds complicated, maybe a bit messy, and without a doubt, time-consuming.

If you, like me, and millions more, are an over-taxed, spread-too-thin, and forever-stressed soloprenuer, you’d think marketing automation is something you should simply leave alone?

MARKETING AUTOMATION

MARKETING AUTOMATION

+

=

But you’d be wrong.

Like everything worthwhile, marketing automation does indeed require learning, but then wonderful things happen…

Many of the tasks you do to market your products and services become easier, cleaner, and less time-consuming. They also become more effective, meaning it takes you less effort to get more business and grow your revenues.

Yes, my friend and fellow sufferer of “too-much-to-do-and-too-little-time-to-do-it” syndrome, this story has a happy ending.

I’m going to make you glad you read it.

Barry Feldman

Marketing + Automation = Marketing Automation

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I didn’t do marketing automation. The truth is

marketing automation, as we now know it (even

if you don’t), came along relatively recently.

If I’m to backup to the beginning of my journey

into digital marketing, there was a decade or so

where I didn’t even do email marketing.

During that span, I suppose I thought of myself

as a digital marketer. I had a website. It had a

contact page with a form on it so visitors could

write to me from there. That’s about it.

Ironically, as a freelance copywriter, I was writing

a fair share of email for clients. For one gig, I

wrote a detailed article for an enewsletter about

email marketing, a “how-to.” The irony thickens

because I still wasn’t doing any email marketing

myself. Do as I say, not as I do, right?

It wasn’t actually until this decade, 2011 to be

exact, when I put together a WordPress website

and began blogging. It’s fair to say at that point,

I became a content marketer, a rookie content

marketer.

Then, or soon after, though I’m not sure exactly

when, I started with email marketing. I dabbled.

I found it to be a time-suck. And considering the

fact that I didn’t have much of an email list (and

no strategy for growing it) my efforts didn’t have

much of an impact on my business.

I can’t even remember which company I chose

as my first email marketing provider (ESP), but

I do recall being very unsatisfied with the way

my newsletters looked. I switched providers

and began sending a newsletter I called “Get

Magnetic.”

My second email service provider offered templates that made it easier for me to create good-looking enewsletters

Once upon a time…

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Five years ago when I was schooling

myself about the possibilities of digital

marketing and fumbling through some of

the processes, I heard about HubSpot and

bought the book authored by their founders,

Inbound Marketing.

I learned a ton from the book about

how the various pieces of the inbound

marketing puzzle fit together, such as:

• Your website, which becomes your

online hub

• Your blog, which houses your content

• SEO, which can potentially attract

prospects with intent to buy

• Social media, which can increase

your reach, drive traffic and foster

relationships

• Calls to action, which inspire readers

to respond

• Landing pages, which feature forms to

capture leads

• Email, which nurtures leads and

fosters loyalty

• Segmentation, which enables you to

deliver more relevant content to your

subscribers

• Analytics, which reports what is and

isn’t working

• Lead scoring, management, and

customer relationship management

(CRM), which help you follow-up with

leads more effectively

I learned what marketing automation is

and what it’s for:

• Marketing automation is software (as a

service) designed to help you prioritize

and execute marketing tasks more

efficiently.

• Marketing automation helps drive

traffic, convert the traffic into leads,

and leads into customers.

• Marketing automation frees some of

your time, but doesn’t compromise

the authenticity of your content you’re

producing.

• Marketing automation helps you reach

your goals faster.

The book, Inbound Marketing, schooled me on the current state of digital marketing and inspired my

interest in marketing automation.

Then came a serious catalyst

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I wanted it all. All those features. All those

benefits.

The problem was, I didn’t want to part with

the money it would take to run a serious

marketing automation platform. HubSpot

and many of its competitors offer a tiered

pricing structure that increases as your email

list grows.

Buying into some of the marketing

automation platforms also requires a

paid onboarding process, which is time-

consuming and expensive. It also requires a

minimum commitment of one year.

As a digital marketing consultant, I’ve

recommended HubSpot to a number of

clients and worked with them after they

bought it. I must say, I like the platform. It

can be the engine of very effective inbound

marketing programs.

But you must understand, a marketing

automation platform doesn’t magically

create customers. You don’t push the

automation button and watch money pour

into your receivables account. You have to

do the work.

If you do the work, and understand much of

the work calls for investing a serious amount

of time in creating content, you can enjoy

some delightful benefits:

• Improve traffic

• Increase the number of leads you get 

• Improve lead quality

• Accelerate your sales cycle 

• Lower marketing costs

I believe the number of companies that fail

with marketing automation exceeds the

number that succeed. Most companies are

simply not as commited, systematic, and

patient as they need to be.

In 2011, I wasn’t quite ready for making the

commitment. So I compromised.

I moved to a lower stakes table (three times)

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Determined to keep my costs low, I shopped

the marketing automation market and chose

a platform called Optify. The software wasn’t

as robust as HubSpot or the marketing

automation platforms (MAPs) competing

in the enterprise space, but in addition to

email, it gave me tools to create and host

landing pages, capture leads, and analyze

user activity.

