How the Sprout Social Salesforce integration strengthens your team

There’s a reason more companies are linking their CRMs with social media management tools like Sprout Social: Optimizing your customer experience should be at the forefront of your social media strategy.

Through a global partnership with Salesforce launched in 2022, Sprout and Salesforce continue to usher in a new era of social customer care. The Sprout Social Salesforce integration empowers your brand to deliver world-class social customer care—all without interrupting your team’s workflow.

And, the Service Cloud integration ensures Salesforce customers can manage all of their social customer care requests directly from within Service Cloud. It enriches customer CRM profiles with social data to provide a holistic view of customer interactions–speeding up internal collaboration while uncovering valuable insights.

In this guide, we’ll break down exactly how the Sprout Social Salesforce integration works. We’ll also highlight how the integration streamlines tasks across your entire business and makes it easier to prove the effectiveness of your strategies.

Why you need to integrate your CRM with social media ASAP

The importance of social media integrations with your business’ tech stack can’t be overstated. And your CRM platform should be a top priority.

This is especially true as customers rely on social media as a research tool, support channel and place to sound off about brands.

According to the 2023 Sprout Social Index™, 76% of consumers notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support, and 70% of consumers expect a company to provide personalized responses to customer service needs. Yet only 30% of brands have adopted customer care processes and tools designed to actively engage with customers on social.

When brands leave their consumers behind, they’re missing out on key opportunities to improve customer retention and their bottom line.

The Sprout Social Salesforce integration addresses this.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s dive into some of the key upsides of linking your CRM with your social presence.

Create a 360-degree view of your customer

Social data is the missing puzzle piece that completes the 360-degree view of your customer.

According to the 2023 State of Social Media report, 88% of business leaders agree social media data and insights are critical to delivering exceptional customer care.

Empower your agents with a complete customer 360 view before responding to customers. Sprout Social enriches your Salesforce customer CRM data with social data to provide a comprehensive view. With this integration, agents can engage in real time with the right context.

Sprout’s Tableau Business Intelligence (BI) Connector takes it a step further by combining social data in an omnichannel view, customized with the exact visuals and metric combinations companies need. This delivers rich data options and visualizations that give users a complete view of their customers, without requiring time-consuming work.

With a more complete picture of your customer, you can create meaningful customer journeys and segment audiences based on their social interactions with your brand. Use the robust social data shared with Salesforce to ensure you’re delivering personalized messages that convert contacts to lifelong customers.

Monitor make-or-break moments in the buyer’s journey

CRMs help businesses assist leads and customers on the path to purchase.

And social media is where so many crucial moments happen during that journey.

This rings true for B2B and B2C alike. Let’s assume that the typical B2B buyer’s journey is around eight months. Social interactions are a given for folks doing their homework on a product.

Meanwhile, research from TikTok describes consumer behavior as an “infinite loop” in B2C. The modern path to purchase is far from linear when people are bouncing between so many channels.

As customers bounce between platforms and content, social media serves as a place to make valuable touchpoints along the way. This includes answering questions and publishing educational content to nurture leads.

In fact, the most recent Index found the primary reason people follow brands on social is to stay informed about products and services.

Earn (and track) more social sales

The growth of social selling speaks for itself.

Do activities such as customer care and content marketing contribute big-time to closing and retaining leads? Of course.

Still, they’re difficult to track without a CRM.

With integrations like those between Sprout Social and Salesforce, it’s so much easier to attribute sales from social. The ability to quickly answer questions and handoff cases between social, sales and support likewise makes it easier to respond to people quickly.

Gather meaningful customer insights you might otherwise miss

The more info you have about your customers, the better.

Consolidating touchpoints between social media and your CRM gives you a more in-depth understanding of your audience. And by tapping into Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector, your team can access all consumer data in one place to get a birds-eye view of how social media fits into the larger picture.

Fact: the 2023 State of Social Media report found that 95% of business leaders agree they must rely more heavily on social data to inform decisions outside of marketing. Consider how many people use social media as a place to sound off about brands.

These conversations and activities provide insights for sales and support, including:

• Sales objections
• Pain points and challenges
• Wants and needs
• Competitor advantages (and disadvantages)

With all of the above on hand, your team can approach leads and customers with a much-needed sense of confidence.

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How does Salesforce integrate with Sprout Social?

Here’s a quick snapshot of the Sprout Social Salesforce integration and what you can do with it:

• Create Salesforce contacts, leads and cases directly in Sprout. This means you can route social customers to support and sales without leaving Sprout or Salesforce.
• Paint a complete picture of your CRM contacts with information and conversations via social media.
• Tie your social presence to actual business results with analytics and reporting.
• Personalize audience segments and journeys in Marketing Cloud based on your social data.
• Respond directly within Service Cloud where agents work, reducing the need for multiple tools wrapped in a layer of governance and security.

As an added bonus, our Salesforce integration is available on all Sprout plans. Features and requirements below:

• Requirements: Salesforce account
• Data types: messages, contacts, tickets
• Key functionality: create leads, edit contact information, create cases, edit cases, auto-sync

What entities are available with the Sprout Social Salesforce integration?

The Salesforce social media integration with Sprout Social allows the creation and editing of these entities directly within Sprout’s dashboard:

• Leads: Kick off the sales process by identifying potential customers through questions, comments and other social media interactions.
• Cases: Route customer issues or concerns posted on social to your support team without leaving the platform.
• Contacts: Beyond customers, you can keep track of social interactions with contacts such as company partners.

To learn more, check out this detailed breakdown.

Sprout + Tableau + Salesforce

We understand there are times when you need to take social data outside of Sprout to combine with other data streams (including customer care and other marketing data), and to further customize it based on your company’s own internal preferences.

With Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector, you can combine the power of social data with other business channels. The tool enables you to analyze data, create custom metrics and merge different data sources.

This seamless and customized view gives you a consolidated source of truth for wider business insights and performance.

The integration:

• Consolidates wider business updates
• Builds your perfect dashboard
• Accesses data without the dev network

For Salesforce users, this ensures social data and insights are included in your 360-degree view of your customers.

