Securing top talent is key to reaching your business’s growth goals, but to retain those star team members you spent so long searching for, you have to offer them a great employee experience. And that starts with onboarding.
Onboarding sets the tone for new employees and supplies them with the confidence and tools needed to thrive in their new role. So, why do so many businesses fall short in this area? They’re doing it manually.
The best employee onboarding is detailed, consistent, and personal, and to make that happen without hours of manual work, you need marketing automation software.
This blog will explore the four main ways marketing automation can help you streamline and level up your employee onboarding process.
1. Automate Preboarding and First-Day Logistics
The best thing about automation is that it doesn’t miss a beat – it's always on the clock, ready to send messages and materials at the right time. It’s perfect for employee onboarding because it keeps your team on track, allowing team leaders to focus on other areas of your business.
It's all too common for new hires to accept a position, then hear nothing until their first day. This silence can leave them confused, anxious, and unsure of what to expect.
But with marketing automation software, you can offer a different experience by automating a series of emails and texts leading up to an employee's first day. For example, the campaign could go like this:
- Welcome email: Kick things off with a warm message congratulating your new employee on the offer and confirming their start date, along with a note of excitement about them joining the team.
- What to expect: This could be a follow-up email outlining what their first day will look like — including start time, dress code, who they’ll meet, and any onboarding sessions or paperwork.
- Document checklist: Include links to forms they need to fill out or bring, like tax documents, ID verification, or direct deposit info.
- Meet the team: Provide a brief intro to team members they’ll be working with — either with short bios or links to team profiles.
- First-day reminder: Send a friendly reminder text or email the day before they start to help ease first-day jitters.
Once automated, this campaign will launch as soon as someone accepts a position – no downtime, no confusion, and no manual input required.
2. Standardize the Training Journey with Drip Content
Training new team members is time-consuming. There’s a lot to cover, and you want to do it efficiently for their sake and yours.
To help ensure a timely training process without skipping key info, set it up as a sequence in your marketing automation platform.
There are a few benefits to this ... You will:
- Ensure consistency across employees by delivering the same high-quality onboarding experience every time.
- Free yourself (or your managers) from repeatedly walking through the same instructions by automating each part of the process.
- Control the pace because training content will be pre-scheduled to be delivered at a cadence you choose, keeping new hires on track without overwhelming them.
- Create a smoother experience so employees feel more confident and organized with clear, timely guidance sent straight to their inbox.
Your automated training sequence can include videos, documents, guides, and other necessary materials.
But this doesn’t mean your employees will receive a cold, impersonal experience because marketing automation software can sync with your CRM system to personalize all communications based on employee details.
Plus, you can sprinkle in task reminders for those training items that your team needs to do.
3. Use Automated Reminders and Tasks to Keep Things Moving
Speaking of tasks, marketing automation software enables you to set up tasks and reminders throughout the entire onboarding experience.
And when you do this, it keeps the process moving, ensures your team doesn’t forget their specific roles, and provides helpful nudges to employees during what can be a very overwhelming time.
Assign internal tasks like “Schedule meeting with new hire” or “Send welcome package,” while also automating reminders for the employee about the different tasks they have on their plate.
On top of that, the right marketing automation platform will monitor employee activity to stop reminders once tasks are complete.
Better Onboarding, Less Manual Work
Automating your employee onboarding from start to finish is easier than it seems, and its benefits will pay off for years to come. So, why not get started today?
Kick things off by mapping your current onboarding process so you know which items to automate and what tasks/reminders to set up.
Then, jump into your software and get to automating! Before you know it, you’ll be done and have a repeatable, consistent, automated onboarding experience for your new hires.
In the market for marketing automation software? Tackle this first, and use our free Marketing Automation Buyers’ Guide to find your perfect software match more efficiently.