I was off to a decent start in marketing

automation. I was content. But not for long.

Optify announced it was shutting down. At

the time many of the companies in the MAP

business were operating in the red. Optify

didn’t have the resources to endure.

The shutdown of the company was abrupt.

Emails from them warned customers to

extract the digital assets they could and

move on. All services and hosted pages

would soon cease to exist.

I did as I was told and made a quick (and

poor) decision to go with another platform

that would allow me to practice marketing

automation on the cheap. I found the

solution clunky and difficult. The support

was also very sketchy.

I moved yet again to an automation

company I believed to be an up-and-comer.

I even managed to reduce my bill to $0

because I struck a deal to work in trade. That

is, in exchange for having a gratis account, I

would provide the company writing services.

My opinion of the company’s platform are

mixed. While it has many strengths its email

functionality is limited. I moved on yet again,

this time stepping up to a more expensive

platform with a strong reputation for

integration.

It’s powerful, but far too complex for my

taste. So… I’ve moved on yet again. As the

title of this eBook suggests, it’s a journey.

Worth noting…

GetResponse hired me to write this

eBook. I’ve begun checking out their

new solution. I’ve read some of their

materials. Watched some video. And

I was given a demonstration. I like

what I see. The platform looks ideal

for solopreneurs.

My marketing automation at work

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I’ll tell you where I’m at now and what I’m

doing with marketing automation and how

it’s helping me accomplish my objectives.

LEAD CAPTURE

• Popup forms—I’ve created multiple

forms that popup for new visitors and

experimented with different offers and

triggers such as: upon arrival, invoked

by scroll depths, and exit intent. The

results have been good.

• Embedded forms—It’s simple to create

forms to capture email addresses

from those that want to subscribe to

my general email list. I use one in the

sidebar of many of my web pages and

another at the bottom of many blog

posts.

• Call-to-action popups—While this is a

trickier operation, I have managed to

put in place click-triggered popups to

offer content upgrades (cheatsheets,

etc.) from within specific blog posts.

LANDING PAGES

• Lead capture—I have created multiple

landing pages for the purpose of

most MAPs, though integration with

transactions systems are generally

available.

• Hosted media—To facilitate access to

eBooks, content upgrades and video,

I sometimes opt to use the content

hosting services provided by my MAP.

This makes it fast and easy to fulfill

requests for gated content instantly.

EMAIL

• Welcome series—Lead nurturing is

probably the most important function

of marketing automation. To introduce

new subscribers to my services, I’ve

created a 13-part welcome series,

which mostly focuses on free content

and tools I offer. The emails are

programmed to “drip” out over the

course of 45 days. This is a strategy

all email marketers should employ

because it generally requires multiple

touchpoints to earn a client, so the one-

time delivery of a thank you email or

offer email is insufficient.

• Newsletters—I don’t create

newsletters or digest style emails as

often as I once did. Only occasionally.

Though some subscribers value them,

I find them less effective than emails

offering downloadable content (lead

magnets),

• Thank you pages—New subscribers to

my lead capture pages (and checkout

pages) are automatically and instantly

served relevant thank you pages. In

some cases, I’ve embedded video of

me in an effort to create a stronger

connection.

PRODUCTS

• Product pages—One my reasons

for upgrading my MAP was to sell

information products. It’s still early

for me on this front, but I’ve created

some of these and found it easy to

update them as needed. I’ve also

created product pages to offer and sell

consulting packages and have achieved

decent results.

• Coupons—I’ve been able to create

coupon codes which can be applied to

specific products, offered to specific

buyers, and honored for specific time

frames.

• Checkout pages—My platform

enables me to accept orders, manage

transactions and issue receipts. This

type of functionality is not offered by

focused on a singular objective.

Newsletters generally offer multiple

links to multiple resources. At best,

they generate traffic and help establish

expertise. At worst, they confuse and/

or annoy recipients.

• Content updates—I wish I could

tell you my MAP makes it easy and

automatic to send updates when I

publish a new blog post or podcast.

This function is made possible by

many ESPs and MAPs (including

GetResponse) with an RSS-to-email

feed. Unfortunately, I must manually

create emails of this nature, though I

have created a template to facilitate the

process.

• Special offers—As I introduce

information products or discount

them to create traction, I use email to

deliver special offers with deadlines.

Urgency and “fear of missing out” is a

psychological play for marketers, which

can produce rewarding results.

• Segmentation—To use marketing

automation to its potential calls

for segmenting your audience,

meaning you don’t send everything to

everybody. You target per preferences,

timing, personas, or specific user

behavior. Segmentation is achieved by

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assigning specific tags to subscribers

(e.g. “attended copywriting webinar”).

I’m working on this and making some

progress. Yes, there’s a learning curve.

• Sequences—A vital component of

marketing automation, which separates

it from basic ESP functionality, is the

ability to create custom sequences.

These generally involve creating

rules that dictate a specific stream

of email correspondence. I’m now

experimenting with several sequences

and tweaking this and that.

