How to Enhance and Accelerate the B2B Journey with Marketing Automation

For professional services firms, competing on the depth of their expertise, client understanding, and relationships is a non-negotiable. Yet delivering a white-glove level of service to a growing roster of clients quickly becomes untenable even for the best resourced client teams.

It's a painful paradox. Growing your client base is vital. But it makes it harder to give each client the consistent, tailored communications they expect from a trusted advisor. 

It can leave you feeling as though you’re caught between two bad options. Either sacrifice service quality by stretching existing resources too thin, or artificially restrict business expansion goals to match current capabilities.

This growth challenge leaves professional services firms seeking an effective solution. It needs to deliver premium client experiences while remaining affordable. Most importantly, it should prevent their best talent from getting bogged down responding to routine queries and free them to proactively nurture high-value connections instead.

For many organisations, the answer is marketing automation. 

Building Trust and Relationships Through Automation

While some businesses worry that automation will dehumanise their interactions with clients, it can have the opposite effect. When used properly, an marketing automation tool doesn't replace human relationships — it augments them. 

To close deals, professional service firms have to ensure that prospective clients deeply trust their intelligence, integrity, and reliability. That confidence won't grow on its own. It has to be  nurtured with repeated positive engagements over an extended period.

By continually engaging clients with valuable perspectives that answer your clients’ spoken and unspoken questions, you can say “we deeply understand your challenges” without a salesy foot-in-the-door pitch.

The Importance of Purchase Journeys

Part of establishing trust is done by providing customers with a purchase journey that matches their expectations and behaviours. 

A B2B buyer's journey is typically non-linear. Customers tend to shift back and forth between different stages, exploring their options and evaluating solutions, before coming to a consensus with stakeholders and selecting a provider. 

Much of the modern customer experience is also self-service. Buyers generally spend more time conducting independent research than consulting with a representative. 

Given these shifts, professional services firms need to personalise communications to match each prospect’s unique evaluation cadence. 

A consultative approach that delivers the right message at the right time is more effective than relying on generic brochures and aggressive pitches. Gartner found that prospects who received helpful information were 3 times more likely to close a bigger deal with less regret. By adapting content, timing and channels to each individual, firms can reduce friction and build trust. 

The Role of marketing Automation in Building Credibility 

The problem for many businesses is how to achieve that level of communication.

Marketing automation makes it easier for your team to continually connect with prospects and clients at scale. Core email capabilities like tailored content recommendations, personalised messaging, and automatically triggered responses facilitate more relevant and timely communication.

When some business leaders think about automated emails, they imagine bland, generic messages that do little to deepen client relationships. In reality, effective automation can target clients' specific circumstances and address them in a way that positions your services as the solution. 

Some of the benefits include: 

• Nurturing relationships between major engagements. For example, you can deliver automated content journeys to provide value based on interests between touchpoints. 

• Ensuring prompt responses to customer enquiries and requests using automated confirmations and notifications. This helps you to accelerate responsiveness and anticipate information needs.

• Allowing for scalable customised and personalised messaging that's aligned with each client's unique needs and challenges using dynamic content.

• Creating an always-on environment where clients feel heard, valued and supported. Ongoing communication sustains an impression of dedication.

Automation in Action

When you begin using or revamping automated emails, it can be difficult to pinpoint which messages will be most effective, when you should send them, and who should receive them. Mapping automation opportunities to each stage of the client lifecycle can help you select the specific options that will provide the most value. 

Reach

Email marketing together with marketing automation can improve brand awareness and lead generation, the central components of the reach stage. Some of the core automations you can incorporate into your strategy include: 

• Nurture leads with valuable content: Automating delivery of thought leadership content, like white papers and insider perspectives, helps to engage high-potential prospects. In addition, sharing email newsletters offering a curated selection of articles and case studies demonstrates your firm’s industry knowledge and commitment to clients. 

• Progressive profiling leads for relevance: Tailor your messaging by tracking leads’ email engagement, website visits, and social engagement. Match them to buyer personas and deliver automated communications that tie into their interests, including campaigns for relevant services or access to useful resources.

• Deepen engagement: Rather than sending blanket invitations to events and webinars, customise your messaging based on each contact's industry and seniority. Use calendar alerts, automated registration confirmations and event reminders to increase the likelihood that they'll attend. Automate your follow-up emails based on whether they were present for the event. 

An email marketing strategy that includes these automations will cultivate interest in your organisation and reflect your position as a knowledgeable and reliable voice in your industry. 

Acquisition

Using automation to generate and nurture leads opens doors to acquisition, where you qualify and convert prospects with strong potential. Consider how these automation opportunities could help during this stage: 

• Focus on the best prospects: Create multi-message journeys targeted to qualified leads to address common questions and hurdles experienced by buyers at this stage of the customer journey. Track interactions to assess their sales readiness and apply a lead score so your team can strike when the iron is hot. 

• Provide timely information: Advance opportunities by reacting promptly to questions and interests expressed by prospects’ interactions. Send automated messages with pricing sheets, past client examples, or other collateral to address information gaps that could derail or delay an opportunity. 

• Account-based marketing: Coordinate your account-based plays across multiple buying group contacts with triggered email marketing campaigns and orchestration. 

• Internal notifications: When a lead hits a pre-determined lead score threshold or accesses a pivotal resource, use sales team alerts to enable a smooth handover. 

