What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing Automation (MA) refers to the use of software that automates repetitive marketing tasks and processes.

Marketing is the bread and butter for any online business. It’s the way to gain sales, get more customers, get more leads, and to build a rapport with a customer.

Most marketers use automation software to manage their email campaigns, landing pages, and lead scoring. They also use the software to help manage social media and blogging.

It’s used in conjunction with email, social media, contact management, audience segmentation, and other areas where repetitive marketing tasks exist.

Marketing automation is a division of customer relationship management (CRM). It’s an important aspect to track potential leads throughout the phases of the buying cycle.

MA is a term which encompasses software platforms and support systems designed to transform the art of marketing into the measurable, repeatable science of success.

It enables you to generate more leads, measure your marketing impact, and build on every successful campaign.

Marketing automation eliminates guesswork and gains deep knowledge of your audience. You can create a customized user experience that wins long-term loyalty.

MA improves engagement and boosts customer conversion by personalizing your content based on a lead’s behavior.

Marketing automation includes the technology that handles routine marketing processes such as lead scoring, multi-channel campaign coordination, and database management.

Companies use marketing automation software to:-

# Automate delivery of product or service information

# Direct prospects to specific webpages

# Score, segment, and nurture leads

# Conduct and analyze customers satisfaction surveys

# Boost customer loyalty

# Assess potential customers’ current and future interest in buying a product/service

Way to Understand Marketing Automation –

Workflows (also called sequences) are at the heart of every marketing automation campaign. Workflows can be used to nurture leads, up-sell customers, incentivize feedback, etc.

There is an example of automation workflow with basic elements as:-

# Triggers – It causes the workflow to start when someone purchases a product from a website.

# Delays – This is time between different steps of the workflow.

# Conditions – If A is true, do it. If A is false, do it instead.

# Actions – If a condition is true or false, then what could be done. It could be a sending email. It could be adding the contact to a different workflow.

How Marketing Automation Platforms Work –

The automation software can automatically send patterned campaigns to your audience based on various rules, and segmentation.

The automation software increases the efficiency of a company’s marketing strategy by allowing marketers to create and re-use certain lead generation tactics.

# Track & Convert Leads – A marketing automation platform can track prospect activity before and after conversion. You can segment leads for campaigns based on criteria like engagement, or demographics.

# Nurture & Score – It nurtures leads using rules that automatically send personalized content based on activities which are valuable to your business. When potential sales lead hit scoring entrance, they are automatically passed to sales via CRM integration.

# Align & Win – Marketing automation platform integrates with the CRM sales to help streamline the entire lead management process. It equips sales with marketing intelligence and helps you realize how much your leads are really worthy.

Strategy for Marketing Automation –

The best marketing automation results come as the product of a thoughtful strategy which tries hard to achieve a brand’s benchmark and objectives.

There are different steps in this process as:-

# Buyer’s Journey – There are different types of marketing automation and it’s tough to know where to begin.

It’ll be helpful to break down efforts into three categories as – Where can automation help before, during, and after the sales process?

Each prospective buyer will go through various stages of the buyer’s journey before deciding to make a final buy. You should consider where automation makes sense along the sales funnel to an ultimate conversion point.

# Set Goals – Next you’ll consider how you can measure progress and measure the success of your efforts after some initial ideas that will shape your strategy.

It’s important to define objectives for different elements of the strategy and to establish some benchmarks. Your goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Over time, your benchmark and goals will change based on what you’re working to achieve. It’s a wise strategy for marketing automation which evolves over time according to what works and what doesn’t.

# Optimize – Next step is to leverage your findings and optimize your marketing automation efforts.

##### Assess the Performance – You should keep a close eye on the performance of your marketing automation solutions. You should be sure to set intervals for regular evaluations and check in monthly to study results.

##### Beware of Misleading Metrics – You must beware of misleading metrics that may lead to false conclusions. Few air metrics such as social likes, followers, and blog comments statistics can lead to lean marketing results.

You should tune into the number that relates to sales like email conversion rate, leads generated, and customer acquisition costs.

##### Customer Feedback – You should go to your customer and ask for their direct input on what’s working and what’s not.

You can use regular surveys and polls to give your audience a voice and to spot areas for optimization around your ongoing marketing efforts.

Key Channels of Marketing Automation –

There are different effective marketing automation channels to use which increase customer satisfaction, conversion rate, and retention.

Here’s a list of current features and the benefits of implementing marketing automation software:-

# Ecommerce Marketing – The automation tools can act as your product database when you sell online products. It’ll offer features like coupon codes and affiliate programs.

