Create a fully functional lead magnet and nurturing automation step-by-step, using all the tools you’ve learned about.
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Home > Ontraport for marketing > Automations > Putting automations together
Home > Automations > Putting automations together
Putting automations together
You'll learn:
- The strategy behind a lead magnet offer
- The way to use triggers to get your automation rolling
- How to set up a string of relevant follow-up messages
- The strategy for creating a long-term lead nurture funnel
- How to wrap up your automation when a contact makes a purchase
Sam Flegal
Putting automations together
Create a fully functional lead magnet and nurturing automation step-by-step, using all the tools you’ve learned about.
- The strategy behind a lead magnet offer
- The way to use triggers to get your automation rolling
- How to set up a string of relevant follow-up messages
- The strategy for creating a long-term lead nurture funnel
- How to wrap up your automation when a contact makes a purchase
Course Instructor
Sam Flegal
Related resources
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Transcript
You’ve learned about the different tools available to you when building your automations – everything from communication elements like emails and SMS messages to conditional filters and splits.
Now, it’s time to put it all together in a useful way — and that’s where this video comes in. I’m going to show you how to use the tools you have to create a fully functional new lead magnet and nurturing automation.
If you’ve never built something like this before, let me talk you through some of the strategy behind it:
First off, a lead magnet is a freebie you offer on your website in exchange for someone filling out a form and providing you with their contact information, usually an email address. Typically, the freebie is something like an ebook, whitepaper or a free chapter of your book — you get the idea. You’ll often have more than one freebie, since they’re a great way to address the different problems your product solves.
For example, if you’re running a marketing agency, you might offer an ebook on strategies for generating new leads. You could also have a different ebook about increasing conversion rates in your nurturing funnels. The idea is that you’ll learn a little more about your customers and their needs when they request one of these lead magnets.
Once you get leads’ email addresses, you can leverage what you’ve learned about them to start sending them compelling offers.
If they don’t take you up on a couple of these, you can take a step back and pivot to sending them a series of educational emails designed to nurture them towards a sale.
Here’s how to create a lead magnet and nurturing automation:
Let’s begin!
First, you’ll Create your triggers.
Let’s start with a form fill-out trigger.
To add a new trigger, find the “Contact submits a Form” option.
Then use the dropdown menu to select a form.
If it’s on an Ontraport Page, find and select the form on the page.
You won’t need a condition for this trigger, because everyone who fills out your form should get your free value item.
Don’t forget about your settings on the left side of the screen!
For “Who can activate this trigger?” select “Any Contact in account” because you want new contacts who aren’t already on this automation to be able to activate it.
The “If Contact is already on the map, then…” setting is up to you. If a contact fills out the lead magnet form more than once, what do you want to happen? You have two options here:
Maybe you want them to receive the email again — after all, people can be forgetful! In this case, set it to “Add here again when triggered” or “move here” As we learned, if you add here again, the contact will then be on the map twice and will get all these emails twice. Probably better to move them here, and just let them start over.
Or maybe you don’t want them to get the ebook a second time at all! In that case, set it to “Ignore this trigger.” But, come on. If someone asked for your ebook and gave you their email address, you don’t want to just ignore them. So let’s just leave this on add here again.
Now, it’s time to follow-up with your leads. Let’s start by giving them what they opted in for. You’ll do this with an email element.
Go ahead and add the element and, under “Send Contacts this Email,” pick the message that sends them the goods. Click “Done.”
Beneath that, put in a one-day “Wait” step so you don’t send all your follow up at the same moment.
In the settings, select “Some time passes” from the dropdown, and put in one day.
Now let’s set up a condition to remove customers from the rest of your nurture funnel, because you don’t want to make existing customers go through your entire lead nurturing sequence of emails again.
Add the condition and select “Has ordered a certain amount of a product.”
The easiest way to do this would be to select “Greater Than or Equal To” then “one” and, in the last field, put “Any Product.”
You can use whatever settings best fit your needs. But remember that your end goal is removing contacts who’ve already bought your products from your sales emails.
On the “Yes” side of the condition, you’ll want to add an “Exit” step so all your customers are removed from this automation, and they won’t receive any unnecessary communication from you in the future.
Next, you’ll create your second email, which is your first opportunity to actually offer these leads something!
On the “No” side of the condition, add another email. This is where you’ll want to start talking to leads about your offerings in a way that makes sense based on what you know about them so far.
So, if a lead opted in for a lead nurturing ebook, it would make sense to talk about how your agency can help with increasing conversion rates from lead to sale.
Add another email, select the message from the dropdown, and then move on to the next step.
Remember the "Wait" step so you don't annoy people with too much communication all at once!
So insert another “Wait” step.
Different industries communicate to their audiences, well, differently! For some companies, it may be standard to communicate daily, while for others, once a week is enough. So, be strategic.
At this point, you could include more emails and “Wait” steps in this automation. You can use as many as you feel are necessary to warm your leads.
For our example here, you’ll send a total of three emails.