In combination, these automations enhance every aspect of your acquisition process, allowing you to more efficiently identify your best leads and move them closer to converting. 

Conversion

The value of email marketing automation tools extends far beyond attracting and qualifying leads. It can also facilitate purchase finalisation by streamlining and accelerating your process.  

Struggles with scheduling and communication can derail otherwise strong relationships. A few well-timed emails can help marketing teams overcome any obstacles that occur during the final days of a deal. Successful automation options include:

• Self-scheduling appointments: Trigger emails should include calendar booking links so they can easily schedule demos, calls, or meetings to move the deal forward. This reduces friction and makes their experience frustration-free. 

• Quoting and proposals: Quickly and conclusively answer leads' questions by automatically sending custom quotes, pricing sheets, or proposal documents directly from your customer relationship management (CRM) system. 

• Smart reminders: You can gently nudge both clients and account managers with timed email notifications if follow ups, proposals, sign offs or even contracts stall. Keep deals moving along and prevent drop-off. 

Once the contracts are signed, use automated emails to help prospects seamlessly transition into customers. Sending them early onboarding preparation emails lets them know what to expect post-purchase, so they won't feel caught off-guard by your processes.

Retention

Closing a deal with a customer is just the beginning of what will hopefully become a long and fruitful relationship. Your ability to build lasting connections with clients is entirely dependent on the quality of your communications moving forward. Maintaining regular contact helps strengthen their loyalty and maximise their account potential, and email automations can help. 

Marketing automations that sustain engagement beyond initial sale include: 

• Onboarding sequences: After you've initiated the onboarding process for new customers, trigger a sequence of events that confirm that they have the resources and guidance they need. This ensures their onboarding runs smoothly and doesn't cause unnecessary anxiety. 

• Milestone celebration emails: Celebrate your clients with automated happy anniversary or milestone emails that recognise the length and quality of your relationship. These quick and simple messages can make customers feel valued and appreciated. 

• Customer experience and feedback surveys: Don’t assume your customers are happy with the status quo. Instead, send scheduled customer satisfaction survey emails or in-person feedback invitations to assess their feelings about your company and their experiences. In doing so, you'll demonstrate your commitment to giving exceptional support to all your clients. 

• Upsell and cross-sell journeys: Leverage opportunities to maximise every customer's potential value and provide them with the best possible solutions for their needs. Create automated email campaigns that focus on introducing complementary or upgraded offerings matched to customers' use cases. 

• Contract renewal reminders: Boost your retention and reduce involuntary churn by sending timely notifications and reminders leading up to contract renewal dates. Urge customers to sign and give them a direct link so that it's quick and convenient for them. 

While no single tactic guarantees that you'll hold on to every client, these automations will underscore your company's dedication to ongoing client relationships. 

Loyalty and Advocacy

Cultivating brand affinity and developing customers into promoters activates a network effect that is key to your company's long-term success. Your method for building those positive connections depends on the structure of your business and the services you provide, but strategically automating emails is a good place to start. 

Rewarding Your Best Clients

Loyal customers deserve recognition, and providing loyalty and rewards updates shows that you recognise and appreciate their continued trust in your business. Develop a system of ongoing program communications with personalised updates on current tier levels, making sure to highlight any new rewards or benefits that are available to them. This spotlights the fact that you offer differentiated treatment for VIP customers. 

In addition, solidify your emotional connection with clients by sending them periodic client appreciation surprises. For example, you can automatically invite high-value clients to access an exclusive event or content series. These seemingly minor tokens of appreciation can make a big difference in a client's impression of your organisation. 

Encouraging Customer Contributions

The most compelling advocates for your company are your existing clients. They have in-depth knowledge of your solutions, can speak to your integrity, and have firsthand experience with the quality of your services. Find ways to bring their experiences with your company to the forefront with automations such as: 

• Advocacy and referral requests: Automate emails that ask satisfied clients to provide testimonials, refer their friends or colleagues, or write online reviews. You might consider offering incentives to motivate them to participate. 

• Case study and story requests: Schedule messages that seek customers' permission to develop branded case studies and success stories featuring their use of your services. This enables wider and more compelling promotion to attract leads. 

• User community email digests: Generate regular automated updates showcasing active user community discussions, new members, popular content offerings, and ways to get involved. This fosters connections not only between you and prospective customers but also between your clients, establishing a more unified and collaborative environment for everyone involved in your company. 

With each of these automations, consider which clients will provide an honest, engaging, and positive representation of your business. A half-hearted or cookie cutter testimonial will offer very little value to you, your client, and your prospects.

Exploring New Opportunities for Marketing Automation 

Lifecycle-based marketing automations - when thoughtfully executed - can enable more personalised, scalable communications. By matching your marketing and messages to each client's unique purchasing journey, you can demonstrate your value and strengthen client relationships over time. 

While integrating comprehensive automation takes time and thought, you can take an incremental approach. Even modest initial steps can make interactions feel more proactive and responsive.

Recognise that this is an evolving journey rather than an end state. By tracking the impact of a few automated communications, you can continuously build on your progress, change efforts that aren't working, and refine your approach based on data and customer feedback on everything from subject lines to tone of voice.

Most importantly, remember that you don't have to venture into automation alone. At 1827 Marketing, we offer campaign management, content creation, and marketing automation expertise so you can get the most benefit from your emails.

Our door is open - contact us today to get the conversation started on how to craft communications that consistently strengthen client relationships over time.