In its most basic form, marketing automation is a set of software tools designed to streamline and simplify your marketing responsibilities. It can automate the lead qualification process and put that lead into the right campaign. Today it has become very sophisticated. In the past, it was a numbers game, today we’re capturing very specific data and marketing to real people. In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at marketing automation and how it can help grow your business.
How Does Marketing Automation Work?
The fuel that feeds your marketing automation machine is data. Customer data is collected through email, website visits, app usage, social media, and more. The data eventually creates a 360-degree view of a specific customer(s). Marketing automation software automatically places the lead into the right place within your sales funnel. Once they’re in the right place, they will receive customized messaging and offers tailored to them. It allows you to deliver personalized experiences for your customers, whether you have 100 or 100,000.
Is Marketing Automation Easy to Use?
Yes, it’s designed for that very purpose. You can create campaigns with a single click. All aspects of your digital marketing strategy are in one place. Even if you don’t want to manage it, you can outsource the management for an affordable rate. Marketing automation allows you to:
- Schedule email campaigns
- Create one-off campaigns
- Manage subscriber base
- Run A/B tests of email campaigns
- Measure everything – click-through rates, timing, channels, conversions, and more
- Expand your view of customers beyond CRM
How Marketing Automation Benefits Your Customer
Every day we’re all getting hundreds of marketing messages thrown at us. The majority of the messages getting thrown our way are not relevant to our needs or wants. It serves marketing messages to specific individuals, not generic groups. When people get a personalized marketing message, they often appreciate it because it’s something useful. You can reach your customer no matter where they are in the customer lifecycle and deliver timely, relevant content that reaches them when they need it and how they prefer it.
Marketing Automation Critical Components
It does a lot. It’s flexible and can be customized to meet the needs of the smallest business to the largest enterprise. At a minimum, good marketing automation will be doing these five things to ease your marketing efforts.
- Website Visitor Identification – Visitor ID is the most essential piece of your marketing automation engine. It will allow you to create unique profiles for each visitor with the information collected during their first interaction and all other interactions that follow.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – When your CRM is integrated with marketing automation technology, you’re able to see so much more. You can track all interactions with prospects. This allows you to see where they are in the sales process so you can nurture them with appropriate content.
- Behavior Analytics – Behavior analytics allows you to see a detailed timeline of all actions your prospects have carried out with your website, emails, social channels, and more. Using that information, you can further personalize your messaging to meet your prospects’ needs.
- Email Automation – Automated email campaigns allow your marketing messaging to sync up with specific stages in your customer’s journey. The right message at the right time makes can greatly impact a potential sale.
- Campaign Optimization – Being able to view the outcome of your campaigns is essential to understanding their effectiveness and proving your ROI.
Ready to Try Marketing Automation for Your Business?