I’ve worked in marketing for the past 5 years as a CRM manager, content writer, and automation specialist. I began working for an IT firm in the healthcare vertical by learning to operate their marketing CRM. I was handed the metaphorical instruction manual and told ‘good luck, hang in there.’ Over the next year, I taught myself every aspect of that CRM, from list cleaning to sales funnel automation.
The most basic part of the job was list cleaning, and it was the most mundane. Checking each business, line by line, to see if the information was current and if that business was a fit for our marketing. Once the list was cleaned and imported into the system, I segmented it by vertical, location, and size to more accurately target our marketing campaigns. Some of these aspects were defined in contact record fields, and some were represented by tags in the system. As a contact interacted with our marketing by responding to emails or filling out forms on landing pages, they received tags automatically that further tracked their progress and responses.
The next step of that CRM was campaign automation. I built the marketing automation campaigns that stepped the sales team through the process of sending out direct mail to hundreds of leads and then following up with 3-5 phone calls to the businesses. At every step, the contact was tagged and tracked in the system. Depending on the outcome of that campaign, the contact was sorted into drip marketing campaigns and slated for another campaign in the next quarter.
The drip marketing was also handled within the CRM. Weekly or monthly emails could be built into a campaign and sent automatically. Lists for direct mail marketing, such as postcards and newsletters, were also managed within the CRM. Every iteration of a marketing campaign could be built into the system to track a lead’s progress.
Once a contact had expressed interest and became a lead, they moved from the marketing campaigns into the sales funnel, which was also handled within the CRM. Through customized internal forms, automated tasks, tags, and notes, a contact could be followed from initial interest all the way to First Time Appointment, Sales Pitch, and Close.
In addition to direct mail and direct call campaigns, I also built automated sales funnels utilizing landing pages. These campaigns used social media posts or email to advertise an offer, then featured a landing page that collected data while also offering a limited time exclusive upsell. These evergreen campaigns can run automatically in the background of all other marketing efforts, generating new leads in addition to passive income. Automated sales funnels like this are a great asset to set up for your business early on, as you can get more value from it over time.
While most of my work focused on operating the CRM, I also created content for the newsletter, postcard mailers, and email marketing campaigns. These articles were tailored to the healthcare vertical and covered niche topics such as HIPAA compliance that would be relevant to the client’s ideal audience.