Well these days lead gen has been automated a lot beyond using a CRM or a tool to auto send your emails. It is more towards automating journeys now. AI has jumped in to make it way more easier while helping you to write your custom codes or helping you to understand an API connection. Some agencies have already adapted to best use cases and have been able to entirely automated the journey. However with automation and AI there comes a lot challenges including loosing the human touch and quality so it is very important to understand the journey and monitoring the points where human touch is necessary or quality loss can happen.
What does it mean by Automating B2B lead gen?
Well lead generation has been a term used widely for over a long, it simply means generating leads for your business through various modes like Email marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Paid Ads etc. Now these channels are manual plus automated for you by default using different tools like for Email marketing tools like Smartlead.ai, Instantly.ai or paid Ads tools like Google Adwords etc.
However automation is totally different compared to just being dependent on tools in 2024, Automation now means automating the lead journey until it meets a specific goal for example from mining the internet for the data to getting in touch with the prospect and converting it into a lead to a paid client. The whole journey can be 90% automated. The tools will help you to carry out huge amount of tasks but it is still a lot human dependent which could be significantly automated by connecting various end points and using AI to study those end points.
What is journey automation?
Before I jump in explaining the Journey automation, let me explain with an example: One of our client was heavily dependent on human resources for lead generation which was done through email marketing. The journey was like this:
- Ripping B2B Email Database
- Cleaning the Email Database
- Drafting a campaign
- Drafting copies
- Loading data into campaigns
- Starting the campaign
- Going through master Inbox to check for replies
- Tagging interested leads and replying back to them.
- Loading back leads in CRM.
- Creating Tasks and Generating reports.
If you notice this process is tool + human dependent, but we helped them to automate the above use case with 80% automation and 20% human effort required ( to maintain the quality ), The client saved 80 hours per week and with 0% of errors using AI validations as well.
How did we do it? Here are the real examples
Automating (Ripping Database, Validating Database and Drafting copies )
We did it by connecting various API’s which would act based on conditions, for example the Ripping B2B Email Database can be automated by using python scripts or connecting your Database tool like Apollo.io, Zoominfo with email validation tool like Million verifier. The user would just go to their Apollo account and Add the leads to a list, and it would trigger an automation which would push those leads to Million verifier for further cleaning, Once the data is cleaned a condition would be placed which would save all the valid email addresses and other columns to a google sheet and push it via Chatgpt to create personalized copy based on different parameters like “Job Title” “Location” “Industry” etc.
Automating ( Drafting a campaign, Loading data, Starting the campaign )
The chatgpt generated data would be further stored back in the google sheet as a new added column called ” Personalized_First_Liners”. Once this process is achieved it ping the team in slack to do a quick review of the first liners i.e where we maintain a human touch and not loose quality. Once the review is done the team member would prompt in slack “/reveiwdone” this prompt would generate a trigger which would push the google sheets data to an email marketing software like “Smartlead or Instantly”. It would auto select Time zone and maintain copy aesthetics and match the first liner column and kick off the campaign!
Automating ( Reply checking, Tagging leads, Pushing to CRM )
We have successfully launched the campaign now and replies are flowing, so we bring in chatgpt to read out the replies and help us tag them. This happens by connecting the API’s as well as condition based tagging. Once the replies are checked and tagged we would still do a human touch there to ensure no mistakes are happening. Plus the AI would generate an reply for you based on the prompt which matches the “If condition” example if a lead is asking for calendly link, Generate a reply which would send them the link with some value added text.
Based on the Tags we would push the lead details to CRM like Hubspot, If the lead is interested a contact would be created which would be saved in Hubspot, a deal will be created pushing to to specific deal stage and auto task would be assigned to an SDR. It would also use a condition called ” If new leads added to hubspot, find their “Apollo.io contact details and enrich the lead which rest of the information.
Automating ( Reports for better decision making )
I can write about this full day since reporting and data analytics is a way more advanced and we have to analyze data from various end points. But these reports can be automated, once you know what you need you can combine them like for the above clients we used to get auto reports regards to campaign performance, template performance, Pipeline performance etc. for helping us to better our decisions.
Tools we can use for automation?
You can either have your own private server which is costly and requires tech skills or you can go with tools out there which would help you to connect various use cases, Here are the tools which we highly recommend to use.
N8N.io is a very powerful tool which would help you to turn the tables down, The tool has various prebuilt automations or you can develop your own automations. A great and budget friendly solution we have been for our own automations.
Zapier is another powerful solution which is widely famous with inbuilt AI which can be prompted to create automated workflows for you. The tool is little expensive but a very stable option.
Make formerly integromat has been famous among marketers for automation workflows, It is pocket friendly but the prebuilt automations are limited however you can always create your own
Hiring vs Outsourcing B2B Automation?
Should you hire internal automation engineer or go out with an agency? The answer is simple, it depends on your use case. Finding engineers is piece of a cake but finding an engineer with domain knowledge is a very challenging task. Here are the pro’s are cons.
Hiring an Inhouse automation engineer.
Pros:
- Better control over data.
- Better control over quality.
- Deep understanding of companies processes
- Aligns with your organizational’s culture
- Dedicated solely to your organization
Cons:
- Cost of hiring is high.
- Limited skill set
- Dependency on resource
- Risk of attrition
Outsourcing to an agency
Pros:
- Cost effective.
- Access to specialized expertise.
- Scalability
- Reduced risk of attrition
- Faster deployment
Cons:
- Communication challenges
- Less control over resources.
- Data security concerns.
- Lack of company specific knowledge.
Conclusion:
Automations are coming in swiftly with AI and Machine learning models. The speed of technology shift is really crazy this time and hence we have to adapt ourselves as soon as possible. It might mean getting out of your comfort soon and learning or developing new skills in an organization but it is going to be worth it. We need to understand and make sure not to get lost in the world of automations by loosing the human touch, we need to maintain the both which is automation plus quality. You can either do it yourself or hire an agency, the agency would be a better option as there is a gap of learning which will be reduced plus you will have access to wider skill set.
At Click Suggest, we don’t just help you to automate but also help you to maintain the quality over quantity of Automations.