4 key benefits of using the Sprout Social Salesforce integration

To wrap things up, let’s look at some of the specific benefits of using a Salesforce social media integration like Sprout.

1. Provide better customer care

According to the Index, the most memorable brands on social respond to customers. And when consumers do reach out for help, 69% expect brands to respond within the same day.

Our Salesforce integration can help you keep tabs on every customer question that comes your way, and respond fast when you need to most.

Logging social activity means a more comprehensive understanding of your customers’ wants and needs. Not having to bounce between your CRM and social tools is a huge time-saver. In turn, you speed up your response time.

Not only that, our smart, automated case creation and routing feature improves agent productivity and optimizes the customer experience. It makes sure inbound messages reach the right agent fast—right inside of Salesforce. And because agents don’t have to spend time weeding through a never-ending stream of messages, they have more time to focus on high-quality customer care initiatives, leading to an improved customer experience.

The end result: responding to customers faster and coming up with better solutions to meet their needs. Doing so is a recipe for long-term loyalty and retention.

2. Align your marketing, sales and support teams

Consider that 36% of marketers say they struggle with cross-team collaboration.

When marketing, sales and support are aligned, each team is empowered to do their best work. There’s so much room for error if you only log your customers’ social interactions sometimes.

Think about it. If marketing or sales leave out key customer details in your CRM, your support team is left in the dark. On the flip side, marketing should be aware of sales objections and concerns to better speak to customers’ desires.

Here are some specific ways that Sprout’s Salesforce integration can help:

• Save time by eliminating needless back-and-forth between vendors, managers and social managers.
• Swiftly route cases to avoid bouncing between tools.
• Provide each team the context they need to serve your customers.

3. Boost the value behind your marketing content

Learning what makes customers bounce or stick around is invaluable for marketers.

Tracking these touchpoints can lead to the answers you need to create more impactful content, meaningful marketing messaging and personalized customer journeys. This includes:

• Blog posts
• Social posts (think: how-tos, tutorials and content you share to nurture customers)
• Reports, white papers and other lead magnets
• Webinars

For example, marketers might learn that high price points are the most common sales objection among lost leads. This information encourages the marketing side to reframe their messaging and how they speak to their audience.

4. More meaningful attribution via analytics

Perhaps most importantly, social integration with your CRM highlights the ROI of your team’s efforts.

This is an ongoing struggle for marketers, in particular. Although social media is a must-have for businesses, determining its business impact can be tricky.

That’s where Sprout comes in. Through our marketing and analytics features, brands can see how social engagements correspond with dollars and cents. Proving how these interactions contribute to revenue reinforces the value of social to stakeholders.

And with our reporting functionality in Salesforce, you can keep track of your full omnichannel experience, including seeing which channels (e.g. phone, email, social) and social channels (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook) cases come from.

When you need to aggregate all of your marketing, customer care and social data in one place, Sprout’s Tableau integration will help you best tell the story of your brand’s success on social and beyond.

Checkout this article to understand why is Sprout the best alternative for Salesforce Social Studio.

Ready to try the Sprout Social Salesforce Integration?

From customer insights to better service, the upsides of linking your social presence with your CRM are crystal clear.

Thankfully, getting up and running with the Sprout Social Salesforce integration can be done sooner rather than later. Our platform makes it a breeze to beef up your tech stack while bringing your team closer together.

Request a demo of our Service Cloud integration or see how Salesforce themselves saved 12,000 hours in their first year using Sprout.

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Social media RFPs: The best questions to include (plus a template)

So, you’ve been tasked with creating a social media RFP. These questionnaires set the foundation for successful agency or vendor partnerships. Particularly for enterprise operations, the RFP process plays a critical role in making sure you select a partner that understands the complexities and nuances of your company. But, like all formal documents, creating them can be challenging and time consuming when you think about all the bases you need to cover.

Thankfully, you don’t need to start from scratch. There are templates to guide you through the process. All you need to do is make a few tweaks and personalize the document to align with your project and goals. Keep reading for a breakdown on what makes a great social media RFP—and we’ll share our template to help you get started. You’ll be sifting through proposals in no time.

What is a social media RFP?

A social media request for proposal (RFP) is a formal questionnaire used to vet vendors for a service or software. These documents help marketers make the best possible decision on who to partner with. Choosing a software or service provider can be a high-stakes decision. Once a contract is signed, there’s little room to renege or make changes. Social media RFPs give marketers the freedom to shop around, allowing them to make the best possible choice for their business.

What’s the difference between a social media agency RFP and a social media software RFP?

There are two types of social media RFPs: agency RFPs and software RFPs.

• Social media agency RFPs assess how an agency might approach your specific needs. These questionnaires focus on information about project and bidder qualifications.
• Social media software RFPs assess whether a software vendor can meet the needs of your organization. These questionnaires focus on software capabilities, data governance, product roadmaps and general company information.

Both types collect standard information: company profiles, terms of agreement and payment information. The technical nature of software RFPs allows them to be more cut and dry, remaining fairly the same from project to project. Social media agency RFPs vary based on your project and  needs. According to our 2023 Agency Pricing and Packaging Report, the top three services agencies provide are social media strategy, content development and social media management.

Both RFPs can be templatized, saving you extra work in the long term. Since software RFPs focus more on technical, legal and regulatory requirements, you likely won’t need to make as many changes to questions over time. As you scale your marketing tech stack, it’s worth it to build out a comprehensive template so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time.

Why should you use a social media RFP?

Social media RFPs may take time to create, a detailed RFP allows you to hit the ground running with your vendor selection process. It covers all the background questions so you can focus on big-picture items. Here are a few more reasons to use a social media RFP:

Better integration with your full marketing tech stack

Your entire suite of software solutions can quickly become cumbersome. You also risk making processes more difficult if the different tools don’t work well together. When searching for the right solution, you’ll want to know if potential vendors can integrate with tools you already rely on. Crafting a solid RFP will help you ask the right questions and find a solution that helps your entire stack work more seamlessly.

