The 8-Step Guide to Create the Perfect Marketing Automation Workflow

Ever find yourself caught in the never-ending "bureaucracy" of marketing processes? Leads slip through the cracks, conversions falter, and you're left feeling defeated.

Grab your coffee because we’re about to transform your marketing chaos into systemized success with marketing automation workflows. These tools save time, boost efficiency, attract more leads, and drive sales — all without the soul-sucking manual tasks.

But how? Dive into this 8-step marketing automation workflow guide that will lay down the foundation for success, complete with five workflow examples to get you started.   

Are marketing automation workflows important? 

According to Marketo, 80% of marketers consider marketing automation to be the top contributor to their success. Marketing automation workflows free you from those tedious, redundant, low-value tasks so you can focus on what truly matters for your business.

Investing in marketing automation is a smart decision for any company, with many businesses seeing a whopping 451% increase in leads after implementation. 

Here’s why businesses should use marketing workflows: 

• Productivity: Save time and resources by automating repetitive tasks.
• Reminders: Never miss a thing with timely reminders and notifications.
• Scalability: Manage large volumes of tasks, business processes, leads, and customers efficiently.
• Improved ROI: Get your investment back through higher conversions, reduced sales cycles, and improved retention. 
• Alignment: Improve collaboration, bring teams together, and reduce mismanagement.

Source: EngageBay

How to create a stunning marketing automation workflow in 8 easy steps

This 8-step guide will help you through the process of creating an effective and powerful marketing automation workflow. You’ll need to familiarize yourself with triggers, actions, and time controls to help build your workflow. 

Triggers are events that start an automation sequence. Think of it as the "starting pistol" that goes off at the beginning of a race. Website visits, purchases, interactions, and specific dates and times are all examples of triggers.

Actions can be tasks that occur as a result of a trigger. Simply put, it’s what the workflow does when a trigger is triggered. Examples of actions include assigning tasks, updating records, scoring, sending emails, or launching a new automation. 

Time controls let you control and schedule actions in a workflow, ensuring that actions happen at the right time. Delays, time windows, frequency, and date-based scheduling are all examples of time controls. 

Let’s illustrate how these components work with the help of a welcome email workflow.

• Trigger: A user signs up for a newsletter. 
• Action: Send a welcome email immediately.
• Time control: Wait for two days.
• Action: Send a follow-up email with an attractive offer.

1. Define the end goal of your marketing workflow

Defining the end goal offers clarity and focus, providing a clear direction for the entire workflow and helping you achieve the objective efficiently. 

Before creating a marketing workflow, you must first understand the end goal and scope. Ask yourself:

• Why do you need a marketing workflow? 
• What are you hoping to achieve? 
• What key performance indicators (KPIs) do you need to measure? 
• What’s the budget? 
• Who needs to collaborate with whom?

For example, if your business wants to create a marketing automation workflow to attract more paid customers through downloadable content, the goal could be to convert 20% of downloaders into paid customers through a targeted lead-nurturing email sequence with personalized content. 

2. Set objectives to help you achieve your goal

While setting clear objectives can bring clarity and focus, how do you define objectives that properly align with your goals?

The best way to set clear objectives is to identify your target audience. This is especially true for workflows that involve lead generation, customer acquisition and retention, upselling and cross-selling, and cart abandonment. Understand your ideal customer profile (ICP), their preferences, and the channels they use to interact with your brand.

Here’s how you set objectives:

• Define roles and responsibilities: Ensures everyone knows their role, resulting in easier accountability.
• Set milestones: Track progress and important KPIs, making it easier to adjust your workflows to achieve the end goal. 
• Provide a road map: Objectives act as a roadmap, guiding you and the team toward the end goal without deviation. 
• Assign tasks and deadlines: Define crystal-clear, specific tasks for team members based on requirements and expertise. Monitor progress through KPIs. 

3. Identify key customer touchpoints

Customer touchpoints are any interactions customers have with your brand, such as websites, advertisements, emails, blogs, social media, review platforms like G2, and more. 

Map out all key customer touchpoints and interactions from the awareness stage to post-purchase support. This helps you understand the overall customer journey and identify key trigger points for your automation workflows, allowing you to engage with customers at various stages.

