These 5 workflow automations will help your end-users supercharge their sales process (and keep them coming back to your SaaS)

The advancement of technology in recent years has meant that it’s never been easier for MarTech and SalesTech providers to cater to the wants and needs of their end-users. Unfortunately, many are still failing to fully integrate with these technologies and harness the benefits they can introduce–benefits that could radically transform their service for the better.

One such benefit is workflow automation, i.e., the ability to use iPaaS-enabled, rule-based logic to automate certain actions to run independently. Once you have established a rule and that rule is triggered, the resulting task - or series of tasks - happens automatically–with no human involvement needed. These might be time-consuming, repetitive tasks like sending out emails or social media campaigns or filling out your CRM in response to a completed web form.

And the benefits don’t stop there–incorporating embedded iPaas into your SaaS won’t just save you valuable time, it can also help you create an altogether more attractive experience for your end-users.

For marketers, this means aligning previously siloed tools and technologies and creating a unique workflow that allows for a highly-personalised marketing response (such as specific email campaigns going to specific customers who fit a specific set of parameters).

80% of marketing automation users saw an increase in their number of leads, and 77% saw an increase in the number of conversions. An overwhelming 91% agreed that automation is a “very important” part of their marketing success, according to invesp’s The Rise of Marketing Automation research.

For salespeople, this marketing automation provides invaluable insights into prospects. From here, sales teams can view their prospects’ activities, customer journey and more, and use that data to create a tailored approach for qualifying them into a buying customer. Automations can ensure specific engagements are logged into their CRM, or real-time alerts are set up so the sales team can contact a customer before they get a chance to look elsewhere.

Automation, used in conjunction with artificial intelligence and modern data intelligence, is giving “new life to the entire prospecting process”, according to Gartner–so much so that sales leaders and CSOs are increasing their sales tech spending by 5% annually.

It may sound like marketing magic, but we promise it’s real. Given these benefits, it’s no surprise that 63% of marketing teams plan to increase their marketing automation budget in 2022.

If you’re still on the fence, read on for five workflow automation examples mapped to each stage of the customer journey. These automations could supercharge your MarTech or SalesTech SaaS, positioning your platform as an essential tool that helps end-users convert more customers.

Outreach

Let’s start at the beginning of every new customer campaign: the outreach stage. Your cloud-based SaaS may help users de-anonymise and identify who is visiting their website and the behaviour of those viewers. This is valuable information for sales and marketing teams, but it only offers them a fraction of the insights they really need, and leaves them to do much of the heavy lifting.

By automating with a component like Clearbit, end-users can take the information you have outlined and compare it against a complete market view to determine whether any of the companies visiting their site match their Ideal Customer Profile (e.g., are they the right size? Do they have the type of revenue you would expect? Are they in the correct industry?). If so, a task can be automatically created in Asana, indicating that an ideal potential customer has been identified. From here, the sales team can see all the gathered information on this prospect and reach out to them as a next step.

Through automation and integration with other apps and tools, the data your SaaS initially gathered has been enriched with other tools. For your end-users, the result is less time spent manually researching potential leads and an automated process that means only qualified relevant prospects are identified to follow up with. As well as this, salespeople have a wealth of information on each prospect which they can use to tailor their sales approaches which can further be automated using tools like Icereach.

Using this workflow, your customers can ensure their salespeople follow up with high-quality leads immediately; after all, 50% of buyers choose to purchase from the vendor that reaches out to them first.

Lead Generation

Much like the outreach automation benefits outlined above, an automated workflow can create a filter than ensure only high-quality are reaching your end-users’ salespeople.

In this instance, a web form is completed by a browsing business. The form submission records basic data such as email, name, job title, company etc., but doesn’t offer any useful insights beyond that. Without further context, it’s up to sales teams to wade through each submission, get an understanding of each inquiry, and see if they are ripe for selling.

By creating a workflow between other applications, end-users can enhance this information; for example, in the diagram above, the information gathered via the web form is once again enriched by Clearbit before being imported into Salesforce as a new contact. 

Suppose that new contact meets a specific set of criteria that suggest they meet your user’s Ideal Customer Profile. In that case, an alert is sent to the Sales channel on Slack or to individual salespeople who are better suited to manage this particular enquiry–which they can follow up with immediately. 

