Marketing automation helps optimize many aspects of franchisee recruitment. Its implementation can be time-consuming and requires various skills. However, in the long run, it saves valuable time. Creating optimized campaigns helps you attract new candidates more effectively. Find below all the key information about marketing automation for your franchise.
What is marketing automation?
As its name suggests, marketing automation generally refers to the automation of marketing campaigns based on a set of predefined conditions and user behavior. Among the marketing actions you can automate are: sending emails, SMS messages, and contact segmentation. On a more technical level, you can also automate:
- Lead scoring, which is the calculation and assignment of a score to each prospect to indicate their conversion potential and the strength of their interest in your network.
- Lead nurturing, or the maintenance and strengthening of a marketing relationship with prospects who are not yet ready to take action (such as submitting a franchise application) with your brand.
Unlike traditional email marketing, which involves sending the same email to a list of contacts (one to many), marketing automation sends targeted and customizable automated emails that are triggered by specific actions taken by prospects.
To make franchisee recruitment easier, it’s essential to use all the tools that can help boost the development of your network. Marketing automation is one of these key tools, allowing you to save valuable time while significantly increasing both the number of applications you receive and the conversion rate of your candidates.
How can you use marketing automation to save time processing franchise applications?
Analyze the actions of prospective franchisees
To implement effective marketing follow-up, it’s important to carefully analyze each action taken by candidates in order to understand where they are in their application journey. You can track their actions based on the time they spend on each page of your website and how long they dedicate to each of them. With proper analysis, you can take specific actions at the right time.
Segmenting candidates
Thanks to marketing automation, you can effectively segment your candidates. This allows you to send targeted messages and announcements via email, depending on where the candidate is in your process. For example, if the candidate has started reviewing all the franchise information, you can send them an email with more detailed content and offer a first meeting or call.
Help prospects mature and advance their application process
Marketing automation tools help move prospects forward in the decision-making process. You can particularly benefit from lead nurturing techniques to strengthen the marketing relationship you have with candidates. Lead nurturing is especially useful for long conversion cycles, such as franchisee recruitment. By offering high-quality, targeted, and informative content, you help candidates gain maturity through the real added value you provide.
Send targeted e-mails
Once your candidate segmentation is properly done, you can create automated and personalized email campaigns using workflows. Workflows are automated, targeted sequences of several emails designed to encourage the prospect to take a specific action. In the case of a franchise candidate, this action could be contacting you to open a franchise. The workflow can be triggered by subscribing to your newsletter, downloading your information brochure, interacting with a landing page, or participating in an online information session.
Create automated publications on social networks
It is also through your social media strategy that you attract new franchise prospects. Alongside publishing content on your website, you can schedule the automatic posting of content on your social networks. By using marketing automation tools, you can create high-quality content and measure its impact, whether in terms of website visitors or the conversion of visitors into leads. In summary, marketing automation enables you to publish relevant, high-quality content at the right time across all your social media channels.
The ultimate goal of marketing automation is to turn prospects into franchisees through sales opportunities. By using marketing automation at different levels, you can know exactly where the candidate stands in the recruitment process. When a prospect reaches a certain score, a lead will automatically be created in your CRM so that they can be quickly contacted by a sales representative or a franchise development manager.
By implementing all these marketing automation actions, your franchise candidate recruitment process will be simplified, and you will be able to identify future franchisees more effectively.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of marketing automation?
Marketing automation offers many advantages for simplifying franchisee recruitment, but it also comes with a few challenges. Here is a brief summary of its advantages and disadvantages.
Benefits of marketing automation
- Significant time savings for the marketing and sales teams, allowing them to focus on other tasks.
- Impactful marketing actions on the right channels with messages that align perfectly.
- Cost savings on marketing and sales campaigns.
- Optimization of prospect conversion into new franchisees.
- Reduction of repetitive tasks.
- Optimization of digital marketing campaigns through performance analysis.
- Improved marketing effectiveness through better prospect targeting.
- A higher conversion rate thanks to targeted marketing actions.
Disadvantages of marketing automation
- The complexity of implementing a marketing automation software.
- Marketing automation requires a significant investment of time and resources during its implementation.
The disadvantages of marketing automation remain quite limited compared to all the benefits it offers. However, it is important to take them into account before implementing marketing automation actions.
Our recommendations for successful implementation
Before launching a marketing automation strategy, you need to clearly define your objectives and prioritize them. Do you want to convert more prospects into franchise candidates, or would you rather pass on more “qualified” leads to your sales team? Once your objectives are clearly defined, you should create tailored marketing automation scenarios and test them to continuously improve their performance.
Smart Automation Flow
Integrated into our solution, our Smart Automation Flow feature fully leverages this approach to optimize your communications during candidate recruitment for your network. The goal is to greatly simplify your recruitment process, enabling smoother management and more targeted interaction with your candidates.
Curious to learn more? Download our brochure to discover all the benefits of the Smart Automation Flow! 🚀👩🚀
You can also use marketing automation solutions such as Pardot by Salesforce, Eloqua by Oracle, InfusionSoft, Marketo by Adobe, or Plezi.
The key to a successful marketing automation campaign is to proceed step by step, and above all, to always personalize your actions!
💬 Still unsure about switching to marketing automation? Discover testimonials from Cerca!
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