# Email Marketing – Marketing automation allows you to communicate with your audience, transform leads into customers and customers into repeat buyers.

Email marketing tools enable email lists management and design of intuitive email templates.

Automation software allows marketers to target customers with email newsletters, lead nurturing campaigns, follow-up messages, product announcements, transactional emails, etc.

# Lead Generation – Automated sign-up forms on your website, landing pages, and other locations can help you easily generate new leads. The workflow and content are developed to attract, identify, nurture, score, and convert prospects.

The other important features and elements are lead identification, online forms, and lead scoring, etc. The important step is the handover of sales-ready leads.

# Marketing Resource Management – It can range from improving internal marketing collaboration, and sharing of documents of collateral. It synchronizes campaigns between various departments to full marketing ROI implementation.

# Content Management – Most marketing automation tools enable this feature and easy to use. You can create landing pages, webinars or other forms of content to send out to your contacts.

# Social Media Publishing – Some automation tools integrate with Facebook and Twitter. It enables you to control social advertising or build social apps from within the service.

They also offer social media monitoring to pull comments from social media platforms into your CRM.

# CRM Integration – Some marketing automation tools have a built-in CRM system with lead scoring and advanced tagging capabilities. The other automation software expects you to connect the software with your existing CRM.

# Marketing Analytics – Marketing automation software offers a better view of analytics as it takes into account several channels and marketing investments.

The most important part would be to take the customer as a whole, instead of as an email subscriber or an anonymous website visitor.

# Website Optimization – Automation software use tools for split testing two different variations of a webpage like a copy, image, layout, etc. to find which produces the best results.

# Text Messaging – Automations tools helps to drive sales via texts that automatically send promotional messages.

These messages could be based on action-triggered customer behaviors like geographic proximity to a retail location or a customer’s birthday.

Why Marketing Automation is Important?

Companies who use marketing automation software are evolving and growing faster than others who don’t. A customer journey will automatically capture leads, nurture customers, and generate repeat buyers.

A marketer can send hundreds of personalized messages a day after building automated journeys. It cuts down the manual labor, hiring of multiple team members, and use of company resources.

Companies who use marketing automation software can see an increase in performance of the marketing team as well as an increase in ROI.

Components of Marketing Automation –

Marketing automation has three components which involve:-

# Marketing Intelligence – It implements tracking codes in social media, email, and webpages to track the behavior of anyone interested in a product or service.

It can analyze links to develop a more accurate response to a targeted program towards their interests.

# Marketing Automation – It focuses on moving leads through the marketing funnel to become sales-ready leads at the bottom of the funnel.

Marketing automation software is seen as the combination of email and web-based marketing technology coupled with a structured sales process.

# Workflow Automation – It encompasses the automation of internal marketing process.

This process will include budgeting and planning, workflow and approvals, marketing calendars, internal collaboration, and digital asset creation and management.

This system increases a marketer’s ability to deliver content which is relevant to interested individuals.   

Benefits of Marketing Automation –

Marketing automation frees marketers from their repetitive tasks and helps brands to boost-up revenue.

There are some revenue-enhancing benefits of automation tools which are described as:-

# Customer Experience – Marketing automation technology allows you to send behaviorally triggered emails.

You can send customized campaigns automatically to customers when they perform any specific tasks such as signing up for your emails or abandoning items in the basket.

The automation tools build better and more personalized marketing experiences for customers.

# Broad Campaigns – Marketing automation helps to increase the scale and scope of your marketing campaigns. Automating email campaign is more efficient than creating and sending them manually.

Automation makes your campaigns scalable beyond the limits of your team size. You can create a broad sequence of campaigns to increase revenue at every stage of the product buying cycle.

# Faster ROI – The automation tools give you a faster return on investment and the initial cost of investing in automation tools will quickly pay for itself.

It’ll reduce the need to employ staff to do repetitive marketing tasks. It allows you to streamline your team and cut staff costs. Your streamline team is free to focus on high impact tasks.

It brings the most value to your business and it improves ROI on the money you invest in employing staff.

It provides a streamlines automatic alternative to traditionally manual processes. Time and labor can be reduced and costs can be reduced too.

The reporting function of marketing automation software will make your team more answerable. Marketing automation software allows you to create a detailed report automatically.

You can quickly see how your marketing activities support sales funnel with comprehensive reporting.

It allows you to pinpoint areas where results can be improved and empowering your team to make the required changes.

# Sales Volume – The most revenue-boosting features in the marketing automation software is automated product recommendations.

Personalized product recommendations are an effective way to cross-sell and up-sell products across your emails and website.