The result is less time and resource spent qualifying dead-end leads and more time spent servicing the high-quality prospects that are created as a result of this automated workflow. This is just one example of how your solution can sync with other services to enrich your end-user’s experience while better positioning your service as means for them to attract, impress, and retain new customers.

Overall, 80% of marketers think marketing automation generates more leads and conversions – by as much as 451%.

Nurturing

Now that your users have their leads, they want to nurture them along the sales funnel and convert them into paying customers. To do this, they will need more than your service alone.

Let’s imagine a new article is uploaded to their company’s Google Drive. It’s a piece of relevant content that will be used to share with leads, demonstrate your user’s capabilities, and play a vital role in the ongoing nurturing process. To ensure it’s delivered on time, an email can be automated to go out to the person who edits and approves the article, covering the subject, task and deadline.

If the person in charge of reviewing this content does not respond ahead of the deadline, an SMS reminder will automatically be sent to them, notifying them that they have to approve the content by a specific date. Once this is done, a task is created and assigned to the social media management team, letting them know they have the green light to distribute the fresh content across the relevant channels.

Such automation ensures that nurturing content is completed and shared promptly via your customer’s channels and that at no stage a warm lead turns cold because they haven’t been properly nurtured.

This workflow frees up your customer’s team to focus on other aspects of their role. It also streamlines the conversion process, so they can rest assured that all of their nurturing efforts are delivered at the right moment to keep leads moving along the sales funnel.

According to Marketo, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost.

Converting

Once your users have nurtured their lead far enough along the path, it’s time to convert.

Let’s take a B2C use case as an example. If an order is completed in Shopify, a workflow can be created that uses Google Analytics insights (into site visitors’ behaviours, purchases and traffic sources, for example) to track the purchase and enable the seller to attribute it to a specific campaign or check it against wider conversion metrics.

An automated SMS or email can also be sent to the customer, assuring them that their delivery is on the way and will reach them by a certain date. While all this is happening, the buyer’s details are logged by MailChimp for future engagements.

This is an excellent workflow automation for small businesses that want to provide a top tier service to their customers without investing lots of time and money. It reassures your customer, creates a positive buying experience, provides deep insights into the behaviour of potential buyers, and lines new customers up for future nurturing and potential purchases via outbound offers.

Workflow automations are a great way for your end-users to create a positive brand experience for their customers, helping them convert the 74% of consumers who are inclined to buy based on customer experience alone.

Post-Purchase Support

Now that your users have successfully converted their customers, they want to keep them happy, engaged, and coming back for more. After all, the customer journey doesn’t stop at the sale.

For this example, imagine you are a B2B technology services provider. A customer has raised a ticket in Freshdesk, and your customer support team needs to deal with it quickly and positively. The team could reach out to the customer based on the information provided in the ticket alone, or a workflow could be put in place that adds further information to the ticket and determines the most suitable response through an automated process.

So, once the ticket is submitted, perhaps its sentiment is analysed through a tool like Google’s Cloud Natural Language API. If the ticket is considered negative in sentiment, it can take two routes depending on urgency. In both instances, a task is created based on the priority (urgent tasks are labelled as such and are expected to be dealt with quickly while regular non-urgent tasks can take second priority). If an urgent task is created, a message can go to the support team via Slack, email, SMS or their preferred communication service, notifying them.

This allows the customer support team to prioritise important tasks and come back to others. By offering them this workflow, you are helping your users ensure that their customers are dealt with promptly and professionally, and walk away with a positive experience.

Only a 5% increase in customer retention can increase company revenue by 25-95%, proving that it’s vital to nurture your customers beyond purchase.

These are just some examples of how workflow automations can turbocharge your SaaS while offering your end-users everything they could possibly need to find, convert and keep new customers.

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This has been the third blog in a six-part series on the benefits of white-label SaaS for MarTech and SalesTech vendors and the vital role of iPaaS integrations in helping them stand out from an increasingly saturated marketplace. Each blog will outline an essential step in white labelling, covering useful workflows, key automations, and practical advice on reselling white label services.

Keep an eye out for part four, which will focus on key metrics, how to properly measure the success of your iPaaS integration, and how to demonstrate this to end-users.