In marketing, less is more. And if you can get more done by doing less work, you will have moved into marketing automation. Marketing automation is a process where technology is used to automate several repetitive tasks that are undertaken on a regular basis in a marketing campaign.
This is a platform that allows marketers to design, execute and automate a time-bound marketing workflow – both online and offline. It replaces manual and repetitive marketing processes – such as emails, social media and certain website actions – with purpose-built software and applications geared toward giving you the best performance.
As your company starts to grow, maintaining customer relationships with everyone becomes increasingly challenging. With marketing automation, marketers have the ability to create consistent, one-on-one cross-channel journeys that deliver a consistent, connected customer experience. This innovative, digital marketing tool is used to make campaigns more accurate and empowers your sales team with better leads to achieve greater return on investment.
Marketers are now better able to qualify leads and pass them onto sales – resulting in higher revenue and greater growth.
One of the primary purposes of marketing automation is to deliver the right content, at the right time, to the right customer – in turn nurturing their trust for the brand.
What are the benefits of marketing automation?
Marketers use marketing automation software in order to build quality leads for sales. These are the benefits of marketing automation:
- Central marketing database: Marketing data with customer interactions and behaviours are stored and nurtured to allow marketers to segment and target the right message to each customer. A central marketing base also gives all stakeholders access to valuable data.
- Engagement marketing engine: Conduct marketing processes and conversations across online and offline channels.
- Analytics engine: Test, measure and optimise marketing return on investment and impact on revenue.
- Target content specifically personalised to a customer’s specific user profile.
- Group customers and prospects by what they like, i.e. common behaviours, interests and demographic details.
- Test different variables such as email send times and subject headings.
- Integrate marketing channels like customer relationship management databases.
What are the key steps towards marketing automation?
Once you establish a workflow, you can implement automated marketing processes. This allows your team to be ready for new processes and ensures that automation brings the best results for your brand.
Let’s take a closer look at actions you can take to incorporate marketing automation into your overall digital marketing strategy.
- Identify the right tasks: Your team’s most repetitive marketing tasks are where you’ll find the biggest gains for automation. Simply automating response emails can substantially reduce the administrative burden on your team. So, plot out all of your current marketing tasks and pick out those that are time-consuming and compatible with automation.
- Select appropriate automation software: With an infinite number of choices when it comes to marketing automation software, filtering the best ones can be challenging. Make sure you identify the marketing automation software that is specifically tailored to your industry in order to get the best results. Expand your research taking this into mind before you commit long-term. Take the time to explore the free trials on offer in order to home in on the marketing automation software that best fits your brand.
- Train your team: Although marketing automation immediately makes marketing more efficient, introducing new software and processes in your business requires an investment in training your staff. Team members must refocus their roles and get an understanding of how automation fits into their working day. Emphasise the benefits of automation and allow staff to thoroughly test out new systems and express any concerns they might have about how it works. Marketing automation is predicted to become one of the most important marketing skills and businesses are hopping on board with increased investment now and in the future.
- Evaluate automation effectiveness: Implementing automation is just the beginning. Your business should conduct a periodic review of what’s working well, what can be improved and the impact of automation on key performance indicators. This will allow your business to make the appropriate adjustments at the right time to perform at its best.