You’ll need to repeat this entire sequence of emails for each of your other two triggers, since the ebook you’re delivering and the subsequent emails will be different.
The easiest way to do this is to go all the way up to your first email step and drag the arrow into the “What happens next?” space beneath the other two triggers.
When you let go, you’ll be asked if you want to copy just this one element or this element and everything beneath it. You’ll want to click that second option.
Then all you have to do is go through each email step and insert the email to be sent to those who meet the criteria of each of the other triggers..
Now on to step three. Let’s Add a longer-term lead nurture funnel.
So, if you’ve been in business a while, you’ll know that most of your leads won’t take you up on the first few offers you throw at them. And this is where a lot of businesses start to fail — they figure they shot their shot and they leave those leads to rot.
This is a mistake. Maybe it’s just not the right time for that lead. Maybe they are still sussing out their issue and figuring out potential solutions.
The point is, there’s still value in leads who haven’t converted yet. The easiest way to not drop the ball here is to build a long-term series of emails designed to keep your business top of mind.
Now, while these leads are worth following up with, they’re probably not worth writing three different sets of emails for. But you can get a little more generic in your email content at this point. So let’s build a single automation path, then bring all three paths together.
You’ll start by adding a series of wait steps and emails.
But remember that your lead has cooled off quite a bit and might not be as interested in your business! So these waits should be longer. If you are sending out daily emails, consider changing to every three, five or seven days. You want to pique their interest periodically, not be pushy and cause them to opt out of your stuff!
The length of this funnel depends on how many emails you have written, but I’ve seen them last anywhere from months to many years.
Once you’ve added your wait and email steps, you need to bring the other two automation paths together. You’ll do this using “Go to” elements. Insert a “Go to” beneath the other two paths, then drag the arrow to reconnect with the first flow on that first step of the long-term lead nurturing funnel.
Now, all of this marketing and keeping in touch is great, but don’t forget your ultimate goal — you want leads to buy your product.
The best way to measure how successful you are with these various efforts is to simply place a Purchase goal at the end of your entire funnel.
This goal should be set to “Purchases Product.” Then you’ll select the product from the dropdown.
You can add more than one product if you want by inserting additional “Purchases Product” goals.
Note that these goals should be set to “Move here when achieved” and “Any contact on this map.” This will make sure that any marketing steps are skipped if a contact purchases your product at any point before this goal.
With this goal attached to the bottom of your automation, you’re actively monitoring how successful your three different offers are at converting leads, as well as how your long-term lead nurturing efforts are working out. You’ll be able to see all that data in Automation Performance mode after it’s published.
And that is our last step… to Publish your Automation and get the whole thing live and running!
Nice work — now you’ve got a fully functioning New Lead Nurturing System!
You can use this to collect new leads, send them highly targeted offer emails, then follow up with a longer term lead nurturing campaign, all while keeping track of who buys your product along the way.
Now that you’ve built a super-functional automation, let’s look at some other features that will benefit you as a marketer.
Now, it’s time to put it all together in a useful way — and that’s where this video comes in. I’m going to show you how to use the tools you have to create a fully functional new lead magnet and nurturing automation.
If you’ve never built something like this before, let me talk you through some of the strategy behind it:
First off, a lead magnet is a freebie you offer on your website in exchange for someone filling out a form and providing you with their contact information, usually an email address. Typically, the freebie is something like an ebook, whitepaper or a free chapter of your book — you get the idea. You’ll often have more than one freebie, since they’re a great way to address the different problems your product solves.
For example, if you’re running a marketing agency, you might offer an ebook on strategies for generating new leads. You could also have a different ebook about increasing conversion rates in your nurturing funnels. The idea is that you’ll learn a little more about your customers and their needs when they request one of these lead magnets.
Once you get leads’ email addresses, you can leverage what you’ve learned about them to start sending them compelling offers.
If they don’t take you up on a couple of these, you can take a step back and pivot to sending them a series of educational emails designed to nurture them towards a sale.
Here’s how to create a lead magnet and nurturing automation:
- First you’ll create your triggers,
- Then you’ll deliver relevant follow-up,
- You’ll build a longer-term lead nurturing funnel,
- And, finally, you’ll add your purchase goal.
Let’s begin!
First, you’ll Create your triggers.
Let’s start with a form fill-out trigger.
To add a new trigger, find the “Contact submits a Form” option.
Then use the dropdown menu to select a form.
If it’s on an Ontraport Page, find and select the form on the page.
You won’t need a condition for this trigger, because everyone who fills out your form should get your free value item.
Don’t forget about your settings on the left side of the screen!
For “Who can activate this trigger?” select “Any Contact in account” because you want new contacts who aren’t already on this automation to be able to activate it.
The “If Contact is already on the map, then…” setting is up to you. If a contact fills out the lead magnet form more than once, what do you want to happen? You have two options here:
Maybe you want them to receive the email again — after all, people can be forgetful! In this case, set it to “Add here again when triggered” or “move here” As we learned, if you add here again, the contact will then be on the map twice and will get all these emails twice. Probably better to move them here, and just let them start over.
