If you work in the world of commercially-specified building materials, you know how important engaging and educating architects is. They’re also an audience that is programmed by their very jobs to receive. The foundational concept of marketing automation is rooted in content marketing delivery through automated drip email campaigns.

It’s such a natural fit that it’s incredible to us how few building materials firms leverage it. Here are some ideas to get you started right.

1. Make it high-minded. You can’t deliver a lunch & learn with brand advertising splattered all over it; don’t do it with your nurturing campaigns, either. The content should be educational, useful, and actionable to the recipient.
2. Make it relevant. Know as much about your audience as you can, and ensure that information is tailored to them. For example, if a particular firm specializes in healthcare design, capture that information on the Account in your CRM and feed the MAS with that data to ensure those prospects are mapped to medical facility-specific materials.
3. Respect preference. Set up a preference center so that every recipient can self-select the information they have a personal interest in. Let them select what categories of products, which types of applications, and what frequency they want to receive information.
4. Keep it connected. Your architectural sales reps win when they have the most profound relationships with the design community. Marketing automation tools like Pardot.com can easily send emails FROM the rep who owns that firm in the CRM, emphasizing the value that rep is bringing to their relationships and providing continual reinforcement of their personal brand presence.   
5. Tie it to a Lunch & learn. What could be more high-minded, relevant, targeted, and connected than following up on a CEU course delivery with a series of weekly emails offering case studies, applications, and specific assistance? And if your attendance form happens to be electronic and feeds directly to your CRM, dropping those attendees right into the MAS campaign, could you have made it any easier for the arch rep? 
6. Tie it to specifications. When you see a project emerge where a particular category of your products is spec’d, you know you’ve found a relevant architect. Where that spec names only your competitor, you also immediately know that the firm deserves your specific attention to educate them on the advantages of including your product in their master spec. If you’re tracking projects and specs in your CRM, tying them to the specifying architect, and feeding that information into the MAS, you can automatically launch their contacts onto an educational program on your products.
7. Make it part of the master spec mission. Those specifications provide a key opportunity and excuse to start a conversation with that firm, offering to deliver a lunch and learn or visit the office. Program your MAS platform to pull that information from the CRM and automate that outreach for your reps.