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acquisitionThis recipe will show you how to send authentic, relevant automated email messages by integrating enriched Salesforce data into your marketing automation platform.
Bradley Gula & Julie Beynon Lifecycle Content Manager at Clearbit & Head of Analytics at Clearbit
7 minutes
Before we dive into the email marketing automation recipe, let's start with our mise en place and set the stage.
First up, what is email marketing automation?
Email marketing automation turns the manual sending of marketing emails into a workflow that automatically generates recipients based on specific criteria. and then triggers sending emails to those recipients in a pre-set sequence.
But what's the difference between email marketing automation and good email marketing automation?
Julie Beynon, Clearbit's Head of Analytics and Chief Martech Data Plumber, shares her thoughts.
To me, good email marketing automation is effectively replicating authentic one-to-one conversations with your prospects and customers — at scale.
This means you need to do more than send automated emails with first name personalization. Context, relevance, and accuracy is critical. Everything that your recipients would expect if you were emailing from your personal email account is just as important when automating.
Now that we know what good email marketing automation is, how does it work?
Julie has thoughts on this, too:
Good email marketing automation works when you have two really important ingredients. First, you need great data. You need to understand who it is that you're sending emails to. This means having as much up-to-date firmographic, demographic, behavioural, and if possible, technographic data on your list as possible.
In other words, the better your data is, the more relevant your automated emails will be.
Take two variations of the same scenario as an example:
Scenario #1 feels like a crapshoot! Scenario #2 feels like good marketing.
Julie argues that there's one more key ingredient for good email marketing automation.
Great data comes first. But you also need standout content — personalized, authentic emails that people actually want to read because they come at the right time and provide info that's actually useful for them.
When you have great data and standout content, you're ready to build workflows in your marketing automation platform of choice.
Now we know what email marketing automation is and how it works. But what are the benefits?
And if you're lucky, prospects and customers won't only take notice, they might even go out of their way to share some compliments.
Here's a great LinkedIn shout-out for our newsletter (we're very proud!):
And here are two email responses to automated messages that made our day:
By the way, if you're interested in engaging stories and exclusive data join our Clearbit monthly newsletter. It's only $100/month. Just kidding — it's free!
Now, how about we learn how to cook up a personalized email automation campaign of your own with an example recipe?
We'll walk you through how to connect Clearbit-enriched data from Salesforce (our CRM) to Customer.io (our marketing automation platform), and then how to use that data to personalize automated email workflows.
First, make sure you've connected Clearbit to Salesforce. Once you're a Clearbit for Salesforce customer, it's a super simple process that involves installing our app from the Salesforce AppExchange.
Next, make sure you've configured all of your field mappings.
Once these two steps are complete, you're ready to send newly enriched Salesforce Account and Contact data to your marketing automation platform.
For this recipe, we're going to use Customer.io, which is our marketing automation platform at Clearbit.
We have a custom integration that connects Salesforce to Customer.io, so we won't dive into the details. Customer.io does have a built-in Zapier integration with Salesforce, which is very easy to configure.
Note: Connecting Salesforce with your marketing automation platform will vary depending on what platform you use. You'll typically find straightforward native or third-party integrations with Salesforce.
Now that you have all of your Salesforce data available in Customer.io (enriched by Clearbit!), you have access to a huge list of attributes to help build your automated segment. Accurate, up-to-date data points like job title, number of employees, company location, and technologies used are now at your fingertips.
Start by giving your segment a name.
Then, select all of the conditions that you'd like your email recipients to meet in order to enter your segment.
With your new segment complete, select it as the trigger for your email marketing automation.
Once you've completed this step, any time someone meets the conditions of your new segment, they'll automatically enter your automated sequence.
Here's where you get to use data, delays, and flow control options to build your own custom workflow.
In the example below, we set up a simple time delay so that recipients will get our automated email one day after entering our segment in Customer.io. But this is only scratching the surface of what you can do. With the various delay and flow controls, you'll be able to create more complex workflows to deliver the custom experience you want to deliver to your sendees.
Time for the fun part. Create your email(s), and don't forget to use all of the Clearbit-enriched Salesforce data that's now available to personalize your messages. Here’s what that level of detail in your message may look like.
Once you've had an initial read-over, check out your email(s) in preview mode for a quick spot check. This lets you see all of your Salesforce-derived personalization tokens completed with real recipient data.
Now that everything's set up and you're sure it's working, move on to the final step to set your automation live.
You made it! This is the last step in this recipe and all it requires is a final review.
Now take a deep breath and set your email marketing automation live.
Congrats! You've now built an automation that will send relevant, personalized messages to a very specific audience at exactly the cadence you want.
When you pair accurate, up-to-date data in your marketing automation platform with accurately personalized messages, you empower your team to have relevant, authentic conversations, at scale.
In other words: you're creating really good email marketing automation.
All it takes is:
That's it! Here's to sending fewer generic messages – and more hyper-relevant emails to build more revenue for your business. 🚀
Firmographic data is also known as company data. Example firmographic data points include employee size and revenue.
Technographic data refers to the technology platforms that companies use as part of their technology ecosystems. Examples include CRMs like Salesforce, marketing automation platforms like Marketo, and advertising platforms like Facebook.
A lot of email marketing automation programs rely heavily on behavioural data for targeting. Common examples of this type of data include site visits, interaction with content, and product usage. It’s typically the most straightforward data to get, and can come out of the box with your marketing automation platform. However, behavioural data only tells one part of the story.
To maximize the reach and relevance of your email marketing automation, you also need to incorporate enriched firmographic, demographic, and technographic data so that you can target confidently based on who your recipients are, the types of companies they work at, and what technology they use. The more comprehensive and accurate these data types are, the more effective your automation program will be.
The most commonly used attributes are the demographic attributes of Job Title, Role, and Seniority, and the firmographic attribute of company industry. These attributes enable you to better personalize your messaging. And depending on the state of your email marketing database, these enriched attribues can help to either greatly increase the size of your mailing list by unveiling more recipients that meet your targeting criteria, or cut it down by eliminating recipients that don’t.
Examples attributes include Job Title, Role, Seniority, Industry, Employee Count, Company Location Data, Revenue, and Company Technology. These are just a handful of of the 100+ business data attributes that Clearbit can help you enrich.
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