Get Started with Automation Tools

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Identify Account Engagement automation tools.
Create a completion action, automation rule, and a segmentation rule.

Automation: Not Just for Robots

Just like any piece of automated equipment, your account needs some adjustment and fine-tuning to run to your specifications. Once you get these automation tools in place across your account, everything will hum along with ease. Here are the automation tools you can use to build and maintain your accounts.

Completion Actions
Page Actions
Automation Rules
Segmentation Rules
Dynamic Lists

Let’s look at how to set up these tools, which tools work best for common goals, and how to use them together to achieve more complex goals.

Completion Actions

Completion actions let you automate directly from a marketing asset. They execute every time that prospect takes an action on that asset. Because completion actions are action-based, they have a singular, binary criterion: Did the prospect do something? That “something” can be anything from submitting a form to opening an email. If yes, the completion action is triggered immediately and executes every time the action is taken.

It’s important to remember that completion actions are not retroactive. They apply only to activities that happen after the completion action is added. To globally automate an action retroactively in your account, use an automation rule instead.

Completion actions don't execute in a defined order. However, if you have multiple completion actions on one marketing asset, the action that processes first will run first.

To build a sequential prospect experience, use an Engagement Studio program.

Remember Leung from the Explore Strategies That Engage Customers module? Leung is the marketing manager at Get Cloudy, and she wants to automate form submissions from site visits. She is working with Awhina, a Salesforce admin, to automate several marketing campaigns using Account Engagement. Form submissions are manually assigned to Alan, the sales manager. Let’s see how she automates this process.

Navigate to Content | Forms.
Click +Add Form.
Enter Welcome Email for the name.
Click Choose and select Folder.
Click Choose and select Campaign.
Click Next, and Next.
Click Choose and select the Standard Form Layout Template.
Enter all optional information.
Click Next.
Enter optional information.
From the Completion Actions dropdown, select Send autoresponder email.
Enter Sales Rep Outreach in the email template search bar.
Click Next.
Click Confirm & Save.

Page Actions

Page actions are completion actions with one criteria: Has a prospect viewed this page? You can place them on your pricing page or products page and alert your sales team. You can also place one on your jobs page and deduct points from the prospect’s score for viewing. It’s important to note that completion actions are applied only to prospects, and anonymous visitors browsing your site don’t trigger the actions.

For page actions to work, the page must have Account Engagement tracking code or tracking code implemented via a tag manager. You can also set page actions on multiple pages with the same domain by using a wildcard.

Automation Rules

Automation rules are the heavy lifters in the automation toolbox. They’re both powerful and flexible, which makes them a popular choice when automating. They’re also the most comprehensive automation tool offered by Account Engagement. They are built from criteria and actions. The criteria is what sorts through your database for you, and the action is what is applied to the prospects that match your criteria.

Automation rules allow you to perform specific marketing and sales actions based on criteria that you specify. Automation rules continuously look for prospects who match the rule criteria. They are retroactive; but any changes after the rule becomes live are not.

A few things to note about automation rules.

Automation rules begin in the “paused” status. This allows the user to preview matches before resuming the rules for the actions to take place.
You can set automation rules to repeat if you select the repeat rule checkbox. This option lets you control how many times the rule can match a prospect.
If you leave the repeat rule unchecked and an existing automation rule is updated, the automation rule does not match already matched prospects for the same rule.
Deleting an automation rule stops it from running, but the actions it has already applied to prospects is not undone. An automation rule resumes if the rule is ever restored from the recycle bin and restarted.

After you’ve considered your criteria, consider what kind of rule operator to use: either match any or match all. The differences between match any and match all can be confusing. Once you set the rule type to either match any or match all, you then set the operators for your criteria.

Using “is” as your operator: You need to supply an exact match to look for.
Using “contains” as your operator: You can list multiple criteria in one line separated by colons, so there’s more flexibility for a prospect to match a wider range of options.

Let’s look at how to create an automation rule.

Click Automations | Automation rules.
Click +Add Automation Rules.
Enter the name Assign Task to Sales User.
Select the Automations folder if not already selected. Click +Add Folder and enter Automations if that folder has not already been created.
Click Choose Selected.
Leave Repeat Rule unchecked.
Select Match all as the Match Type.
Click +Add new rule.
From the dropdown, select Prospect Score.
From the next dropdown, select is greater than.
Enter a score of 100.
Click +Add new action.
Front the dropdown, select Create Salesforce task.
Fill out task fields as follows:

In Subject enter Consulting Interest Follow Up
Select CRM Owner
Set Priority to High
Set Status to Not Started
Enter Due 3 days from today
Enter Reminder 1 days from today

Review the page.
Select Create automation rules.

Segmentation Rules

Segmentation rules look very similar to automation rules with two main differences: 1) segmentation rules only run once, and 2) they only deal with building lists and campaigns. You can use segmentation rules to create a list of prospects and apply a segmentation action based on specific criteria.

Rule Logic

Segmentation rules use criteria to filter matching prospects to which the user applies actions. When you build your rule, you select and combine various criteria. You can always combine multiple criteria in one line of logic by using semicolons (;) to separate them. The final part to building a segmentation rule is defining which actions you want the rule to take. Every action has something to do with segmenting your audience.

Using Segmentation Rules

A really good use case for segmentation rules is a one time discount after a conference. For example, Get Cloudy wants to send a follow-up email to new prospects who attended their recent Acme Conference. Before Leung can send the email, she would need to create a list.

Depending on how you are segmenting a list, you may need to create a tag before creating your Segmentation rule. If so, you can create one quickly by clicking Content tab | Tags | +Add Tag.

Click Prospects | Segmentation | Segmentation Rules.
Click +Add Segmentation Rule.
Enter the name Acme Conference New Prospect.
Click Set Rules.
Select Match all.
Click +Add new rule.
Select Prospect tag from the first dropdown, select is from the second dropdown and select Acme Conference Attendee from the third dropdown. (See note above if you don’t see this option from the dropdown.)
Click +Add new action.
Click Add list.
Enter the name Acme Conference Attendees.
Click Preview.
Click Preview matches to review your matches.
Click Run Segmentation.
Click Ok in the prompt.

Dynamic Lists

Dynamic lists are “smart” lists that automatically add or remove prospects based on the criteria you set up. They’re easy to set up and they maintain themselves, so they’re a great choice for building lists around information that changes frequently.

Keep in mind that not every list needs to be dynamic. You can still use static lists in your account. Use a static list for things like all the prospects who complete your Contact Us form. You can create this type of list with an automation rule or a completion action. Prospects who complete the form match the rule once and are added to the list.

There are a few differences between static lists and dynamic lists. Dynamic lists cannot manually add/remove prospects to/from dynamic lists. Membership to the lists is refreshed and changed based on the prospects matching or unmatching the criteria. And currently, dynamic lists are not available as CRM-visible lists.

Let’s take a look at how to create a dynamic list. Lueng is back and wants to check her prospects’ activity history for emails they’ve received within the past 2 weeks after the Acme Conference.

Click Prospects | Segmentation | Segmentation Lists.
Click +Add List.
Enter Suppression List: Emailed >2 times in past week for the name.
Click Dynamic List checkbox.
Click Set Rules.
Click +Add new rule.
Select Prospect has been emailed :: 2 :: times in :: 7 :: days.
Click Preview.
Optionally, click Preview matches if you would like to view matches.
Click Run Rules.
Click Ok.

Now that you know more about the automation tools available in Account Engagement, let’s see how to choose the right tool for each automated task in your lead management strategy.

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