What is marketing automation? Using software to take care of repetitive marketing tasks can be a great tool for streamlining the process.
Marketing automation software reduces the amount of time that marketing and sales teams must put in to track lead activity and move potential customers through the sales pipeline.
It also has a lot of bottom-line benefits. Organizations have a payback period of less than six months when they invest in marketing automation, which provides a return on investment of around $5.44 per dollar spent, from research conducted by Nucleus Research.
Software for automating marketing operations often combines with software for managing customer relationships (CRM) and a platform for collecting customer data (CDP).
Marketers are able to employ automation tools to plan campaigns, program common reactions and modify the messages or the material customers and prospects come across.
Marketing Automation: A Growing Industry
The past few years have seen a surge in the popularity of marketing automation tools, and it appears this trend will continue.
The worldwide advertising automation industry, which was valued at over $2.74 billion in 2021, is estimated to climb to $4.69 billion by 2028, with a compound annual development rate of 7.9%. The growth in prominence of cloud computing and social media outlets has created a surge of growth.
Some of the most popular marketing automation platforms currently available include:
- HubSpot: 29.3% market share
- Adobe Experience Cloud: 11.9% market share
- Oracle Marketing Cloud: 8.55% market share
- Active Campaign: 8.02% market share
- Salesforce Pardot: 4.89% market share
- Marketo: 3.06% market share
- Drawbridge: 2.34% market share
- SharpSpring: 2.29% market share
Companies Using Marketing Automation
Marketing automation typically works with “if” and “then” scenarios. If a user does X, then Y happens.
Nitai Aventaggiato, founder and CEO at Helpmonks, suggested that website visitors can be reminded of items left in their abandoned shopping carts, and an automated email welcome series should be sent to subscribers. Marketing automation allows businesses to maximize their performance, increase their sales, interact with customers on a more individual level, and expand their profits quicker.
Marketing automation programs can deliver personalized messages according to previous purchases.
The platform could, for example, send a customer who has already bought a printer an email that contains a discount code for ink cartridges. It might be able to determine when someone who purchased dietary supplements is likely to run out and recommend different kinds.
The Benefits of Marketing Automation Software
We discussed the advantages of automated marketing, with the primary focus on higher financial profits and saving time. Let’s analyze the tech’s perks more carefully to make sure it appeals to both the people your company is trying to reach and your in-house team.
1. Understand Customers Better
Present-day patrons wish to be perceived as an individual, not just a figure. It has been found by Salesforce research that two-thirds of purchasers anticipate that businesses should understand their individual wants and projections.
A Statista survey showed that a vast majority of US customers find messages from companies that have nothing to do with them irritating.
Marketing automation enables small businesses to offer personalised experiences to customers. It permits them to access and meet user actions without exerting a large amount of pressure on the marketing or sales departments. The result is deeper insights and higher customer satisfaction.
2. Engage More Efficiently
Andrea Lechner-Becker, the head of marketing at Toolio, described how marketing automation tools facilitate lead management to make marketing activities scalable and help brands boost their income.
Lechner-Becker asserted that the definition is accurate, and it does what it is intended to do. Without the correct instruction, planning, and execution, it will not become a reality.
3. Gain Qualified Leads
Qualified leads are helpful for marketing-sales collaboration. Having expert-level prospects assists in filling up sales pipelines, making the job of marketing personnel much simpler.
According to Chung, marketing automation helps generate qualified leads in a number of ways:
- Using a scoring model to track behavior and demographic/firmographic information
- Creating landing pages that act and look like the main website
- Utilizing dynamic content that focuses highly on personalization
Aventaggiato stressed that accurately targeting prospects with relevant communications at the appropriate moments is vital to creating leads. Marketing automation enables companies to send timely, pertinent messages to their clientele.
Aventaggiato remarked that this allows them to have a more intimate relationship with potential and current clientele.
4. Enhance Team Collaboration
Utilizing marketing automation software strengthens the relationship between sales and marketing by forming service level agreements outlining what approaches will be implemented, as stated by Lechner-Becker. “Marketing automation forces teams into consistency,” she said.
Marketing automation simplifies the purchase process and makes it easier for the sales and marketing personnel to create potential customers and convert them into active buyers.
Chung described marketing automation as acting like a baton in a relay race, supporting the collaboration between marketing and sales teams and ensuring the two teams are working together. It is imperative that effective communication exists between marketing and sales and that it happens swiftly.
Chung explained that marketing alone is not enough. Marketing strives to identify potential customers and provide leads that can be converted into sales. Nonetheless, if this info isn’t directed to the right person, the chance slips away.
Marketing Automation Tools and Features
Automated digital marketing tools come with numerous features. Some key capabilities include:
1. Lead Nurturing
Teams can use automated emails to move leads down the sales funnel with the help of automation. These emails can provide data related to the consumer’s likes and dislikes.
A 2021 report from Databox highlights that lead nurturing is important for B2B organizations for five primary reasons, including:
- Generating higher-quality leads
- Increasing each customer’s average order value
- Reducing the average customer acquisition cost
- Increasing customer loyalty
- Establishing the brand as an authority
2. Lead Scoring
The utilization of lead scoring is necessary within any and all email and marketing automation systems.
Officials from Yield, a growth strategy firm, pointed out that a lot of advanced solutions are transitioning away from grading by activities (e.g., visits, opens, clicks, etc.) to evaluate presumed intention or the stage of purchasing.
