How to use automation to increase leads for your SaaS business

Automation increases both lead quantity and lead quality. No kidding. Businesses who use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads, as mentioned by Hubspot.

If that number doesn’t make you want to get you on the marketing automation train, we’re not sure what else will.

But, on a serious note, businesses are moving towards automation because it makes life easier and improves the efficiency and oftentimes quality of care. Whether that be the product, or simply managing the data that comes along with running a business.

For a SaaS business, creating a winning sales funnel relies heavily on marketing automation and a CRM.

What is marketing automation?

As said by Hubspot, “Marketing automation refers to the software that exists with the goal of automating marketing actions. Many marketing departments have to automate repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, and other website actions. The technology of marketing automation makes these tasks easier”.

Customers want personalization. In fact, it’s expected of businesses to provide it throughout the buyer’s journey. This, however, can be difficult to deliver, especially for businesses with a large customer database. This is where most marketers cue marketing automation.

Marketing automation is really just a way to automate marketing/sales/etc. processes that allow businesses to provide lead-nurturing content to customers.

As you can see, automation can work wonders for a variety of reasons.

Why automate?

Many businesses fear that using automation will make them seem like a robot or make them irrelevant. But that’s really not the case.

Marketing automation makes you more efficient meaning you are more effective at creating better experiences for customers. This ultimately means you have a better chance of getting someone to make a purchase.

By using automation, you are:

• Creating better and optimized pages.
• Again, increasing your efficiency.
• Making yourself more reliable (you have less of a chance of forgetting a step since workflows can be set up.
• Be able to create personalized touchpoints, thus create a stronger customer relationship.

Now that you see why automation is great, let’s cover how to use it to increase your SaaS leads.

How to use automation to get SaaS leads

Most businesses have one goal, and that’s to get customers. Automation can help with that, but don’t be fooled it’s not a secret lead vacuum either. It largely depends on your existing marketing channels.

Joint Media Marketing mentions that “70 percent of your leads are not “ready to buy”. Meaning you have a whole slew of people you can target to convert!

Here are a few marketing automation strategies you can try to attract new leads and convert leads.

Email automation

It’s probably no surprise, but email automation can be a big life saver. You can retarget past customers, you can send updates, newsletters, coupons, you get the point.

With email automation, you have the ability to consistently send emails or emails based on specific triggers. This can help you strengthen your customer relationships and even help you generate new leads.

As mentioned by Forbes, “email marketing has long been a tried-and-true method for generating leads”.

You have plenty of touch points to use, and if you segment your lists, you can further target specific groups of people and turn leads into sales.

Being a SaaS business, you may find that your customers are particularly more interested in shopping around. It’s these targeted emails that can turn them into a hot lead!

Social media automation

There are many reasons you use social media automation. Whether it be to schedule posts or promote specific ads. This type of automation can help your SaaS business stay in the game and help you remain present in all the noise. Because it’s effective in driving word of mouth.

People use social media all the time. In fact, Statista believes the number of social media users will continue to incline. Meaning within just the next year or two there will be about 3.02 billion social media users!

Social media offers your SaaS business the opportunity to communicate more casually with customers. So not only will you have a way to better communicate with people, you can streamline your content to be shared with them.

Social media is a great owned media channel, and with the right automation tools, you can strengthen your brand recognition and reach a whole new level of audience.

Referral marketing

Who knows you better than anyone else? Your active customers. These are the exact people that can bring you high-quality leads.

How do you harness this power though? By automating a referral program into your existing processes you can encourage users to share your business and refer their friends, partners, etc. when it really counts.

Many referral software tools allow for easy integration points. You’ll be able to easily and automatically add people to your CRM, mailing list, scheduling software, and other workflows easily open up the floodgates for leads to pour in.

Take a look at Cognito Forms’ referral program. A customer simply shares their referral link with a friend and that friend is automatically tied to them. So now if that referral subscribes, both parties earn their incentive (without you having to lift a finger). Since this process is seamless and happens automatically based on triggers you set, the referring party may continue to refer based on the ease of use.

Affiliate marketing

Another option you have for increasing your SaaS leads is to use affiliate marketing. You may find that you have the opportunity to work with a niche or industry leader or influencer.

With an affiliate program those people will add links and talk about your brand and what you do in their content, or simply add a banner to their site showing that they are a part of your affiliate program.

The trick to automating this is to track and measure the effectiveness of affiliates. You’ll want people to be tied to their affiliate without having to phone in and tell you (unless they really want to). And you’ll want the reward/commission delivered on cue, and not have to also manually do it.

When these points are automated the entire workflow is nice and seamless to the user, not to mention less painful—making it an easy and appealing way to get more leads.

The Bluehost affiliate program, for example, asks affiliates to promote them by placing a banner on their site. When someone clicks the banner, they are tied to the affiliate and rewards are sent automatically. Because the process happens so smoothly, affiliates tend to keep the banner displayed, and everyone wins from it!

Summary

By automating your existing processes, you can create a seamless user experience. But that won’t matter unless your website is also optimized. So if you’ve seen an increase in leads, but no one is converting, be sure to see if your website is optimized too.

Automation can help get you the leads, but they won’t be easy to convert if they are being shuffled to a poorly optimized site. Things like slow load speed and poor CTA placement can hinder the incoming leads that you worked so hard for.