How to Create Sitecore 9 Marketing Automation Campaigns

Sitecore 9 Marketing Automation is the newest version of Sitecore that enables marketers to create personalized automated campaigns. Through these new capabilities, marketers can create custom campaigns that are activated by particular user circumstances. How Sitecore Marketing Automation works is as follows: users agree to a set of rules and conditions (as provided by Sitecore), which then allows Sitecore analytics to track online activity as a basis for marketers to produce campaigns tailored to their web surfing behavior. Using your contact list, you can initiate marketing actions based on a number of different categories like demographics, list membership, or goal triggers.

With this blog post, we’re going to go more in depth as to how Sitecore 9 Marketing Automation works and how to create a Sitecore 9 Marketing Automation campaign for your enterprise business.

The Benefits of Creating Automated Online Campaigns in Sitecore

From a Sitecore Development agency like Aumcore, there are tons of reasons why Sitecore is important for enterprise business. Sitecore is a great option because it gives marketers the foundation they need to create and execute a fully cross channel marketing automation strategy. You can reach your target audience across all digital platforms through various web and social sites. Some of the tools that are provided for marketers through Sitecore include the ability to:

• Enroll contacts in automation campaigns
• Evaluate contacts based on defined rules
• Perform various marketing actions for individual contacts

The data Sitecore collects allows marketers to look at their users on an individual level and provide personalized experiences for them. These unique experiences help marketers move users along the sales funnel because they’re exposing consumers to relevant content. For example, Sitecore 9 also allows you to track and analyze the results of your marketing campaigns and, with the information you collect, you can optimize your content for better ROI. This means your campaigns will only get better and better!

With Sitecore, you will also be able to provide your consumers with timely offers. This is a win-win situation because you can target users who are in a specific part of the sales funnel, who will receive relevant offers. Sitecore also allows you to reach users all across the internet on various channels and platforms like desktop, mobile, and social media.

Understanding Sitecore 9 Elements

Before you create a Sitecore Marketing Automation campaign, there are five elements that you need to familiarize yourself with. The main elements of Sitecore campaigns as noted on the site are as follows:

• Default Elements: the Start and End elements that indicate where contacts are enrolled in the automation campaign and where the campaign ends.
  • This element will help you choose your users based on specific user activity. For example, if users have signed up for your newsletter or if they’ve visited the sales page on your website, you can select those users to be opted in to your next marketing campaign.
• Marketing Actions: the elements that you can use to make changes to a contact in the system. For example, if you want to add or subtract points from a contact’s engagement value.
  • This element will allow you to personalize different users based on Scope, Building Trust and Define Concept. You can also choose different marketing actions for users such as send them an email, add to contact list, unsubscribe, update their consent settings, and validate their email address.
• Listeners: the elements you can use to listen for specific actions made by a contact in a specific period to identify how the contact should proceed through the automation campaign.
  • This element will help you understand certain user behaviors and allow you to control how they move through the next stages of the sales funnel.
• Decision Points: the elements where you can specify a rule to identify how a contact should proceed through the automation campaign. You can use this element to filter contacts without delay because they are evaluated against the specified rule immediately.
  • This element will help you differentiate between users by sorting each consumer into different categories based on their actions.
• Other Elements: the elements you can use either to delay a contact’s movement through the campaign, to move a contact to the beginning of the campaign, or to another campaign.
  • This means you can move users to a more relevant section of your marketing automation sitecore 9 campaign to better serve their needs.

Sitecore is the best CMS platform for enterprise businesses because these marketing elements can help you carry out a robust, relevant, and effective marketing campaign through personalization. With Sitecore 9 tracking specific user actions, marketers can use that information to better market their products and services. Knowing where consumer fall in their sales journey is invaluable information to marketers because it enables you to give them the offer they need to convert.

How to Create and Edit Your Automation Campaigns

One of the best things about the newest update to Sitecore’s multi channel marketing automation is drag and drop options.

Marketers can now go to the Sitecore Launchpad > Create > and drag and drop elements from the Toolbox to get started on their campaign. Much like if you were working in Adobe Illustrator, the side panel changes when you click on each element so you can edit the factors to your desired settings.

After you’ve made the changes you want, remember to hit “Apply.” If the campaign is getting too big for the frame, you can also zoom in and out with the mouse or with controls on the bottom-left of the screen. Once you’re done, click save and put in the name and description of your campaign. You can also simply activate your campaign upon completion by heading to Actions > Activate.

Editing a campaign is just as easy as setting one up with Sitecore. However, a word of caution: if you edit a campaign that is currently active, you may interfere with some of the elements of that campaign. For example, if you wanted to change the landing page of a particular message that newly edited landing page may not be the best for some users who were previously being taken through the marketing automation cycle prior to the edits.

To edit your marketing campaign, head to your dashboard and click the name of the campaign you want to change. You can also edit your marketing elements by going to “Details.” Once you’re satisfied with all the changes hit “Apply.” You can also delete elements by hovering over each item and click the “delete” icon. After you have reviewed everything, save it and you’re done!

Key Takeaways

Sitecore 9 is a great tool for marketers of enterprise business because it’s a CMS platform that allows you to deliver personalized marketing campaigns at scale. Consumers are more interested in seeing advertisements and promotions that pertain to their interests. In fact, according to SmarterHQ’s privacy report, 72% of consumers in 2019 only engage with marketing messages that are catered to their specific interests, and 80% of consumers note that they are more likely to purchase a product or service from a brand that personalizes their experiences. Personalization at scale is how Sitecore 9 Marketing Automation works for you. In order to stay relevant to your target audience with Sitecore, we’ve compiled the key takeaways of what it can do for you:

• Create cross-channel marketing campaigns with Sitecore to reach your target audience across the web
• Use Sitecore analytics to optimize your content for users and improve your campaigns
• Create timely offers for your users at different stages of the sales funnel
• Use Sitecore Elements to refine your marketing campaigns to target users who have completed different goals, events, or outcomes
• Create your campaigns with the new, seamless drag and drop feature Sitecore 9 offers
• Edit your campaigns to your liking and click apply!