Marketing Automation Tips to Increase Your Lead Conversion

Increasing your conversion rate hinges on effective follow-up with leads ⁠— skip it and you’re leaving money on the table. But a high-touch follow-up program doesn’t have to be manual: Having a marketing automation strategy in place does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Sales and marketing automation doesn’t just save you time from repetitive tasks, it helps you engage, nurture and convert contacts by giving them an outstanding experience. 

Here are tips for creating a marketing automation strategy to increase your lead conversion.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is a set of tools and tactics that automates your most time-consuming tasks to more effectively manage your digital marketing campaigns. If you take the time to identify key moments in your customer’s purchasing journey, marketing automation makes it easier to deliver the right message to your target audience when they reach specific milestones.

Marketing automation is not:

• A blanket marketing solution
• A content generator 
• A substitute for the human touch

What marketing can (or should) I automate?

Automate any messages you repeatedly send to buyers, such as:

• Reminders about grand openings and sales center hours
• Thank-you notes for touring your model home
• Tips for identifying which home is right for them
• Educational information on navigating new construction, choosing upgrade options and finding a home loan
• Special offers and time-limited promotions

A word of caution: Be careful when using automated messages on social media, where posts and tweets should be individually reviewed and replied to.

Keep in touch with buyers after the sale with:

• Happy anniversary messages
• Requests for ratings, followed up by a request for a review if the rating was high enough
• Status updates about new amenities and community growth
• Announcements about your newest community that might encourage repeat purchases and referrals

How can I build an effective marketing automation plan?

First, identify your specific goals in following up with leads, then establish and automate your processes to strategically achieve those goals.

Define your goals

You won’t know how well your marketing automation plan is working — or the ROI it generates — if you don’t know what success looks like. Your goals will determine what kind of campaigns you want to automate. While there are several kinds of automated email campaigns you can use to drive prospective buyers to choose your homes, the two most common types are drip and lead-nurturing campaigns.

• Drip campaign. A drip campaign delivers content that educates buyers and helps you determine their needs. Drips aren’t always triggered by an action, but you can use them to include your seasonal promotions or a reminder of a home they favorited. 

Use a drip campaign to welcome and educate new leads, retain customers or increase company awareness.

• Lead-nurturing campaign. A nurture campaign sends relevant information based on each action a prospective buyer takes and when they’re ready to act again. For example, filling out a form or opting into your newsletter can trigger a lead-nurturing email. 

Use a lead-nurturing campaign to prompt engagement with your resources that moves buyers further down the funnel.

Get a customer relationship management (CRM) tool in place

You can’t build a marketing automation plan without first putting a CRM in place to capture your prospect and customer data, sync details, remember dates, plan activities, and leverage previous conversations.

Remember that your CRM data is only as good as your inputs. The higher quality your data is, the more personalized and timely your messages can be. Most marketing automation platforms allow you to use personalization variables or fields and insert the prospect's name, company and other data fields you have access to in your CRM. Get your team on board with using the tool and applying best practices to generate consistent data entry and actionable information.

Segment your buyer audience

Be specific about who you want to target in each campaign. If you cast too wide a net or set parameters too broadly, your lead quality (and subsequently your conversion rate) will suffer. Taking the time upfront to define your target buyer will ensure your messages are personalized, resonate with prospects and prompt a quality response.

Create complete buyer profiles with specific context

Prospects might have explored your online listings, but they still need a reason to book a tour. Give them compelling information about your homes and communities, mention your open hours, and encourage them to stop by. 

After a buyer takes a tour, classify them as a warm prospect and begin nurturing them by sending helpful information about the benefits of buying a new home and securing financing. Did they express interest in a certain lifestyle? Let them know when a matching community starts selling or when it has only a few homes left.

Closing a sale doesn’t end your relationship with the buyer but rather begins a new phase. Create post-sale campaigns that send new homeowner tips, anniversary greetings and warranty date reminders.

Map out the sequence

Think about what should happen every time a buyer takes an action — opens an email, submits a form, visits your sales center, buys a home — and map your response in the workflow sequence. Every action a buyer takes should trigger a response that thanks them for their interest and includes a specific message moving them to the next step.

Here’s a sample marketing automation workflow:

Invest in quality content

Develop content that’s specific to where each target buyer is in the process. That means poring over headlines and subject lines too. Send content that educates, informs and appeals to the buyer. You should also consider different formats that might resonate with your segmented audiences: videos, blogs, social media posts, photo galleries, quizzes, etc.

Revisit your automation campaigns every 4-6 months to ensure content is still relevant and accurate.

Always include a call to action (CTA)

Tell buyers what you want them to do. Every communication should include a CTA: learn more, book a tour, stop by. Frame your CTAs around a clear buyer benefit.

Test your campaigns

A/B split testing is an easy way to see how different factors affect your campaign’s performance. Test one element at a time, making small tweaks to your messages, then check the results to see what works and what should be retested.

For example, you can A/B test two subject lines where one is based on FOMO (fear of missing out), such as “Only three homes left in your dream neighborhood!” and one subject line that’s more aspirational, like “Picture summer barbecues in this backyard.”

Measure and adjust

Track who is engaging with your emails so you can attribute revenue back to your marketing programs. If buyers came in for a tour or bought a home after engaging with one of your messages, you can attribute some of that success back to your marketing automation campaigns. This is key to understanding which efforts lead to true conversions.

Improving your lead response and follow-up is an ongoing task. Executing a marketing automation plan can take a significant load off your shoulders while providing buyers with a consistent and personal experience.