Just a few years ago, I was generating leads through billboards, radio commercials, and designing print marketing materials. This was also the era of all-denim-everything, drinking juice from Garfield cups, and AOL messenger. Today, the customer journey has changed. Customers buy experiences, not products. 73% of users say the customer experience is an important factor. But, only 49% of consumers say they’re getting a good customer experience. Modern marketers need to react to what is happening to the customer journey. And, with today’s seemingly endless amount of marketing Automation tools available, modern marketers are integrating automation into their MarTech stack. So, I’ve officially jumped on the bandwagon to join the 80% of marketers who are using automation software to generate more leads. The good news? 77% of like-minded marketers saw their number of conversions increase after switching to automated systems. We’re not alone. The majority of enterprise business respondents saw spending in marketing automation to be worth the price. Marketo generated 2,500+ conversation-qualified leads using automation. And, Kate Hollar, Marketing Manager at Capterra, saw nearly 4x increased sales leads with automation. The downside to the power of automation is the pressure it puts on smaller businesses that have more limited resources. In fact, a lack of resources is the biggest obstacle for 61% of marketers working on B2B Lead generation. As the technology develops, it is becoming cheaper and more accessible. Even with great automation software at your fingertips, there are several other things to consider when designing email campaigns, personalizing your website, and using a chatbot. Let’s take a deeper look at four ways to generate high-quality leads using automation. Here are 4 ways to automate lead generation I’ve ransacked the depths of the internet to unearth these four enticing automated lead generation tactics. 1. Automated email campaigns Have you ever felt like this after receiving a poorly designed automated email? Yep. 🙌🏽That’s exactly how I felt after reading this email. And, this email. According to Content Marketing Institute, 83% of B2B marketers still use email as part of their content marketing strategy. Additionally, 28% of customers still prefer to regularly receive promotional emails. And, there is an expected 3% increase in email usage per year. This is significant when you look at where and how to generate your leads. Using email marketing is still the top lead generation strategy of 2019. Though 62% of marketers say they use email marketing, content marketing (60%) and in-person marketing (57%) strategies aren’t far behind. Automated email marketing campaigns are winning when it comes to lead generation. These advanced, automated systems improve your bottom line via cold emailing, lead generation, relationship building, and content promotion. Here’s an example of how you might use a tool like Mailshake to scale your leads through automated email marketing. Growthscore generated 500 leads in 72 hoursusing automated email marketed. According to Campaign Monitor, automated emails increase open rates — and, they also generate 320% more in revenue than traditional emails. All that said, if you want to see revenue jump by up to 760%, all you have to do is personalize your emails. If you’re not prepared to generate a new mailing list of subscribers, don’t worry. It’s easy enough to implement an automated drip campaign for your existing subscribers. This can be especially impactful if your list is bogged down with inactive subscribers. 2. Automation through personalized website experiences One misconception about personalization is that it takes a lot of time and effort, as well as costs a lot of money. If you’re depending on a tool like Marketo, the latter is certainly true. It’s a great tool for enterprise businesses but out of reach for just about everyone else. But personalization doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, you can use existing data to set up powerful sequences. Personalized leads can be created based on customer behaviors. When looking at customer behavior, you should divide up customers based on marketing personas. You can either buy the data you need from third parties or generate the data you need with personalization software. Another behavior-based way to develop leads is geared toward paying attention to how customers navigate your website, then dividing them into groups based on their actions. RightMessage is a market newcomer that’s tailored to a small business customer. One of their features, RightBar, allows you to create a welcome bar that changes messaging based on the type of customer seeing it: No matter how you decided to create customer behavior categories, you will need to establish rules once a customer’s behavior is identified. These rules will determine what actions to undertake based on what the customer does once they meet a certain criteria or complete a specific action. Though there is plenty of data to inform your decisions about what kind of personalization to adapt, you still need to manually make choices, create content, and set triggers. Thankfully, there are plenty of useful automation tools out there to finish the job for you. Combining personalization methods with your email campaigns is the way to go. More than 94% of professionals agree that personalized emails bring in business. In fact, targeting users with content relevant to their position along the buying process can yield 73% higher conversion rates. 3. Automation using a chatbot Social media can be a great source of leads. According to Pinpoint Market Research, 64% of B2B marketers generate leads via LinkedIn, 49% via Facebook, and 36% via Twitter. However, social media is so much more to your business than a way to generate leads. These platforms have also become customer service channels through which people expect immediate responses — no matter what time zone they’re in. Here is yet another way automation technology comes to the rescue. With massive leaps in artificial intelligence due to machine learning systems, the complexities of language can be managed by chatbots. According to the 2018 State of Chatbots Report, when users were asked why they would engage with chatbots: -35% said they would use the bot to resolve a complaint or problem -22% said they would use it to add themselves to a mailing list -13% said they would use it to buy an expensive item Chatbots, such as those created by Drift, are capable of: -Immediately answering common questions -Routing high-quality leads to your sales reps -Booking a lead to meet with a sales rep if one isn’t immediately available Here’s a more in-depth explanation regarding what you can do with Driftbots: Embed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-1GGTwcXuY Of course, a chatbot can’t do everything for you when it comes to communicating with customers. However, for most consumers, 64%, said chatbots are useful because they are available 24/7. So, unless you’ve got endless resources to pay employees to provide 24/7 customer service, using chatbots has become essential. Even if you can’t answer right away, you can still gather enough information to generate a lead: 4. Lead automation tools using your website data In addition to chatbots, pop-ups, lead generation pages, and email software, there are automated tools that generate leads based on who visits your website via Google Analytics. These programs automatically assign a score to a user based on relevance, which will help you determine which visitors to contact directly. Along these same lines, you’ll be able to set up email alerts when specific companies visit your site. You can even connect such tools to your CRM to create a centralized database of information for following up with all leads — regardless of how you initially connected with them. Final thoughts: How to generate high-quality leads using automation Successful lead generation, as well as lead nurturing, hinges on relevance. You can create relevance through personalizing content, prompt responses, or combining the two through automated email campaigns. Introducing automation to your lead generation efforts makes the process fast and efficient by eliminating low-value and repetitive tasks from your workday. Not only will automation end up being quicker, but you’re also going to get better results.