Get your team on the same page

Working in a silo rarely produces the results you need. Ideally, any social media software you purchase should benefit everyone. A social media RFP  serves as a level-setting document  your entire team can contribute to. This is particularly useful if multiple departments will use the new platform. For example, if both marketing and customer service will use the software, your social media RFP should include content and questions that address the needs of both departments. Interview key stakeholders to guide your RFP.

Measure scalability

Software scalability is everything for enterprise social media programs. One potential solution might handle all the different social channels you have, but can it also manage the multiple regions and languages of your target audience? Artificial intelligence (AI) is creating new opportunities for software to meet the needs of large and disparate marketing operations. RFPs help you tap into whether a potential partner can truly scale at the pace your company needs.

Understand cost and ROI

Marketing budgets can be tight and social media professionals often face huge pressure to show return on investment (ROI) quickly. Investing in the wrong tool can be disastrous when it comes time for reporting. On top of that, many software companies don’t post every cost level on their website, opting for custom quotes. Social media RFPs help answer important questions about product cost of ownership, included features and potential custom application programming interface (API) solutions so you can feel confident about your choice down the road.

RFPs are a key part of maintaining transparent, equitable processes. They help guarantee you’re making the best choice for your organization. By giving multiple vendors a fair shot at bidding, you access a variety of perspectives on how to approach the task at hand. All you have to do is pick the one that aligns best with your vision.

What’s included in a social media RFP template?

There are many marketing RFP templates available. That said, not all marketing RFP templates are created equal. Instead of tailoring an all-purpose template to the needs of your project, start with a template that’s social-specific. We created a social media software RFP template to give you the framework for a solid RFP:

Make a template copy

There’s some essential information you should include when creating a social media RFP template. Whether you want to build off our template or create your own, here’s what you need:

Your company profile

Think of this as the “About Us” section of your RFP. It doesn’t have to be a detailed account of your company history. It just has to give vendors an idea of what your company does and your ideal customer base. Equip them with enough information to do their own research. Include information on your mission, values, average customer profile and industry.

Social media overview

This is where you provide details on your social channels, current software and historic performance. Include links to all existing accounts. Include quantitative and qualitative information on past performance to give a picture of the size of your social media operations, such as:

• Quantitative: follower count, average inbound messages per month, relevant analytics
• Qualitative: overview of past campaigns, SWOT analysis by channel

Description and goals

This is the most important section of your RFP. Social media software can support several different areas, so be as clear as possible. Do you need ongoing profile management? Audience engagement? Analytics? The more specific you are, the easier it’ll be to find the right vendor.

When it comes to social media goals, stick to broad objectives. Include ideal timelines for product selection and implementation. Allow the bidder to come back to you with SMART goals, providing them with enough flexibility on how they’d like to approach the project.

Account management

Highlight key back-end needs such as integration with your other marketing and social media management tools. You’ll also want to understand the ongoing management needs and details about the usability of the tool. This can include features like single sign-on, overcoming native API challenges of various social channels and user interface questions.

Customer care and points of contact

A single point of contact can do wonders when it comes to limiting confusion. In this section, list a point of contact for the sales process and another for once the contract is signed. Leave space for the bidder to do the same. When it’s time to set a meeting, you’ll know exactly who you’re reaching out to.

This section is a great space to discuss customer care needs and expectations. What support does the vendor offer and how do they handle crises like outages? Given the increasing applications of AI, it can be useful to know if a vendor leverages AI to address certain customer support needs. Include a place to discuss how the vendor does or doesn’t guarantee uptime and the initial implementation process.

Analytics and social listening

With any social media tool, you’ll want access to quality data that can be easily sorted, understood and shared. AI is an ally here and an ideal social media technology partner will leverage it to make data aggregation and reporting easier. Your social media strategy likely includes social listening as part of your data collection, so you’ll want a platform that can support those efforts.

Proof of work

Proof of work (or bidder qualifications) gives vendors the opportunity to make their case for your business.

Request any specific experience information (testimonials, case studies, references etc.) in this section. If you’re in a niche industry, ask for examples of previous work that relate to your business sector.

Terms of agreement

Choosing a new vendor is a legal decision. The final contract will need to be approved by your legal team before you can sign it. There’s nothing worse than being ready to kick off a project and running into a frustrating legal hurdle. By asking for terms of the agreement upfront, you can get a head start on reviewing the request. That way, you can address any issues during the selection process.

Next steps

Ask the bidder to outline how they’d like to move forward after the proposal has been reviewed. Each software vendor will have its own process.

To keep track of how the process is progressing, create a vendor selection scorecard that lists all your RFP criteria. Include columns for each vendor to maintain a quick snapshot of who meets your different needs. You can also use this sheet to track where your team is at in the selection process.

Example questions to include in your social media RFP

To better understand the type of questions you can include in your social media RFP, here are a few examples from our free template:

Industry and company profile

• Describe your company’s industry footprint.
• Who are your major competitors?
• What differentiates your company from its competitors?
• Can you provide three customer references with similar use cases?
• What languages can your company’s services support?

Account management

• Which networks does your platform integrate with?
• Do we have the ability to track actions and posts by users?
• Are there workarounds in place for content that must be scheduled natively due to API issues?

Service and support

• Which networks does your platform integrate with?
• Do we have the ability to track actions and posts by users?
• What level of support can we expect during implementation?
• What level of support can we expect post-implementation?
• What technologies and support channels does your company offer to improve the customer experience?

Customer care

• Can users delegate cases to specific team members?
• Can you customize workflows to streamline tasks, improve collaboration and help customers faster?
• Does your platform offer the ability to consolidate and address messages across channels in a unified inbox?
• Does your platform provide message spike alerts?
• Does your platform support review management across channels?

Artificial intelligence and automation

• Does your platform use AI to automate analytics and reporting?
• Does your platform employ AI techniques for sentiment analysis and social listening?
• Can you evaluate and improve the accuracy of your sentiment scoring?
• Does your platform offer AI and/or automation functionality to support content generation?
• Does your platform offer AI and/or automation functionality to generate listening topics?

