Marketing & Automation
Marketing that runs without you chasing it
Email marketing and multi-channel automation that nurtures leads and keeps customers coming back. Once set up, it continues to run without intervention. This service pairs naturally with our standalone AI Automation and CRM services for businesses who want the comprehensive system.
What's included
- Email marketing campaigns and sequences
- Multi-channel automation (GoHighLevel, n8n)
- Customer nurturing and re-engagement flows
- Performance tracking tied back to your analytics setup
Who it's for
Businesses currently marketing manually (by sending one-off emails or ad hoc social posts, for example) who want a system that continues to work effectively for them between campaigns. We work with businesses across Sheffield and Yorkshire, from independent studios to multi-location chains.
What's the difference between manual marketing and marketing that runs itself?
When marketing depends on whether someone remembers to do it, it tends to happen in short bursts: a newsletter goes out in a quiet week, a follow-up email gets sent when someone has a spare moment, and when the business gets busy it stops altogether. It's often why a quiet patch follows a busy one. Customers who enquired but didn't book, or who haven't been back in a while, slip away without anyone noticing, because nobody has the time to keep track of them all.
Automated marketing works the other way round. Instead of someone deciding when to send something, messages are triggered by what your customers do. An enquiry that hasn't turned into a booking gets a follow-up after a set number of days, a new customer receives a welcome sequence, and someone who hasn't returned in months gets a well-timed reminder. Once it's set up, it keeps running in the background whether you're fully booked or taking a well-earned week off - no lead is forgotten because of a full diary.
How is marketing automation set up?
Mapping your customer journey
Looking at how customers find you, enquire, book and come back, and which channels you use today. This shows us where people are dropping away, so we can build automation into the places where it will make the biggest difference.
Building your sequences
Writing and building the emails and messages around how your customers behave, from follow-ups for enquiries that go quiet to re-engagement for customers you haven't seen in a while.
Connecting your systems
Linking your marketing to your CRM and analytics, so that messages are based on up-to-date customer information, and results can be traced back to real bookings and sales.
Launch
Switching everything on and checking that every trigger fires as it should, before any of it reaches your customers.
Ongoing refinement
Reviewing what's performing and what isn't, and adjusting messages, timing and audiences based on the results, so that your marketing improves the longer it runs.
Marketing automation for
What affects the cost of an ongoing marketing retainer?
Every marketing setup is different, so we scope yours around what your business needs. The following are the factors that shape cost the most, and we'll go through which of them apply to you before anything is agreed:
Channels and sequences
A single email follow-up sequence is a much smaller setup than several customer journeys running across email, SMS and social.
Size of your customer list
A larger or more varied list needs more segmenting, so that people only receive messages that are relevant to them.
Where you're starting from
Building from nothing is a different job to improving an existing GoHighLevel or n8n setup, or tidying up one that has been left to drift.
One location or several
Marketing for several locations means messages, offers and reporting need to be right for each site as well as for the business as a whole.
What do we build your marketing automation on?
We build most marketing automation on GoHighLevel, which brings your email, SMS, customer records and sales pipeline together in one place, meaning nothing has to be copied from one tool to another. Where you need something GoHighLevel can't do on its own (such as connecting to another piece of software your business relies on) we use n8n, a workflow tool that links different systems together and passes information between them automatically. Because our CRM and AI Automation services use the same platforms, everything we build for you can work together as one system if and when you need it to.
Wondering how many past enquiries never heard back from you?
Get in touch and we'll talk through where automation could help your business - it costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
How is this different from our AI Automation and CRM services?
Marketing & Automation, AI Automation and CRM Setup & Management are built on the same platforms and designed to work together, but each one does a different job. This service is about the marketing itself: the email campaigns, sequences and lead nurturing that keep your customers engaged and bring them back to you. AI Automation is about responding to new enquiries instantly and taking repetitive admin off your team's plate. And CRM Setup & Management is the system working underneath both, recording every customer and mapping where they are in your sales or booking process and what has happened so far.
You don't need all three to get started, and it's perfectly normal to begin with just one. They do become more useful together, though, because marketing that can see what's in your CRM can send the right message to the right person - and a CRM kept up to date by automation gives your marketing more reliable information to work from. If you're not sure which to start with, that's something we can work out with you on a first call.
More from us at Millside Creative
If you'd like to know why marketing, sales and technology increasingly sit inside the same tools, our piece on how sales, marketing and technology are converging explains what that means for the team a growing business needs. For a closer look at one of the most useful automations to start with, automating enquiry responses without sounding automated covers how to reply quickly without losing the personal touch. If you're working with a smaller budget for now, free ways to market your small business is a practical place to begin. And if your marketing is part of a bigger picture, our AI Automation and CRM Setup & Management services are designed to work alongside it.
Proof point
Multi-channel marketing automation across all 12 locations of a UK tattoo studio chain.
FAQs
Common questions
What's the difference between this and the AI Automation service?
This is about the marketing itself: email campaigns, sequences and multi-channel nurturing - the factors that keep your customers engaged. AI Automation, on the other hand, is about an instant response to enquiries and internal workflow. They're built on the same platforms and pair naturally, but you don't need both to start.
What platforms do you use?
GoHighLevel and n8n for the automation itself, tied together with email marketing and multi-channel sequences.
We currently just send one-off emails when we remember to. Is that enough of a starting point?
That's exactly the situation this service is built for: businesses marketing manually with ad hoc emails and social posts who want something that keeps working between campaigns instead.
Can you tell if the marketing is actually working?
Performance tracking is tied back to your analytics setup, so results aren't reported in isolation from what's happening on the site.