Or maybe you don’t want them to get the ebook a second time at all! In that case, set it to “Ignore this trigger.” But, come on. If someone asked for your ebook and gave you their email address, you don’t want to just ignore them. So let’s just leave this on add here again.
Now, it’s time to follow-up with your leads. Let’s start by giving them what they opted in for. You’ll do this with an email element.
Go ahead and add the element and, under “Send Contacts this Email,” pick the message that sends them the goods. Click “Done.”
Beneath that, put in a one-day “Wait” step so you don’t send all your follow up at the same moment.
In the settings, select “Some time passes” from the dropdown, and put in one day.
Now let’s set up a condition to remove customers from the rest of your nurture funnel, because you don’t want to make existing customers go through your entire lead nurturing sequence of emails again.
Add the condition and select “Has ordered a certain amount of a product.”
The easiest way to do this would be to select “Greater Than or Equal To” then “one” and, in the last field, put “Any Product.”
You can use whatever settings best fit your needs. But remember that your end goal is removing contacts who’ve already bought your products from your sales emails.
On the “Yes” side of the condition, you’ll want to add an “Exit” step so all your customers are removed from this automation, and they won’t receive any unnecessary communication from you in the future.
Next, you’ll create your second email, which is your first opportunity to actually offer these leads something!
On the “No” side of the condition, add another email. This is where you’ll want to start talking to leads about your offerings in a way that makes sense based on what you know about them so far.
So, if a lead opted in for a lead nurturing ebook, it would make sense to talk about how your agency can help with increasing conversion rates from lead to sale.
Add another email, select the message from the dropdown, and then move on to the next step.
Remember the "Wait" step so you don't annoy people with too much communication all at once!
So insert another “Wait” step.
Different industries communicate to their audiences, well, differently! For some companies, it may be standard to communicate daily, while for others, once a week is enough. So, be strategic.
At this point, you could include more emails and “Wait” steps in this automation. You can use as many as you feel are necessary to warm your leads.
For our example here, you’ll send a total of three emails.
You’ll need to repeat this entire sequence of emails for each of your other two triggers, since the ebook you’re delivering and the subsequent emails will be different.
The easiest way to do this is to go all the way up to your first email step and drag the arrow into the “What happens next?” space beneath the other two triggers.
When you let go, you’ll be asked if you want to copy just this one element or this element and everything beneath it. You’ll want to click that second option.
Then all you have to do is go through each email step and insert the email to be sent to those who meet the criteria of each of the other triggers..
Now on to step three. Let’s Add a longer-term lead nurture funnel.
So, if you’ve been in business a while, you’ll know that most of your leads won’t take you up on the first few offers you throw at them. And this is where a lot of businesses start to fail — they figure they shot their shot and they leave those leads to rot.
This is a mistake. Maybe it’s just not the right time for that lead. Maybe they are still sussing out their issue and figuring out potential solutions.
The point is, there’s still value in leads who haven’t converted yet. The easiest way to not drop the ball here is to build a long-term series of emails designed to keep your business top of mind.
Now, while these leads are worth following up with, they’re probably not worth writing three different sets of emails for. But you can get a little more generic in your email content at this point. So let’s build a single automation path, then bring all three paths together.
You’ll start by adding a series of wait steps and emails.
But remember that your lead has cooled off quite a bit and might not be as interested in your business! So these waits should be longer. If you are sending out daily emails, consider changing to every three, five or seven days. You want to pique their interest periodically, not be pushy and cause them to opt out of your stuff!
The length of this funnel depends on how many emails you have written, but I’ve seen them last anywhere from months to many years.
Once you’ve added your wait and email steps, you need to bring the other two automation paths together. You’ll do this using “Go to” elements. Insert a “Go to” beneath the other two paths, then drag the arrow to reconnect with the first flow on that first step of the long-term lead nurturing funnel.
Now, all of this marketing and keeping in touch is great, but don’t forget your ultimate goal — you want leads to buy your product.
The best way to measure how successful you are with these various efforts is to simply place a Purchase goal at the end of your entire funnel.
This goal should be set to “Purchases Product.” Then you’ll select the product from the dropdown.
You can add more than one product if you want by inserting additional “Purchases Product” goals.
Note that these goals should be set to “Move here when achieved” and “Any contact on this map.” This will make sure that any marketing steps are skipped if a contact purchases your product at any point before this goal.
With this goal attached to the bottom of your automation, you’re actively monitoring how successful your three different offers are at converting leads, as well as how your long-term lead nurturing efforts are working out. You’ll be able to see all that data in Automation Performance mode after it’s published.
And that is our last step… to Publish your Automation and get the whole thing live and running!
Nice work — now you’ve got a fully functioning New Lead Nurturing System!
You can use this to collect new leads, send them highly targeted offer emails, then follow up with a longer term lead nurturing campaign, all while keeping track of who buys your product along the way.
Now that you’ve built a super-functional automation, let’s look at some other features that will benefit you as a marketer.
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