It drives conversions and attracts your customer to spend more in each transaction and increase your average order value.

The marketing initiatives are presented to the right customers. So, the inquiries are coming from potential buyers and it’ll increase the possibility of closing a sale.

Marketing automation tools are helpful in basket abandonment campaigns to encourage customers to complete the purchases. It enables you to recover lost revenue.

It increases the amount of money made from the e-commerce website. Marketing automation platforms can help you increase sales by acting your salesperson.

This tool can automate the delivery of product discounts or create Facebook Ads which helps to increase your sales.

A human might not recognize the patterns that a machine might be able to see which can perform better than an expert.

# Customer Retention – Marketing is not only getting new customers. The key way to boost revenue is to get existing customers to spend more during their lifetime with your brand.

Marketing automation allows you to automate requests for reviews and feedback. Customer retentions are as important as the acquisition.

As a marketer, you’ve to build a strong and lasting relationship. Marketing automation helps gather valuable insight into your customer acquisition and retention and greater control over marketing distribution.

The costs of marketing automation are getting lower each year with the advancement in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The automation tools can help you in retaining customer engagement by providing valuable insight into their behavior patterns.

It provides market intelligence along with various marketing automation tools which provide relevant customer data and analysis.

# Save Time – Marketing automation tools can manage higher than usual volumes of work better than a team of people as your business grows.

A product review app will be able to send automated emails to customers who’ve received their order so that you don’t need to manually track.

You can save more than 6 hours per week when you automate your social posts and Ads. You can increase your reply rate by 200% by automating your outreach and emails follow-up.

The multiple campaigns can be scheduled ahead of time and released as per your own settings. As a result, the working hours can be utilized for other activities.

# Maintain Consistency – The hardest part of marketing is being consistent. Every day scheduling social media posts get lost as your workload gets heavier.

You only need to automate processes once a week or less to schedule social media posts, create ads, etc. It allows you to stay active and visible to your customers.

Marketing Automation Tools –

Marketing automation tools will make your life easier by automating things. You can use marketing automation tools for everything from lead generation, conversion to content marketing, and analytics.

Choosing a marketing automation tool can be a difficult task since there are so many options.

# HubSpot – HubSpot is one of the primary tools for inbound marketing as it presents the ability to capture leads, qualify leads, and maintain customer relations.

It’s an all-in-one marketing automation tool which helps to attract new leads and convert the leads into customers. It provides a variety of features which can help you with SEO and content marketing.

Hubspot features will include email automation, landing page creation, analytics, lead scoring, and built-in customer relationship management (CRM) system.

# Marketo – It’s another all-in-one solution for strong B2B marketing automation platform. This software helps you in lead management, email marketing, and customer tracking campaigns.

# Buffer – One of the biggest challenges with social media marketing is consistency. In Buffer, you can add up to 10 social media posts at a time for free which will go out automatically.

Buffer is a social media automation tool to try and the best feature is the data analytics. You can see how many people clicked your link, your reach, and more. It’ll let you know about your top posts.

You can better understand what works well on social to increase social media engagement by looking at data.

# Eloqua – It’s one of the best marketing automation tools and fully loaded with an exceptional level of service.

Company spend a good amount of time in teaching and helping their customers to get the most out of the product. It’s a great marketplace with plenty of integrations with third-party services.

# Customer.io – The main feature is of Cutomer.io is flexibility. This tool has a lightweight UI with fast and personal customer support. It’s built to trigger emails based on events rather than page views.

How to Choose the Right Software –

You should choose the right marketing automation software after careful consideration of several important parameters:-

# Functional Fitment – It’s important to document the marketing processes to be automated by using the application and choose the solutions accordingly.

It’s essential to measure the improvement in marketing KPI post-implementation. Standalone automation software can’t be effective without a comprehensive marketing strategy.

# Ease of Use – It’s important to choose an intuitive platform which provides drag and drop for most functionalities to drive adoption within your team.

# Scalability – Your automation tools should be able to support an increase in the number of your customers, leads, and team members without an unexpected increase in cost.

# Integration – Your automation software should be compatible with existing enterprise application standards.

It should integrate easily with relevant applications such as the brand website, email solution, CRM application, and data warehouse.

# Single Platform Solution – It’s recommended to decide on a solution which provides all functions via a single platform.

It’ll reduce integration complexities and empower you with a comprehensive view of interactions during the customer lifecycle.

Conclusion – Marketing automation tools are the way of the future. Your future success has never been easier to attain. Marketing automation can contribute to the success of your company by automating your routine and repetitive things that take up a fair amount of company time. It improves your ROI and helps to maintain a healthy customer base.