Influencer marketing

• Does your listening tool flag potential influencers and industry thought leaders?
• Do you offer the ability to search and filter for influencers by channel, niche, reach, engagement rate, audience demographics and other relevant criteria?
• Can you plan, execute and track influencer campaigns within the platform?
• Can we reach out to influencers and/or talent management within the platform?
• Does the software offer direct messaging, contract management and payment processing?

Create your next social media RFP

The right social media RFP can land you great bids that lead to even better project outcomes across your enterprise. Create yours using this template alongside the guidelines above. You’ll be sorting through unique options for solving your social media software needs in no time.

Get started creating your social media RFPs with these essential questions to ask, so you can find an ideal partnership to support your social media management:

Make a template copy

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We analyzed 50 social media job descriptions: Here’s what we learned about the state of social careers

If you’ve scrolled through LinkedIn lately and found yourself wondering, “Is there something different about social media job descriptions?,” the answer is yes.

We recently analyzed 50 different social media job listings to learn more about the skills and experience brands require candidates to have. What we uncovered were social media roles with higher levels of specialization and sophistication—an indication of what future social jobs will look like.

We also found a lack of industry standardization when it comes to career levels and compensation, factors that negatively impact career longevity. According to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey, two of the top reasons marketers would continue working in social are financial incentives and career advancement opportunities. Yet, 42% plan to leave social marketing in the short term—suggesting they need greater role and pay clarity—which starts with job descriptions.

Let’s dive into our complete analysis, and why—despite having areas for improvement—career prospects for social marketers are moving in a positive direction.

About the data: For this article we analyzed 50 social media job descriptions from various countries, brands and industries. The roles were primarily for specialist, strategist, manager and director-level positions. We collected the data from May 15 to May 24, 2024.

The line between strategists and managers is blurred

In the early days of social, most professionals were called either “interns” or “managers.” Which seems to have contributed to the confusion surrounding the experience actually needed to land each job title today.

The qualifications that make someone suitable for a strategist role are often not that different from a manager. In some cases, manager titles might require fewer years of experience and less responsibility.

While some of the social media manager job postings we analyzed indicated managing a team of direct reports—including strategists, coordinators or interns—many didn’t. In fact, the difference between strategists and managers often came down to semantics.

Notice how this strategist position is more robust than this manager role when compared side-by-side.

Strategist:

• Years of experience: 10 years
• Compensation range: $145,000-$165,000
• Responsibilities include: people management, video content creation, social listening and paid social
• Company size: 1,300+ employees

Manager:

• Years of experience: 3-5 years
• Compensation range: $113,050-$234,000
• Responsibilities include: video content creation
• Company size: 700+ employees

Key learning: Whether you should hire a strategist or manager ultimately comes down to your team structure and business needs. But you should think critically about the responsibilities you’re asking a potential employee to manage, and how that stacks up to the career bands in other parts of your company. Make sure a clear path for career progression is charted for strategists and managers alike, and that no single employee takes on too many responsibilities.

Wide salary ranges underscore the lack of industry standard

In our analysis, compensation for social marketers significantly increases as you move up the corporate ladder. But differences from top to bottom are greater than in other industries, like finance or sales. While some specialists make as low as $20/hour, we saw listings for senior managers who could make up to $360,000.

Zooming in closer, there are wide compensation ranges at every level of the social profession, and sometimes even within one job description. Companies are sending unclear messages about what compensation for an open role will actually be, a red flag for many in the job market.

Based on our analysis, specialists can earn up to $93,654 annually, strategists up to $121,800, managers up to $194,721 and directors up to $216,570, on average. But there are wide spectrums at each level, which means there’s ample room for negotiation that candidates can (and should) take advantage of.

Key learning: The starting end of your compensation range shouldn’t be less than half of the cap. Work with your HR partners to develop ranges that meet industry standards, align with other internal departments, and properly compensate people for their work and expertise. Be transparent about a realistic range in your job description and candidate interviews, and what would put someone on the upper end.

Job responsibilities are becoming more sophisticated

Across the 50 job descriptions we reviewed, we took note of responsibilities that demonstrated a higher level of social media maturity, like customer care, social listening, community management, paid social and influencer marketing.

Here’s what we found:

• Only 26% of the listings included customer care, suggesting those roles lie elsewhere in the organization.
• Almost half (46%) mentioned influencer marketing as a core responsibility.
• Most director-level listings called out social listening and insights, and those jobs offered significantly higher salary bases ($120,513 compared to $93,162).
• Paid social responsibilities correlate with higher average salary bases compared to those who only handle organic ($116,615 compared to $100,693).

These findings illustrate the value skills like data analysis and content amplification offer, and reveal more about what future social teams will look like. These increasingly sophisticated responsibilities will branch out into burgeoning roles (some already have) as social teams expand. Roles like analysts, community managers, paid media specialists, influencer marketing managers and customer care leaders.

Key learning: As you map out how you’ll grow your social team, think about how roles can become more specialized and data-driven—ultimately providing a higher caliber of work and return on investment.

Experience with video-centric platforms is in highest demand

Demand for short-form video content continues to grow. According to a Q4 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey, 81% of consumers want brands to publish more short-form (<15-30 seconds) video this year. Another Q1 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey found that consumers are most likely to discover new products on Instagram (61%), Facebook (60%) and TikTok (46%), underscoring the importance of crafting video-centric feeds.

To meet this increasing appetite, brands are trying to bring more video content creators in-house to join their social media teams. Jobs that list TikTok and YouTube both have higher starting salary ranges than those who don’t—suggesting companies understand the value video content (and the people behind it) delivers.

We also noticed half of the job descriptions mention wanting candidates who are “extremely online” and tapped into internet culture, a nod to today’s lightning speed trend cycle fueled by short-form video content.

Video content creation isn’t eliminating static image and text-based social expertise, though. Almost half of all ‌job descriptions we analyzed still mention X (formerly Twitter). Emerging network Threads wasn’t mentioned as often, emphasizing how many brands are still experimenting with it and determining how best to fit it into their strategies.

