Marketing Automation

Online marketing is big business. In 2020, there are already hundreds of different social networks and marketing channels with a combined subscriber pool of billions of people worldwide. The internet is a daily fixture in most people’s lives, and the popularity of online platforms shows no sign of slowing down. So much so, that recent data shows the average person spends up to a whole day online every week. That’s one in every seven hours of our lives spent on the internet! With so many people to reach and so many platforms to cover, it is impossible for marketers to be productive on all of them, all of the time. In fact, just managing one efficiently can be a full-time job! Yet successful companies still manage to be active across a variety of platforms and grow their following, traffic, leads, and sales. So how do they do this? With Marketing Automation, that’s how!

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is the practice of using software solutions to streamline a business’s marketing processes by automating tasks like email marketing, social media posting, and ad campaigns. By using marketing automation, businesses can target customers across email, web, and social channels by sending automated messages. When the correct strategies are used, marketing automation allows companies to:

• Easily move customers through the sales funnel
• Provide personalized experiences for customers
• Handle repetitive admin tasks with minimal hassle
• Generate leads
• Build customer relationships
• Drive conversions at scale Reduce human error
• Increase revenue Maximize efficiency

Marketing automation is the technology that propels your business into a new era of relationship-based marketing with quantifiable results. When powerful technology meets effective implementation and internal process management, your company will soon find itself on a journey that leads t new heights of business success

Jon Miller, Marketing Entrepreneur

How Does Marketing Automation Work?

Marketing automation takes all of the customer data a business has collected through web visits, social media interaction, app usage, emails, etc. This is used to create segments and audience targeting processes so that customers receive personalized and relevant messages in line with the company’s marketing goals and strategies at every stage of contact. It is important to note we’re not talking simple personalization here – for example when an email marketing campaign slots the customer’s name into the subject line of a correspondence. Marketing Automation can achieve way more than that, including:

• Integrating mobile messaging with email and social media campaigns, whether push notifications, group messaging, or SMS/MMS
• Generating digital ads that appear to the right person at the right time
• Automatically pointing each individual customer to the right products for them on a website

By targeting each contact on an individual level at any and every point of the customer journey, businesses can convert potential browsers into loyal consumers and brand ambassadors at a much more efficient rate.

What are the Benefits of Marketing Automation?

Hopefully you are already starting to see the advantages from what you’ve read so far - more loyal customers, reduced overheads, higher levels of efficiency…what’s not to like?! Marketing automation is much more than that though. It helps with lead generation, nurturing, and scoring, as well as with measuring the overall return on investment (ROI) on specific campaigns. Plus, the more marketing automation strategies are employed, the more time and cost savings businesses will see in the long run. The best marketing automation systems are scaled to suit the business and develop in complexity with it, so owners and managers should see the continuous growth of the business in line with the proportionate expansion of marketing automation techniques. Recent surveys have shown that: Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities over non-nurtured leads (DemandGen Report). Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospective customers experience a 452% increase in qualified leads (The Annuitas Group) Marketing Automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in market overheads (Nucleus Research).

The Customer Experience Everyone loves to be treated with special attention, and a little personal care in business goes a long way. However, once you reach a certain level of progression, it becomes unfeasible to reach out to all of your existing customers personally – let alone acquire new clients too. The beauty of marketing automation is how specific and personalized you can make each communication, making it easier to retain existing customers, keep subscribers engaged, recruit new customers, and take advantage of cross-selling and upselling opportunities, all at the same time!

Doing it Right With marketing automation, there is no need to guess or assume what customers are interested in and want to see. Proper segmentation and analysis allows you to follow up on emails with tailored campaigns, send customers content that is tailored to their browsing habits, and prioritize information on products that suit the subjects they engage with online. When utilized correctly, marketing automation also strengthens your brand identity as each department (whether it be sales, customer service, or marketing) is unified in their approach, and the customer sees the same brand identity from each team, making their interaction with your business seamless.