Lead scoring helps to promote cooperation between marketing and sales teams, allowing everyone to increase their performance.
3. Lead Filtering and Management
Marketing automation platforms can be utilized to collect data from leads that do not have sufficient information to be passed on to sales teams, according to Yield.
For a growing number of B2B companies, this is becoming less important. Having a huge amount of data on a certain demographic makes it feasible to simply keep track of those customers and not store any other data. This brings every account and contact into the CRM.”
4. Personalized Email Marketing
Clients are looking for customization, and equipment for automated marketing can make that a reality.
Creating emails tailored to individual customers let companies strengthen their ties with customers and increase their happiness. This also promotes a longer, enduring relationship with customers, prompting them to return repeatedly. There is a very high probability that 90% of satisfied customers will buy again.
Research from SimplicityDX has demonstrated that the cost of obtaining a new customer has risen by 60% over the past five years. It is more beneficial to maintain current customers rather than seeking out new ones.
Automating the Lead Generation Process
It goes without saying that the primary objective of marketing is to acquire more customers for your business.
Generating leads by hand, from obtaining data to creating an advertisement scheme, can take a great deal of effort. Marketing automation offers a way to expedite repetitive marketing tasks, allowing you to reclaim a significant amount of time.
The sales team can gain useful understanding of what customers require by utilizing the information given through the automation software.
At the same time, this will give marketers the freedom to focus their energy and resources on more important activities, such as developing new strategies, engaging with customers, etc. Some of the top areas where you can use marketing automation are:
- Drip email campaigns
- Lead generation
- SEO and digital advertising
- Lead nurturing
- Analytics and Reporting
Here are some techniques you can use to generate leads through marketing automation.
1. Hyper-Personalization
As a marketer, it is evident that in order to create long-term relationships with customers, personalizing their experience is essential. Here, user intent cannot be taken for granted. And marketing automation helps you achieve exactly that.
Using several programs accessible through the internet, it is straightforward to increase the number of leads you connect with through automated email campaigns. Reports show that emailed notifications that have been automated can lead to open rates which are higher, as well as a potential for 320 percent more income.
Automating your email campaigns can help you to get around the lack of personalized content and have the whole campaign all set up for your desired recipients.
2. Landing Pages
Landing pages are one of the first steps that help to launch your lead generating process. A visitor to your website is likely to become a lead if they fill out a form that shows that they are interested in your product and business. You can use this collected information in two ways.
You can take advantage of this knowledge to craft specifically tailored content for leads, and create your email marketing initiatives.
Secondly, you should design multiple forms for conversions that are tailored to the products that your viewers appear to prefer. The automation software will create campaigns that are tailored to your needs and focus on users who are interested in the product.
3. Drip Campaign
Drip campaigns are an effective way of communicating with your target audience without being overly aggressive. If marketers plan their emails appropriately and make sure they are being sent at the right time, they will be able to capture the attention of their customers and turn them into prospective leads.
Automated drip campaigns that have been carefully developed, paired with content that has been tailored based on the customer’s profile and purchase behavior, can be very beneficial for a lead generation plan.
To commence, you can separate your website visitors into categories depending on their web activity. You can use marketing automation software to accurately deliver focused emails at predetermined times.
For instance, if someone spending time checking out a certain type of goods on your website, you could arrange automated emails with linked blogs on your site. Send out special deals that will help you gain an advantage.
4. Chatbots
Clients are searching for more out of their experience, so chatbots are becoming a go-to for businesses to fulfill their desires.
Besides email, you can upgrade the way you engage with customers and people who visit your website by using chatbots. Managing chatbots by hand can be a challenge without someone who is qualified to take care of it.
In addition, customers anticipate immediate access to your business through Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc. in order to have an uninterrupted experience across all channels.
They desire quick replies regardless of their location. Social media has developed into a formidable technique for getting new leads and staying in touch with clients.
It would not be feasible for you to be present on all of these platforms constantly. This is where chatbots enter the picture. They assist by taking care of the current needs of the customers and assisting in boosting their total experience.
Subsequently, when people who are inquiring obtain a prompt answer to their query, they will experience as though their input is worthy, which increases the likelihood of them transforming into potential customers. In addition, chatbots can:
- Improve customer satisfaction
- Generate and qualify valuable leads
- Save time and resources
- Provide self-services for customers
- Automate several processes
- Offer instant customer interaction
It is no surprise that 35% of businesses have implemented chatbots to address customer complaints and have seen an increase of 50% in potential prospects as a result.
Conclusion
No matter the size of your brand, automated marketing can bring you better quality leads, make processes more efficient and help maximize gains from your campaigns. Your staff don’t have to exert greater effort to get outcomes.
Consider researching the best tech available so that you can reap the benefits for your business; find out which platform has the most practical and useful applications.
It is possible that you could get rid of some other services that charge monthly fees when you have comprehensive marketing automation software.
Utilizing automation in an intelligent manner when dealing with lead generation can help hasten the procedure and maximize efficiency. Not only that, it also has the capacity to create prospects which are ideal for your firm.
By employing the strategies referenced above, you can automate your process of obtaining leads and consequently witness superior outcomes. You must additionally make sure to reinforce these techniques with individually tailored material, prompt messaging, and meticulously crafted promotions!
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