• Personalization—I’m less bullish on

personalizing emails than some digital

experts, however, I occasionally use

my system to address the recipient by

first name. In the future, I may create

more interesting personalization

strategies including birthday emails,

sales followups such as requests

for feedback, the use of PURLs, and

possibly other programmatic one-to-

one correspondence. My platform

tracks individual behaviors and

purchases, giving me the potential

to do research, deliver support

when necessary, and segment and

personalize in a variety of ways.

AND MORE…

• Webinars—I recently began using

a webinar platform which offers an

integration of sorts with my MAP.

That is, the landing page that collects

registrants passes data through to

my platform. Conducting webinars

has enabled me to connect with

many of my subscribers and begin

selling “productized” variations of my

consulting services.

• Analytics—I don’t love the way

analytics are presented with my MAP,

however, a fair amount of data is

captured. I generally keep tabs on:

email open and clickthrough rates,

subscriber growth, and landing page

conversion.

• Lead scoring—I’ve setup a basic lead

scoring system, but haven’t yet applied

it in the ways I should. I plan to learn

more about how to do this and use it to

better segment my list, and possibly, do

some list cleansing (via re-engagment

notices and automatic opt-outs). The

idea is to pare your list down to cater to

active subscribers.

Marketing automation is “iffy”

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I suspect a lot of small business marketers

can’t clearly separate email marketing from

marketing automation. Not surprising. The

truth is, marketing automation is rooted in

email marketing and the bulk of marketing

automation is email marketing.

In my mind, the biggest difference is

marketing automation, when used

effectively, is based on user behavior. The

platform you purchase, then configure to

meet your needs, becomes “triggered.”

In more simple terms, the tiny word “if”

becomes the big deal.

So I’m calling marketing automation “iffy.”

With marketing automation, you setup your

system to things if and when subscribers do

things (or don’t). For example:

• If X is read, send Y.

• If X is visited, send Y.

• If X is purchased, send Y.

• If X is ignored, send Y.

The response, the Y, in each of these cases

are vastly different and therefore produce

far more relevant, right-timed messaging.

Email marketing alone generally doesn’t

track a prospect’s actions after clicking

through to your webste. Subsequent

communications are not tailored to each

prospect. If your goal is to nurture leads by

moving prospects along in their journey,

marketing automation is the engine that

drives the process.

Essentially, marketing automation can

transform subscriber data into a powerful

advantage.

Let’s simplify your journey

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So marketing automation sounds like a

good idea, right? No doubt, it’s exciting and

frightening at the same time.

Take a deep breath. You don’t need to go

from zero to sixty in seconds. You can take

it one step at time. Simply automating

one process can have a significant impact

on your business. The secret is to identify

processes you’re missing or doing manually

and replace them with automation.

I’m going to present a guide to starting

smart. The following trio should be easy to

accomplish:

Create an email capture form or landing page.

You can offer visitors a simple opt-

in to your email. It may or may not

work. You’ll be more successful by

creating a lead magnet of some

sort (eBook, cheat sheet, customer

success story, video, etc.) and gating

it with a form on a landing page.

Respond with a thank you email

Write an email to thank new

subscribers for signing-up. Conceive

ways to add value to the emails. You

might offer additional content or a

discount. Also, tell subscribers what

to expect from subsequent emails.

Nurture your leads

Write an email sequence, 3-10

emails, to be “dripped” over a

period of 4-6 weeks. Send helpful

information to build trust. Consider

“soft sell” offers.

After you have these processes in place,

subsequent steps to consider might

include:

Sales cycle emails

• Begin with order confirmations.

• You might create an onboarding series.

• Try upsell and cross-sell offers to

increase lifetime customer value.

• If your product is subscription-based,

use renew or replenish offers.

• Send abandoned cart messages to

increase conversion rates.

Increase segmentation or personalization

• Setup a tagging system based on user

actions.

• Target specific personas with specific

content and offers.

• Collect birthdates and send birthday

wishes. You can also schedule emails

to coincide with anniversaries (such as

one year of being a customer).

Additional considerations

• Begin split-testing email subject lines

and/or A/B versions of landing pages or

offers.

• Promote events with invitations,

reminders, last chance invitations and

follow-ups.

• Explore the possibilities of workflow

automations.

• Use reactivation messages to reach out

to inactive subscribers.

• Put a lead scoring system in place.

• Analyze your metrics. Replicate big

winners. Improve mediocre programs.

Kill the stinkers.

1

2

3

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Marketing automation may appear to be

a fit only for companies with marketing

departments. Not so. In fact, it may

be your ticket to greater productivity

and profitiablity because you don’t

have a marketing department—or any

departments.

You have you. Your talent. Your tools.

The marketing automation toolset that

fits your needs will enable you to capture

leads, nurture them with useful content

and convert into paying customers.

It’s time to automate

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Barry Feldman is the author of SEO Simplified for Short Attention Spans. Barry operates Feldman Creative and provides content marketing consulting, copywriting, and creative direction services. He contributes to many of the web’s top marketing sites and was named one of 25 Social Media Marketing Experts You Need to Know by LinkedIn. If you would like a piece of his mind, visit his blog, The Point.

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