4. Sketch the logical flow

Before implementing the software workflow, sketch the main logical flow on paper. This prototype workflow can help you quickly identify any necessary adjustments.

Steps to sketch the logical flow: 

• Identify key stages of your marketing automation: Outline the main stages of the process, like lead nurturing, conversion, retention, and others. 
• Define triggers: Identify all the key trigger events and incorporate them in your sketch. 
• Utilize conditional logic: Apply conditional logic based on scenarios and triggers, and map out the different paths your logic may take based on the customer journey and triggers. 
• Review, tweak, and review again: As you proceed, review the prototype workflow to identify issues, gaps, and areas for improvement. Make adjustments so your workflow aligns with your objectives. 

5. Use a marketing automation software

Marketing automation software is the core tool for building workflows. It lets you capture, nurture, and score leads, manage contact lists, ensure consistent messaging across multiple channels, and, above all, automate critical marketing processes. 

With hundreds of automation software for various industries, budgets, and team requirements, choosing the right one can sometimes be challenging. 

Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you select the right one: 

1. Cost: The most important and often limiting factor when choosing a suitable platform is the pricing. Most software operates on a sliding scale model (pricing based on the number of contacts) with different tiers for different feature sets.
2. Scalability: As your business grows, you’ll need to manage more contacts and require more features. Choose software that can grow with you.
3. User interface: An overwhelming user interface can diminish productivity and make it difficult for you and your team to learn the ropes. Opt for software with an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. 
4. Features: List essential features your company needs before hunting for a suitable platform.
5. Integrations: Can it integrate with the current platforms and technologies? The software you choose should be able to integrate natively with your current assets, as this can connect and move data seamlessly.
6. Customer support: To familiarize yourself with the platform, you’ll need all the help you can get. What types of support does it offer? How quick is the response time? Does it offer onboarding and migration support? 
7. User reviews: Learn how others use the software and the issues they may face. This can give you an inside peek that can’t be found by skimming through the official pages. Go through case studies, testimonial videos, and review platforms. 

By integrating with your CRM system, these workflows can provide valuable insights into customer interactions and behaviors, enhancing your marketing strategies.

6. Craft compelling content, visuals, and creatives

Once the workflow is set up, it's time to create the actual assets. Compelling content can attract your target audience, boost engagement, and lead to conversions. 

Always segment your audience into various lists based on demographics, behavior patterns, purchase history, and other factors, and score them. This helps personalize and tailor your content to individual preferences. 

Use visuals to enhance your narrative and capture attention quickly. Visuals can include images, infographics, videos, and GIFs. More importantly, ensure your content and creatives align with your brand identity. Consistency is key here as it engages your audience, fosters brand equity, and improves conversions. 

For example, if you are creating content for an email campaign, do the following:

• Segment your audience
• Write personalized and tailored content for each segment
• Employ attention-grabbing visuals
• Include a call-to-action
• A/B test your emails

7. Measure your success (or failure)

Now that your marketing automation workflow is live, it’s important to keep track of KPIs and tweak your campaigns to make the most out of them. Your marketing automation software does the heavy lifting for you by analyzing KPIs. 

Here are essential KPIs to keep track of: 

• ROI
• Open rates
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Inbox hit rate
• Social media engagement
• Bounce rate
• Lead scoring
• Lead conversion rate

Most automation software offers dashboards and reports with qualitative and quantitative data from your campaigns. See what’s working and what’s not, and make the necessary adjustments. Continuously split-test your workflows and campaigns to achieve better results after each iteration.

8. Review and optimize

This is the last, albeit crucial, step to creating the perfect workflow. 

After you get all your metrics, analyze them, review, and optimize your workflows – the cycle goes on. This is where your clearly defined goals and objectives come into play. After analyzing your metrics, compare them with your goals to see if you've hit your targets.

If not, optimize, measure, repeat. 

5 easy-to-use marketing automation workflow examples

While there are automation workflows for almost every marketing process, here are five of the most important and frequently used workflows.

1. Welcome email workflow

The welcome email workflow contains a series of emails that introduce the new user to your brand. This makes it one of the most important touchpoints in the entire customer journey. 

