10 Ways to Use Automation Recipes in a Marketing Agency

Technology surrounds us today, but we must remember its ultimate goal; to help us work smarter not harder. While finding one web app to solve a problem is not too difficult, what about integrating that app into systems we are already using?  This is where tools, like Zapier and If This Then That, have solved many marketing automation and integration woes. Here are just a few “recipes” for marketing smarter with web automation apps.

 

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Bring form data into your CRM

There are several different ways to make a web form today, and not all of them easily integrate directly with all CRM solutions. Use Zapier to seamlessly bring the data from several form builders directly into your CRM.  Making sure all data reaches your CRM is important for a streamlined and accountable process.

 

Alerts for form submissions

Now that you have made sure all web data is logged into your CRM, it is time to make sure you do something with it. Alerts tools such as Slack, Hipchat or several emails platforms (we use Bitrix24 at RBM), to alert your team when a new form has been submitted.

 

Take event invites and create campaigns

If you are using EventBrite to manage invites to an event; take those sign-ups and use one of many email systems like MailChimp or AWeber to develop an automated campaign to communicate with those who sign-up.

 

Use RSS to automate social media posts

Use RSS feeds to automate posts to Facebook, Twitter, Google + and other social media platforms so you can get the whole team in on the social sharing fun!

 

Brand monitoring

Mentions and conversations are happening in many more places that you can manually monitor at once.  Automate tracking mentions to alert you via email or SMS, so you can react immediately.

 

Add multiple social media posts into Buffer queue

There are several platforms to share content today, and to make this process less boring and more efficient, utilize automation to take posts and add it to your Buffer queue for posting to several other sites.

 

Add clients or vendors directly into invoicing software

This problem of work duplication can become a time waste in the workplace. Whether you are adding a new client into your CRM, or a new vendor into a project management tool, let automation add them to your billing system for invoicing in the future.

 

Landing pages to increase promotion

Sometimes you are using a platform to create or manage a specific event, and then you realize there is not a suitable way to market the event using that platform. Utilize tools such as Unbounce to create engaging landing pages to increase marketing for your event, while funneling all the information back to your event management tool.

 

Aggregating Information

Needing to stay current on several different topics in very important, but couldn’t we do something more productive than waste time searching for articles to read? Use a combination of RSS feeds, Yahoo Pipes and an automation recipe to send relevant articles directly to you through email or another notification app.

 

Shouldn’t this app already do that?

Even when a web app seems like the perfect solution to your problem, you may find it difficult to get the app to complete a process that you think “it should already be able to do.” This is where automation tools like Zapier and IF This Then That (IFTTT), can even optimize a web app beyond it’s designed intentions.

 

There will always be another great web app being developed, and while that just adds to the clutter, know that there are tools designed specifically to bring the “next big thing” directly into your current workflow.