By bbr

If you’ve been considering marketing automation for your firm, you’ll be happy to hear that MailChimp is now offering a suite of free automation tools. It’s a sweet deal, allowing those with the free versions of MailChimp accounts to use the tools that were previously available only to paid users.

In addition to the perfect price, MailChimp’s latest feature comes with another great advantage: help with figuring out how you can use automated marketing strategies to benefit your firm. Since professional services providers typically don’t have online shopping carts or products that go on sale, some firms are unsure how to utilize marketing automation.

MailChimp is offering “intent-based campaign creation” that walks you through the process and helps generate strategies that are appropriate for your firm and its specific marketing goals. The company offers preset automations you can choose from as well, to help simplify the process.

Another nice feature is the ease of using marketing automation tools in MailChimp. They get that it’s confusing for many people, and really do try to make it accessible.

“Developing a marketing journey for your audience can be a bit overwhelming. No matter your line of work, you have to identify the intent of your messaging, decide how you want to reach your customers, and then make sure you include the right content each step of the way.

With this in mind, we’ve redesigned our campaign creation process, making it easier than ever to create a personalized experience for your customers or subscribers.”

So what can you do with the new automation tools? Plenty. For example, your firm might want to:

• Send invitations to download a whitepaper when new visitors browse specific web pages
• Announce events
• Send personalized greetings and invite questions when new subscribers join your newsletter or email list
• Share company news when you’re mentioned in media or win awards
• Let clients know you’ve added a new service or new partner
• Send sector-specific information (approaching tax deadlines for CPA firms, breaking security threats for IT companies, etc.)
• Let clients know when you’ve published an article that relates to their concerns

As you can see, automation gives you a lot of flexibility to nurture relationships in the ways that are right for your firm, while not spending too much time in the process. The newly free tools from MailChimp are a great way to explore what you can do with marketing automation and learn whether it’s something your firm wants to adopt as part of your marketing strategy. If you’ve already tried out MailChimp’s new offerings, please let us know what you think of them.