Key learning: Video content creation skills are worth the investment, and candidates with this skillset will expect higher compensation. Build that into your budget. But don’t completely overlook the importance of static content creation and copywriting.

Assemble a best-in-class social media team

Social media has become a mainstream business function. Now what? It’s clear that many brands are still figuring out what a sophisticated social team looks like in practice.

Our analysis highlighted a growing specialization and sophistication in social jobs, coupled with a lack of industry standardization in career levels and compensation. In this evolving landscape, companies must provide clearer career paths and competitive pay. Despite these challenges, the demand for advanced skills, particularly in video content creation and data-driven strategies, indicates more recognition and opportunities for social marketers.

For job seekers, this evolving market means it’s time to refine your skillset and hold future employers to higher standards. For marketing leaders and hiring managers, it’s time to think strategically about how to build a social team that meets future demands and drives growth for your business and your people.

Download this social media org chart guide to build, expand and strengthen a dynamic social media department.

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Email automation best practices for highly engaging campaigns

Creating an automated email campaign can seem daunting. You have to consider multiple factors that can make or break your conversions. At the same time, you have to do this while balancing your customers’ needs. Then there’s the need to ensure your automated email series addresses every stage of the buyer’s journey.

To make the process easier, we’ve put together this guide. Follow these email automation workflow best practices for optimal results.:

6 email automation best practices to follow

Ready to jump on the email automation bandwagon? Follow these six email automation best practices to reach your subscribers with the right emails at the right time:

1. Set goals and map your automated workflow 

Setting up an automated email workflow is pointless if you don’t know what you want to achieve. Think about it. How else will you gauge the effectiveness of your automated email sequences without marketing goals?

Your goals determine the type of automation workflows you set up. For example, an email sequence whose goal is to drive sales will look different when compared to one that exists to onboard new customers.

Here are other automated email workflow goals you might have:

• To inform or educate
• To reduce cart abandonment 
• To promote an event
• To win back subscribers

To ensure the best results, your automated workflows and goals should align with every stage of the customer journey. That’s why creating a customer journey map helps. Think of the customer journey map as a visual representation of the stages your customer goes through when interacting with your brand. Essentially, it allows you to visualize your customer’s specific points of interaction with your brand at every stage.

Download this template here

The main benefit of this email automation strategy is that it can boost your customer retention rates. When you combine goals with a customer journey map, you can deliver timely messages that resonate with your customers. 

Additionally, when you analyze your automation workflows against goals, you can identify the factors that impede desirable user behavior. This can help you finetune your email workflows and help customers progress through their journeys.

2. Trigger emails on customer behavior

When creating a sequence of emails, automate them to send based on specific customer actions and inactions. 

Behavioral triggers refer to email sequences that activate in response to the recipient’s actions. Common behaviors that can fire off such email workflows include:

• form submissions and sign-ups
• abandoned ecommerce carts
• website visits

In the image below, Sony sends a trigger email in response to an abandoned cart from its Playstation Store:

Source

Meanwhile, time-based triggers occur in response to inaction. For example, you can set up an email sequence that triggers after a user has been inactive for a specified period. The content, calls to action, and aim of each of the individual emails in the sequence will be to win back the customer.

Triggered emails are essential because they let you speak to the customer at specific points in their journey. That helps enhance the customer experience. 

Additionally, trigger emails target specific customer journey stages. So, they essentially lead customers toward taking a desired action. 

3. Incorporate follow-ups in the automated campaigns

Unfortunately, emailing your target audience once won’t be enough to get them to take your desired action. It doesn’t even matter whether they’ve expressed a strong interest in your products or services. Life’s distractions could still steal their focus away and hurt your chances of making a sale or nurturing a lead.

So, incorporate follow-ups into your automated campaigns.

This entails contacting a customer who has stopped progressing through their customer journey. For instance, the customer may have abandoned their shopping cart at checkout or registered for a webinar but failed to attend. Whatever the case, your follow-up email serves to give them a gentle nudge so that they re-engage with your brand. 

In the context of automated emails, your follow-up emails should trigger in response to your email recipient’s behavior. Abandoned carts, lead magnet downloads, newsletter subscriptions, free trial signups, and more are all fair game for follow-up emails.

Regarding how often you should follow up with your customers, there’s no clear-cut answer. As a rule of thumb, aim to automatically send follow-up emails a few days after your initial confirmation email. For example, if a customer abandons their shopping cart, you can wait between three days and a week before following up with them.

Meanwhile, if a customer’s behavior reveals that they need time to mull over whether to do business with you, play the long game. Program a longer series of emails with informative content like blog posts and case studies to nurture them until they come around. You can use ready-made AI templates like the one above to speed up the content creation process.

4. Implement hyper-personalization

Hyper-personalization refers to email marketing that leverages insights from historical and real-time customer data and use them to deliver relevant and personalized content. For instance, in hyper-personalization, you’d send a male subscriber this email on the left. A female subscriber would receive the email on the right:

Source

To leverage hyper-personalization in your automated email workflows, gather as much customer data. Collect their demographic information, previous purchases, interests, and browsing trends. For this, use tools such as surveys, preference centers, heat maps, and recording sessions.

Your email marketing efforts can benefit from hyper-personalization in numerous ways. For one, it helps you create email content and personalized messages that resonate with your audience segments. When used with email segmentation, you can create dynamic content based on factors like your audience’s behavior and location.

Also, hyper-personalization is great for customer engagement. It can help you tailor your communications in a manner that’s optimal for higher conversion rates. Thanks to AI-powered automation, you can speak directly to your customer’s needs and pain points at scale.

Finally, hyper-personalization gives you a deeper understanding of your customers. This benefit is significant because it improves your email marketing chances in numerous ways. 

Not only will you get better at targeting customers, but you’ll also have the data needed to create a pleasant customer experience. Your customers will deem your emails as a source of valuable content. 

5. Maintain consistent branding

When your email subscribers open your automated emails, they should instantly know that the email came from you. Brand recognition is key to business success. Half of consumers say they’d buy from a brand they easily recognize. 

To foster this familiarity, maintain consistent branding across your email and web properties.

