I hate buzzwords. Which is why Subscription Content was late to cover the marketing automation fad. But after sufficient research, and a great video tutorial on marketing automation by Brad Mehl, it’s become clear to me that marketing automation is a powerful tool for subscription marketers.Nevertheless, buzzwords predominate the marketing information space. So in the interest of both showing you how marketing automation can help you sell more digital subscriptions and pulling the veil off fancy-sounding buzzwords, here are my 10 favorite marketing automation (MA) hacks for subscription sites and the triggers that should cue them:

1. Trigger: Prospect signs up to receive your free email newsletterMA Hack: Send a warm, fuzzy welcome message(OK, this is obvious for anyone who knows the value of onboarding. But like I alluded to above, marketing automation is sometimes just a buzzword for the stuff you’ve already been doing.)
2. Trigger: Prospect clicks on double opt-in linkMA Hack: The confirmation landing page encourages prospects to share your site with others via social media or email
3. Trigger: New blog post publishedMA Hack: Automatically posted to your social media accounts
4. Trigger: Prospect follows you on Twitter (or other social media)MA Hack: Send an email with a quick thank-you
5. Trigger: Prospect views particular section or pages of your siteMA Hack: Send an email with a subscription offer with messaging specific to the content they just viewedThis can also be tailored to send messages specific to someone’s job function, location, time zone, etc.
6. Trigger: Prospect downloads a whitepaperMA Hack: Customer service department gets cue to call prospect within 24 hours to follow-up
7. Trigger: Prospect abandons a shopping cart for a subscriptionMA Hack: Send an email attempting to save the account
8. Trigger: Subscriber views X number of pages, making them a highly engaged subscriberMA Hack: Send emails promoting upsells/cross-sells
9. Trigger: Track a subscriber’s page visits, email open rate over time, time on site, etc. to create a digital profileMA Hack: Create marketing funnels based on subscriber activity to upsell/cross-sell and renewThe same technique can be used to score leads on prospects in order to convert them to subscribers
10. Trigger: Track referral source to your site, whether it’s search engines, other websites, social media, or even offline marketing channels like a print publication, direct mail or refer-a-friend campaignsMA Hack: Get automated reports and determine most valuable marketing channels.

As you can see from the list above, marketing automation can vary from the simple (e.g., email autoresponders) to the complex (e.g., lead scoring). Likewise, marketing automation software can range from cheap and easy (like Ifttt.com, where you need to program simple “if this, then that” statements for web-based applications) to expensive and sophisticated (like Eloqua, which can integrate with your CRM to automate digital marketing with offline marketing like direct mail). That’s why we’ve created a handy PRO Buyer’s Guide on Marketing Automation Software where we evaluate six marketing automation vendors — ifttt.com, MailChimp, Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua and Pardot. Become a PRO member today to download your copy!