It’s your opportunity to say "Hi there" and start building a relationship. Here’s a sample welcome email automation workflow: 

Source: EngageBay

This is what a typical welcome email workflow looks like: 

• Trigger: A new user signs up.
• Email 1: Thank them for signing up.
• Email 2: Share more information about the brand and include testimonials to build connections and foster loyalty.
• Email 3: Optionally, send an email to update user preferences.

2. Lead magnet workflow

A lead magnet is a free marketing asset offered to customers in exchange for their contact information. A lead magnet workflow helps you engage with leads and build trust over time, enhancing conversions.

Here is a sample of lead magnet automation workflow: 

Source: EngageBay

This is what a typical lead magnet workflow looks like: 

• Trigger: The user fills out a submission form with an email to receive the lead magnet.
• Email 1: Send a thank-you email expressing gratitude and reinforcing a positive brand image.

3. Re-engagement workflow

A re-engagement email series aims to renew relationships with customers who have stopped engaging with your brand.

As time passes, people will inadvertently slow down engagement and turn into cold leads. This can negatively affect the sender's reputation and lower open rates. This workflow can revitalize your bond with them through a refreshed campaign. 

Here is a simple re-engagement automation workflow: 

Source: EngageBay

A typical re-engagement automation workflow goes as follows: 

• Trigger: Customer is inactive/has not engaged for a while.
• Email 1: Send a "We miss you" email to re-establish contact.
• Email 2: If there’s no response, send a series of fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) emails with increasing discounts or exclusive promotions.
• Email 3: If there is still no response, send a goodbye email and remove the person from the email list.

 4. Abandoned cart workflow

Sometimes, people add items to their carts but leave without completing the purchase. An abandoned shopping cart automation sequence can nudge these users to finish the transaction.

Here’s a sample cart abandonment automation workflow: 

Source: EngageBay

This is how a typical cart abandonment workflow plays out: 

• Trigger: User abandons cart.
• Email 1: Send a reminder email encouraging the customer to complete the purchase.
• Email 2: Send further incentive emails to persuade the customer to complete the purchase.
• Email 3: If the order remains incomplete, send a feedback request email to understand why the purchase was not made.
• Email 4: If the order is completed, exit the workflow and move to an upsell/cross-sell workflow for additional engagement.

5. Lead scoring workflow

A lead scoring workflow assigns a ‘score’ to each customer action. This workflow qualifies your leads for other campaigns, including lead nurturing.

Here is a sample of a lead scoring workflow: 

Source: EngageBay

Lead scoring is typically done in this fashion: 

• Trigger: User engages in actions.
• Positive Actions: When a user engages in positive actions (e.g., visits a sales page or opens a welcome email), they earn a positive score.
• Negative Actions: When a user engages in negative actions (e.g., unsubscribes from an email or abandons a cart), they earn a negative score.
• Score Weight: The weight of the score depends on the significance of the actions. 

Best practices to polish your marketing automation workflows

Marketing automation workflows are the hidden gems that convert hard work into smart work. Here are a few best practices that’ll further polish your automation workflows:

• Don’t automate blindly; automate tasks that are the most time-consuming and labor-inducing. 
• Take into account the running costs of marketing automation software. Many software might offer low base prices but have additional hidden costs. 
• Provide proper training and support for your team when introducing new software.
• Keep it simple. Complex automation can get out of hand, especially when dealing with a lot of data. 
• Keep your team members and stakeholders in the loop about workflow changes.
• Align your marketing and sales teams to improve communication and lead handoffs.

By thoughtfully embracing and implementing these best practices, you can transform your marketing workflows into successful powerhouses. 

Wrapping up

Automating repetitive and mundane marketing tasks can save time, enhance productivity, improve conversions, and boost ROI. 

With enhanced data analytics and predictive modeling, marketing automation workflow can empower marketers to make more informed decisions, targeting the right audience with the right message at the right time. The importance of embracing marketing automation workflows for your business cannot be understated. 

Transform your marketing efforts today for a more productive and successful tomorrow.

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Edited by Monishka Agrawal