There are several ways to do it. The easiest method is to place your company logo in the profile picture section of your email account and the email’s header. As the image below shows, SaaS company ClickUp adheres to this best practice:

This email design technique ensures that your logo will be the first visual element your email contacts see when they open your emails. It’s also the lowest-cost method for building brand recognition with your email campaigns.

Another effective method for maintaining brand consistency is to use the same design elements in your email as you do on your website. Incorporate the same fonts and color scheme in your email newsletters. This will prevent your potential customers from being confused when they visit your email and other web properties.

6. Continuously track performance

It’s good practice to continuously track how your automated marketing emails are performing. Tracking performance provides a treasure trove of data you can rely on when planning future campaigns. 

One way to track performance is to run A/B tests on the various elements of your emails regularly. Send two sets of emails with different subject lines, layout designs, and call-to-action copy to two sets of audiences. Then, note down which version produces higher email engagement rates.

While doing A/B tests, keeping track of success metrics will help you gauge your campaign’s performance. The key metrics to track include open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. 

You can analyze the results in your chosen email marketing automation software. Use the metrics to make data-driven decisions related to your workflows as part of your B2C or B2B strategies.

You can also track campaign performance using email funnel conversion analysis.

mail funnel conversion analysis tracks how customers move through your conversion funnel. With it, you can identify bottlenecks that cause subscribers to churn or impede their progress along their journeys. The data you get from this analysis will help you optimize your funnel for conversions.

FAQs

What is an automated email workflow?

An automated email workflow is a series of emails that are automatically triggered and sent based on a subscriber’s specific action. That action can be everything from a link click to a form submission. 

Automated workflows can be a powerful tool in your overall email marketing strategy. Not only do they save you precious time. They also help you reach your business goals with minimal intervention.

What are the benefits of email automation?

Email automation workflows provide several benefits. For one, they help you respond to customer behavior appropriately. Also, email automation saves you time. It automates mundane and repetitive workflows (for example, welcoming new customers). Finally, automated workflows drive conversions. They help you personalize email communications and send them to audiences that find them relevant.

What is the best email automation tool?

There are several excellent options on the market, but we can confidently say that AWeber is among the top options. It offers all the features needed for automating email workflows. These include an email builder for design and behavioral automation features. Other great automation tools include HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and GetResponse.

How do I automate my email?

Automating email campaigns is a five-step process. Step one involves choosing email automation software. The second step has to do with determining the goals for your automated campaigns. Your third step is to target and segment your audience. Step four involves deciding on email triggers. The final step involves creating email campaigns and activating them.

In closing

The email automation best practices discussed should get your campaigns off to a flying start. Your email campaigns must incorporate follow-ups to bring disengaged customers back into the fold. Without goals, creating automated workflows will be a pointless endeavor. For best results, make sure to map them to the customer journey during the goal-setting phase.

Meanwhile, hyper-personalization can help you gain actionable insights into your audience and drive customer engagement. Maintain consistent branding across your email, social media accounts, and website. This will ensure brand recognition. Automate trigger emails to ensure content gets sent at the right time and based on pre-specified user actions. Finally, consistently track your campaign performance. It will help you iron out any issues in your future campaigns.

Good luck with your email automation journey!

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The ultimate list of customer engagement metrics to monitor

The success of your business depends on how well you engage your customers. Highly engaged customers are more likely to buy from you and stay loyal to your brand. So you should stay on top of your customer engagement metrics to improve various aspects of your performance. This includes everything from the content you create to the customer care you provide.

This post breaks down some of the key metrics you need to track to understand customer engagement. Use this to find out the metrics that matter and how you can measure them.

What are customer engagement metrics?

Customer engagement metrics are the metrics for measuring how engaged your customers are. They help you measure how customers interact with your brand and how they respond to your marketing strategies. As such, they give you a better understanding of how connected they feel to your brand and how certain strategies resonate.

You can measure these metrics for specific campaigns or even for your larger business operation. For example, you could use customer engagement KPIs like Instagram likes and comments for a social media campaign. Additionally, you could measure customer service impact using churn rate and customer satisfaction.

The advantages of tracking customer engagement metrics

The benefits of measuring customer engagement extend beyond social media and influence your business as a whole. Here are some of the main advantages of tracking your customer engagement KPIs:

• Measuring customer engagement helps you track patterns in customer behavior. This gives you an understanding of their needs and preferences so you can adapt accordingly. For instance, if you notice a high drop-off during checkout, you could optimize the checkout page to improve conversions.
• Tracking your customer engagement metrics helps you improve your return on investment. You can use these metrics to identify the best channels and campaigns for your brand. This lets you focus your efforts and resources to maximize returns from channels and campaigns that have the biggest impact.
• Metrics such as Net Promoter Scoreâ (NPS) and customer satisfaction score (CSAT) help you measure the customer experience. Tracking these metrics will show you how to address pain points and improve your customer experience strategy.
• You can also use customer engagement metrics to inform your customer journey mapping. They help you identify inefficiencies, pain points and content gaps so you can optimize each customer touchpoint.
• Another key benefit of measuring engagement metrics is improving customer retention. Customer lifetime value (CLV) and churn rates can show you which customers are at risk. This lets you put together targeted retention strategies that ultimately boost loyalty.

10 customer engagement metrics to track

1. Net Promoter Scoreâ (NPS)

Net Promoter Scoreâ or NPS tracks how likely people are to recommend your business to others. This makes it an excellent measure of customer loyalty and brand advocacy. It not only gives you an idea of how satisfied customers are with your brand but also whether they’re likely to stay.

Even better, it shows you whether your business can grow organically through word-of-mouth.

NPS surveys classify your customers into three groups based on their responses:

• Promoters: Those who answered 9 or 10
• Passives: Those who answered 7 or 8
• Detractors: Those who answered between 0 and 6

You can use the following formula to calculate your NPS:

NPS = % of promoters – % of detractors

Survey Monkey has an NPS Calculator to easily calculate your score.

Source: SurveyMonkey

2. Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

This customer engagement metric measures how satisfied customers are with your business. So it’s a great way to gauge customer experience and find opportunities for improvement.

