For years, marketing automation was reserved for those with big budgets and large corporations, those days are over. Marketing Automation has availed itself to just about every website that is looking to attract new customers, win back lost customers, keep visitors engaged, get reviews, share testimonials, and much, much more!
Let’s start with what Marketing Automation is.
What is marketing automation?
What are the benefits of marketing automation?
– Increase Lead Generation
– Increase Campaign Efficiency and ROI
– Provide Personalized Customer Experiences
– Improve Conversion Rates
– Conclusion
What is marketing automation?
Marketing Automation is a term used to describe technology (read software) that manages marketing processes and multifunctional campaigns, across multiple channels, automatically. A well structured marketing automation campaign will allow the business to spend more time delighting customers or other business activities.
Stated a little differently, marketing automation is the ideal solution to have a crystal clear image of the quality of your customer’s journey with your website, social media, and email marketing material in an effort to drive more revenue.
According to this 2019 House of Marketing report, 48% of marketers are using at least ONE application of marketing automation, and a 2019 Markets and Markets study projects this industry from $3.3 B to $6.4 B in matter of 5 years between 2019-2024. Simply put, this subject is not going away and you should be learning all you can about what your customers want from you!
What are the benefits of marketing automation?
The goals of a marketing automation campaign tend to fall into a combination of these 4 buckets:
- Increase Lead Generation – capture the attention of potential customers.
- Increase Campaign Efficiency and ROI – capturing and utilizing data to deliver targeted, valuable content.
- Provide Personalized Customer Experiences – after all, your users are going to demand it.
- Improve Conversion Rates – people do business with people they know, like, and trust.
Increase Lead Generation
Are you looking for a way to improve lead generation efforts with the communication platforms available to your business? Inserting marketing automation processes and systems into your current efforts to see the holes in your game, engage potential customers on more platforms, improve your outreach, and clarify your value proposition. Here are some statistics to back up this statement:
· The top three reasons for implementing marketing automation are the following: streamlining marketing and sales efforts (35%), improving customer engagement (34%), and improving customer experience (34%) (Ascend2 and Research Partners, 2021).
· Other reasons for implementing marketing automation include minimizing manual tasks (30%), increasing the number of leads captured (28%), optimizing workflows (25%), improving lead quality (34%), integrating/centralizing data (21%), improving marketing attribution (17%), and improving multi-channel touch (10%) (Ascend2 and Research Partners, 2021).
· For 55% of sales and marketing professionals and executive members, the most important feature of marketing automation software is integration with existing systems like CMS, CRM, and ERP (ZHAW School of Management and Law, 2021).
· 35% of sales and marketing professionals use marketing automation software for content creation and email outreach services (ZHAW School of Management and Law, 2021).
· More than 60% of sales and communications professionals said the main benefit of marketing automation is improved targeting of messages (Liana Technologies, 2020).
To generate leads, you MUST create an intriguing lead magnet that is packed with value for the potential customer, design an easy signup form, and put it where your target audience is most likely to discover it. The rest of the work will be done by your marketing automation solution. There are countless ways to automate lead generation. You can set up PPC campaigns, use lead generation tools, or do referral marketing — just to name a few. But regardless of the method(s) you choose, the result is a steady stream of leads if done properly.
Another option could be a lead generation chatbot to identify potential customers by their behavior, spark their interest, and add their contact information to the relevant segment. This is a common strategy for social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn for example.
Increase Campaign Efficiency and ROI
In order to truly grasp how your marketing efforts are working, you need a clear picture of what your potential customers are finding valuable on your channels. Thus, giving your business key data on what your customer base finds relevant to them, allowing you to drill deeper. In multi-channel marketing, marketing automation is the only way to evaluate the performance of individual marketing channels and set priorities.
How effective can marketing automation be at improving ROI of your marketing?
· The top three main advantages of marketing automation according to sales and marketing professionals and executive members are the following: time savings of repetitive tasks (49%), personalized communication (49%), and improved efficiency/ROI (45%) (ZHAW School of Management and Law, 2021).
· Automation contributes to a 14.2% rise in sales productivity, as well as a 12.2% drop in marketing expenses (Oracle, 2021).
· 8 in 10 marketing automation users see an increase in the number of leads (Oracle, 2021).
· Marketing automation drives 28% better sales productivity and 33% higher revenue growth compared to companies without lead scoring (Marketo, n.d.).
· With marketing automation, you can increase sales leads by 50% and decrease cost per lead by 33% (Marketo, n.d.).
Ideally, marketing automation serves as the bridge between marketing and sales. It aligns these two core areas of your business to make them both better by giving business the data to support their content. Imagine being able to consistently target your potential customers with material that is relevant to them.
Provide Personalized Customer Experiences
Prospects are attracted and customers stay engaged when a company offers well-managed personalized journeys that are relevant to their context and buying preferences. Sounds tough, and it is, but the rewards are worth it!
While marketing automation aims to simplify repetitive marketing tasks that would otherwise be quite time consuming, the extent to which it really achieves this goal is subjective to each company, depending upon the maturity of its existing tech stack.
Imagine you’ve reached a prospect with a Facebook ad campaign, brought them to your company blog, and nurtured them with a series of marketing emails. After receiving your third email, the prospect has bought your product. Unless you’ve connected all the touchpoints with an automation solution, you can hardly track the entire path of that user. In this example, you’ll wrongly attribute the sale to that last email, not the initial Facebook ad campaign.
To convert more leads into sales, you need to entrust your lead capture, qualification, and nurturing to marketing automation software. By doing so, 77% of companies increase lead-to-sale conversion rates. 43% of marketers say that improving customer experience is the number one advantage of leveraging marketing automation (Ascend2 and Research Partners, 2022).
By optimizing customer journeys, marketing automation workflows follow your leads all the way from the moment they’ve interacted with your company to a sale. There’s no way you’ll miss a warm lead or forget to follow up — your automation software has got you covered.
Improve Conversion Rates
Cold leads are tough to close and low conversion rates tell the tale. So, why not take full advantage of the tools we all use to communicate to target your desired audience and have them come to you?
Marketing automation will help your business create relevant content and messaging at scale across multiple channels. Sending email messages with dynamic content that personalizes far beyond sticking a customer’s first name in the subject line. Integrate mobile messaging with your email and social campaigns through SMS/MMS, push notifications, and group messaging. Generate ads that appear for the right person at the right time. Plus, recommend the right products on your website for each individual user, automatically.
Here are some more fast facts:
· 77% of marketing automation users witness an increase in the number of conversions (Oracle, 2021).
·Users of marketing automation software can benefit from a 451% increase in qualified leads (Oracle, 2021).
· The second most important function of marketing automation software for sales and marketing professionals is lead qualification and scoring (ZHAW School of Management and Law, 2021).
With marketing automation, you can reach customers along their journey no matter where they are in the customer lifecycle — from acquisition to advocacy. Deliver timely, relevant content that reaches customers when, where, and how they prefer. Thus, turning a cold lead, into a warm one!
Conclusion
The truth is, we are barely scratching the surface of what marketing automation can do for you and your business. This subject is as deep as the Mariana Trench and easily twice as wide.
Never the less, we hope you have a clearer understanding of what marketing automation is used for and why it is gaining so much attention in 2023. After all, you can’t convert all your marketing leads. The majority of contacts on your mailing list will never become paying customers. Therefore, you shouldn’t lose those few warm leads. Reach them with timely campaigns on the right channels!