Marketers, this one's for you!
Welcome to the second part of our blog series on leveraging automation in Zoho Forms! If you are just joining us, in part 1, we explored what automation means and why it is important. Although we'll cover various types of automation in this series, as a marketer, the very first topic that came to my mind was geared towards marketing. Marketers wear many hats: From crafting compelling campaigns to engaging with our audience across multiple channels, our days are filled with tasks. Amidst the hustle and bustle, finding time for creativity often feels like a challenge. This made me begin thinking about the automation tools that are streamlining marketers' workflows and making our jobs more efficient.
Automation in Marketing
Automation isn't about replacing human creativity; it's about amplifying it. Just by automating a few repetitive tasks, you can reclaim time that can be reinvested into brainstorming innovative ideas, crafting captivating content, and driving impactful campaigns.
Up to 91% of marketers say marketing automation helps them achieve their objectives (Exploding Topics, 2024). This signifies a strong correlation between automation and achieving marketing goals.
So, how does Zoho Forms support automation in marketing? Before we get into the processes we can automate, let's first look at some of the marketing tasks we handle in our day to day work life.
Getting content approved and scheduled
Writing emails
Managing marketing events
Assigning marketing tasks within the team
This list is not exhaustive; it merely scratches the surface, but let's discuss how we can automate these tasks.
Simplifying lead generation
According to HubSpot, businesses that use marketing automation to nurture leads experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. If you are manually inputting lead information into your CRM system, it's time to start using online forms to create custom lead generation forms. Whether it is capturing contact information from website visitors or gathering feedback from a recent campaign, Zoho Forms streamlines the process, automatically syncing data with Zoho CRM for efficient lead management.
Each time potential customers visit your website and engage with it, they encounter a sleek and user-friendly form that collects essential information in seconds. Behind the scenes, Zoho Forms seamlessly integrates with Zoho CRM, ensuring that every lead is captured and nurtured effectively.
Getting content approved
Content creation is a major marketing activity, and it's crucial to ensuring your message is polished, accurate, and aligned with your brand. This is why the content approval process is so important—a formal process guarantees your content meets specific quality standards before it is published. Reviewers may include editors, subject matter experts, marketing specialists, or legal teams. Each reviewer provides feedback based on their area of expertise.
However, traditional methods of content approval, such as endless email chains and documents sent back and forth, can stifle and delay your content creation process. By implementing an automated content approval system with Zoho Forms, you can:
Design custom approval forms to gather all necessary content information, including drafts, revisions, and feedback requests.
Automate the routing of forms to designated reviewers.
Enable reviewers to leave comments, suggestions, and approvals directly on the form, eliminating the need for separate email threads.
Provide instant notifications to relevant stakeholders when a form is submitted and reviewed.
Taming your content calendar
Content creation is your marketing engine's fuel. However, keeping track of content ideas, deadlines, and publishing schedules can quickly become overwhelming. With Zoho Forms, simply create a content calendar form with content title, type, target audience, publishing date, and any other relevant information, and once your marketing team submits this form, push this data to popular calendar platforms such as Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar.
This way, all content ideas, deadlines, and publishing schedules are consolidated into one centralized calendar, eliminating scattered documents or emails. Zoho Forms' integration with popular calendar platforms allows your marketing team to continue using familiar tools without having to switch between multiple platforms or manually transfer information, saving time and reducing the risk of errors. With every new form submission, automatically update the connected calendar, ensuring everyone has access to the most current information.
Check out how you can integrate Zoho Forms with your calendars.
Automating welcome emails
Welcome emails provide the first interaction with users after they sign up for your product. But Ever feel like you are stuck in an endless cycle of welcome emails? We've all been there: the never-ending queue of emails to be sent.
With Zoho Forms, welcome emails can be sent instantly when a new user signs up, ensuring timely engagement and making users feel valued from the moment they join your product or service, while freeing up time for your team to focus on other tasks and initiatives. Zoho Forms lets you design email templates packed with dynamic fields that automatically pull information from the sign-up form. This means you can:
Address users by name: A simple "Hi [Name]" goes a long way!
Refer to any specific features or services the user selected.
Offer helpful resources.
Managing marketing events
Planning a marketing event can feel like conducting an orchestra with a dozen broken instruments if you have disorganized registrations, scattered information, and endless communication loops. Zoho Forms makes it easy to fix these issues and make event management more efficient.
Create interactive registration forms and watch confirmation emails fly out instantly, keeping the attendees informed.
Personalize the attendee experience with conditional routing by automatically sending different emails to individuals based on their form responses.
Save time by choosing quickly from a library of prebuilt event registration form templates and customizing them to fit your specific event needs.
Simplify event registration fees within your form using popular payment gateways. Attendees can register and pay in a single, secure step.
Spread the word and boost event awareness by easily sharing your event registration form on your social media platforms.
Streamline volunteer applications and onboarding with dedicated volunteer forms.
Gather feedback with post-event feedback forms to measure attendee satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.
The possibilities are endless! Focus on the creative aspects: crafting captivating event experiences that wow your audience while Zoho Forms handles the mundane tasks for you.
Assigning tasks within your team
Save time by automating marketing task assignment within your team. Avoid endless email threads and guesswork about who in your marketing team should handle incoming leads or campaign tasks. Define conditional rules that trigger task assignments based on specific conditions when a form is submitted.
For example, if you have a lead generation form embedded on your webpage, a lead from a particular industry might be assigned to a specialist in that area. This eliminates the need for manual intervention, freeing up time for your team to focus on strategic initiatives.
Similarly, if you have a content request form to assign content writing tasks within the team, you can define rules to route the requests to the right person with the relevant skills For example, if the Content Type field indicates "Blog Post," the task is assigned to the writer specializing in blog content creation. If it indicates "Infographic," the task is directed to the graphic designer.
Try these Zoho Forms workflows with your own marketing team and share your success stories in the comments below! We can't wait to hear how automation transforms your workflows. In part 3 of this blog series, we'll explore another surprising industry where automation can work wonders. See you soon!
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