Most businesses use CSAT surveys as part of their customer service strategy. That’s why you’ll often get surveys at the end of a customer service chat or call, asking whether you’re satisfied with the interaction.

Usually measured on a scale of 0-5, a rating of 4 or above falls under a positive response. Meanwhile, a rating of 3 is neutral, and a rating of 2 or below is a negative response. You can use the following formula to calculate your CSAT:

CSAT = (Positive responses/Total responses) x 100

Use tools like the CSAT Calculator from SmartSurvey to simplify the calculation.

Source: SmartSurvey

Some businesses also give an option to write additional feedback in addition to the number-based scores. This helps you collect qualitative feedback on how to improve the customer experience and boost your CSAT.

3. Customer effort score (CES)

Your customer effort score or CES tracks the ease of interacting with your business. This makes it a vital measure of the overall customer experience.

In fact, your CES influences other aspects of your customer engagement and business performance. Gartner reports that low-effort companies see a 65-point higher NPS than high-effort companies. CES is also 40% more accurate than CSAT at predicting customer loyalty.

On top of this, 94% of customers with low-effort interactions are more likely to make another purchase. This makes sense because when it’s easy to buy something with a company, you’ll likely be happy with that interaction. And there’s a good chance you’ll go back for another purchase.

A CES survey asks a question that users have to score on a scale of 1 to 7. You can then calculate the score using the following formula:

CES = Sum or responses/Total number of responses

Tools like SmartSurvey’s CES Calculator also help to simplify the process.

Source: SmartSurvey

4. Customer churn rate

Churn rate measures the number of people who stop using your products or services over a given period. So it’s an excellent indicator of customer dissatisfaction.

An increase in customer churn is a sign that people aren’t happy with your brand, usually because of a bad experience. According to Zendesk, even a single bad experience would push 52% of customers to switch to another brand.

Sometimes, you may see higher churn when a new competitor enters the market. Either way, it indicates a need to review your customer engagement strategies. You’ll also want to stay on top of the latest customer service trends to remain competitive.

The formula for measuring churn rate is as follows:

Churn rate = (Number of customers lost/Original number of customers) x 100

You can also use the WebEngage Churn Rate Calculator to calculate customer churn.

Source: WebEngage

5. Customer retention rate

A closely related metric to churn rate is customer retention rate. This metric tells you how many customers stay with your brand over a given period. In other words, it helps you measure your customer loyalty.

It’s an excellent indicator of how well your brand is engaging your customers. So it gives you an idea of whether you’re delivering the kind of experiences that make them want to stay.

Surveying your most loyal customers will help you understand what makes them stick with your brand. You can use these insights to inform how to improve the customer experience to further boost retention.

The formula to measure customer retention rate is:

Customer retention rate = [(Total customers – New customers)/Original number of customers at the start of the period] x 100

WebEngage’s Retention Rate Calculator helps you speed up the calculation.

Source: WebEngage

6. Average resolution time

How quickly are you resolving customer issues? Your average resolution time measures the speed at which you’re resolving customer support tickets.

So it plays an important role in customer satisfaction. Quickly resolving customer complaints improves your chances of satisfying them. But if you’re taking too long to resolve them, you’ll end up with frustrated customers.

This metric is crucial to understand your customer service performance. You can use it to see the efficiency of your customer support operations, including social media customer service.

If you have different customer service tiers, work on reducing resolution time across these tiers.

7. Social media engagement

Engagement metrics on social media help you understand the impact of your social media efforts. You can use them to track the performance of specific campaigns. Or you can use them to measure social media’s contribution to your overall business goals.

See which types of posts and campaigns resonate with your audience based on engagement. And track whether you’re building an engaged brand community based on your social media interactions.

Depending on your goal, you can use various metrics to measure engagement on social media. Some of the most popular social media metrics for measuring customer engagement are:

• Follower growth
• Likes
• Comments
• Shares
• Brand mentions
• Saves
• Post clicks
• Story retention
• Reply time
• Conversions

Most social media platforms offer native analytics to provide you with these engagement insights. Alternatively, you can also use third-party social media analytics tools to access more metrics.

8. Click-through rate (CTR)

Your click-through rate shows you how many people clicked on your links or ads. So you can use it to measure the effectiveness of your calls-to-action and marketing initiatives. It’s highly useful for tracking engagement for your ads, marketing emails and social media content.

The following formula lets you measure your click-through rate:

CTR = (Number of clicks/Number of impressions) x 100

Check out this CTR Calculator tool from WebFX to instantly find out your click-through rate.

Source: WebFX

9. Average session duration

Your average session duration tells you how long people are spending on a page. It’s a good indicator of how engaged they are with your content.

This makes it an important metric for tracking your content marketing performance. If a certain blog post has a higher-than-average session duration, it indicates that people find it valuable. So you could use this information to create content that addresses your target audience’s needs. You can even use it to come up with customer-centric marketing campaigns that resonate.

10. Bounce rate

Your bounce rate shows you the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing just one page. A high bounce rate is an indicator that your website or content isn’t engaging enough.

Ideally, you’d want to keep your bounce rate below 40%. Anything higher than this is a sign that you should review the page to make it more engaging. This may require improving the page load speed or optimizing certain elements. You may even need to improve the content itself to ensure that it’s effectively addressing your audience’s needs.

How to measure customer engagement

Here are some best practices to help you measure customer engagement successfully.

Clearly define your goals

Why do you want to measure customer engagement? Start with a clear purpose so you can better organize your efforts.

Perhaps you want to improve your customer care performance. Or maybe you want to track the effectiveness of a specific campaign. You might even perform customer engagement analytics to improve the omnichannel customer experience.

Your customer engagement metrics can inform various aspects of your business. Make sure you go in with a clear goal so you can extract the insights that matter.

Identify key engagement metrics

With so many engagement metrics available to track, it’s easy to lose sight of what you need to measure. Narrow down your efforts to focus on the right metrics for measuring customer engagement.

This will depend on the purpose of your analytics. For instance, if you’re looking to improve customer care, you’ll want to look at metrics like CSAT and response time. If your goal is to enhance the omnichannel experience, your CES will give you the insights you need.

Collect data from the right sources

The quality of your insights depends heavily on the sources you use. Collect data from multiple sources to get comprehensive insights. This will give you a deeper, more accurate understanding of your customer engagement.

Go beyond your website and native social media analytics. Make the most of third-party analytics tools to get the data you need. Surveys and customer support interactions can also provide you with valuable qualitative insights.

Measure, optimize and grow customer engagement

Measuring customer engagement metrics is only the first step. What matters is what you do next with those engagement insights. Ultimately, the goal is to use those metrics to inform and optimize your performance.

Take your engagement to the next level with Sprout Social’s powerful social customer service tools. Easily track the engagement metrics of your customer care team to measure their impact. And automatically capture feedback through NPS and CSAT surveys. Enhance your responses with AI Assist and watch your customer engagement grow.

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From the desk of the President: What I’ve learned about social from sitting down with C-suite execs

As President of Sprout Social, I’m fortunate to have conversations with C-suite executives and marketing leaders across brands and industries everyday. I hear their timely perspectives, challenges and sentiments around social media, and how it fits into their macro business strategy.

Their anecdotes tell me a lot about the current and future state of marketing. I talk to brands at every stage. Some are just getting started managing social from native platforms, while others have dabbled in social media management software, but face roadblocks that keep them from maximizing social. Others consider social to be the tip of the spear that drives success across all channels, and rely on social intelligence to inform their entire business strategy.

Here are some of the most important things I’ve learned about the state of social from all of these senior leaders—including lessons from C-suite execs who fully harness social, and from those who wish their brand could do more. Let’s dive in.

Some C-suites undervalue the benefits and overstate the risks of social

The most common apprehensions I hear from execs about social are: 1) that a brand crisis will go viral and spiral out of control and 2) that they won’t be able to pinpoint the data and insights they need. These fears prevent brands from resourcing teams appropriately and fully developing an online presence—leading to team burnout, lackluster results and unsatisfied customers.

There are countless examples of brands who value customer-centricity in their stores or call centers, but they leave mentions and DMs unresponded to for the world to see. Abandoning customers on social—their customer care channel of choice—leaves room for the competition to swoop in and sends a concerning message to current and future customers. According to The Sprout Social Index™, 76% of consumers value how quickly brands respond to their needs on social, while another 70% expect personalized responses.

And ironically, investing in social actually makes it easier to prevent crises from escalating. Social can do what traditional surveys can’t: Collect real-time data. For example, when a CEO of a large publicly-traded company recently made a comment about “efficiency” in an earnings call, some employees misconstrued that to mean imminent layoffs. By using Sprout, the company was able to identify the source of the spike in social chatter, gauge sentiment and quickly stop misinformation from spreading inside their organization.

Social data isn’t just valuable in a crisis. Performance data from social can show you what’s working with your audience, what proportion of trending conversations you own and what your return on investment is from your social efforts (including revenue impacts). Many leaders who are afraid to fully dive into social don’t realize just how many unfiltered insights it offers.

Future-thinking leaders want their entire companies to tap into social data

Some leaders do have a clear vision of social media’s role in their company’s success. When I met with the CEO of a power tools company recently, their most pressing concern about using our platform was whether their entire company could glean value. The CEO said, “We believe Sprout has the data and technology we need, but what’s most important isn’t just making our marketers better. It’s arming the rest of our organization.”

This leader wanted to make sure product managers could use social listening to uncover what people love about their products, and how they want them to improve. They wanted their sales team to be equipped with competitor intel so they could refine their pitches and ultimately win more shelf space over their competition by emphasizing the right differentiators.

This illustrates a mindset shift I’m seeing among today’s most successful leaders. They are creating social-first cultures and leading with social insights. According to The 2023 State of Social Media Report, 95% of business leaders agree companies must rely more heavily on social media data and insights to inform business decisions outside marketing, but 69% report social data is underutilized.

Having a culture with social at the forefront is the most important factor in determining whether a company will use social to its full potential, regardless of industry. Of our 30,000+ customers, even leaders in transportation, government, higher education, and healthcare find success when adopting a companywide approach to social. Many of them do this by adopting social media center of excellence models to ensure social has a seat at the table when it comes to developing—not just executing—strategy.

AI is top of mind in the boardroom

In today’s economic climate, executives are prioritizing new tools that don’t simply offer time savings—the benefits need to be even more tangible. When a leading media company’s call center executive was told by their C-suite that they needed to cut costs by 40%, they were eager to find AI solutions that could streamline costly manual tasks to deliver more value without the need for more resources.

They aren’t alone. Many social teams strapped for budget or headcount report being inundated by manual tasks. The Social Media Productivity Report found that 63% of social media marketers agree manual tasks prevent them from doing high impact work. The right social media management tools give marketers valuable time back. The same report found that those with dedicated social media management tools are almost twice as likely to report they often have enough time to get their work done compared to those without a dedicated tool.

Most leaders I speak with don’t have a clear vision of what they need AI for. They just know they need to save money and time. They’re looking for ways AI can be embedded into their current workflows, without costly retooling and retraining. They’re looking for a partner with a clear point of view on what the future of AI holds.

When in doubt, go where your customers are

Across the board, I see a critical divide among C-suite execs when it comes to social media. Some are hesitant, fearing crises and data challenges, while others embrace social as a pivotal tool for growth and insights across their organization.

Those who prioritize a social-first approach not only mitigate risks effectively but also empower their teams to innovate and connect with customers in meaningful ways. As we navigate the evolving landscape of AI and customer engagement, it’s clear that embracing social media data isn’t just a trend—it’s a strategic imperative for driving future business success.

If I had to share some motivation with fellow execs, it would be this: Take inventory of where your current and future customers are. There are few companies that can say this isn’t on social. If that’s true for your business, how do you plan to show up for them?

Looking for more on how to find a social media management platform that drives more revenue, boosts team efficiency, enables strategic focus and outperforms your competition? Consult the Social Media Management Buyer’s Guide.

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