Marketing Automation 101: What You Should Know
You probably know that marketing involves a lot of repetitive tasks. As such, it makes sense to automate these tasks so that people can be free to tackle more demanding problems. That is precisely why many businesses & marketing departments use marketing automation to automate their sales activities and marketing campaigns.
On average, 51% of companies are currently using marketing automation. With more than half of B2B companies (58%) planning to adopt the technology.
Marketing automation helps to both increase revenue and boosts efficiency. Apart from that, marketing automation also helps to reduce human error.
So, here’s what you should know about marketing automation!
What is Marketing Automation?
The purpose of marketing automation is to automate marketing campaigns across multiple digital channels. Businesses use this technology to target customers and automatically send automated messages via email, web, social, and text.
Marketing automation uses workflows to send messages. A workflow is a set of instructions that determine how and where a message is sent. Usually, workflows come as templates, or a business can build its own from scratch. Once created, workflows can be monitored and changed mid-campaign to get better results.
There are many benefits of marketing automation. For example, when running a campaign with marketing automation, it will be easier to generate leads, nurture, score, and measure the return on investment.
According to Moosend, the current leading brands using marketing automation beat their competitors in sales and ROI.
Additionally, as companies grow and become more complex, marketing automation makes a lot more sense to save time and lower costs.
The good thing is that there are many types of marketing automation software, platforms, and services, and some can even scale alongside a business.
What Does Marketing Automation Do?
You cannot fully understand marketing automation without knowing what it does. In its simplest form, marketing automation is a collection of tools designed to streamline and simplify repetitive and tedious tasks.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of such tasks in modern marketing and sales roles. Some of these tasks include lead qualifying and the creation of hubs for digital campaigns. Most businesses use marketing automation when they realize how fast the world is growing and how complex everything is becoming.
Imagine having to manually send every email, message, and post you create. Developing such a strategy would be a lot of work, and it would become nearly impossible to maintain. With automation, you can quickly identify your audience, curate relevant content, and trigger action based on studied customer behavior.
After your campaign has launched, you can start doing other things and come back to analyze and adjust your campaign when you see results. That way, automating your marketing will help you save both time and money. In addition, you will be able to quickly drive revenue and ROI without spending all your time doing tedious tasks.
What Are The Components of Marketing Automation?
Several features and capabilities come with marketing automation. These features enable marketing teams to deliver better results and a more impressive ROI.
A Central Marketing Database
A central marketing database is where all your marketing data is stored. Marketing data includes information about your prospects, customer interactions, and behaviors. A marketing database allows you to develop a marketing automation strategy for segmenting and sending the right messages to respective customers. Think of this as a filing system for your marketing data.
An Engagement Marketing Engine
An engagement marketing engine is where you create, manage, and automate all marketing processes and conversations between online and offline channels. The engagement marketing engine is more like an “orchestra conductor” for all customer interactions.
An Analytics Engine
A marketing campaign requires testing, measuring, and optimizing its impact on revenue; this is where an analytics engine comes in. It lets the marketer know what produced desirable results and what didn’t work. With this information, it will be easier to make adjustments to the campaign and improve ROI.
A Marketing Technology (MarTech) Stack
To understand marketing automation, we also need to look into the technology that is being used. Marketing automation uses several collaborative and scalable apps to boost the impact of campaigns. These marketing automation tools are collectively known as the MarTech stack. This section of the marketing automation system allows you to stay connected to buyers and deliver meaningful alignment.
How Does Marketing Automation Work?
Now we know the answer to, “What is marketing automation?” Let’s see how it works. The first step in marketing automation is to collect data via several interactions with customers. These interactions include emails, signups, web page visits, app sessions, and social media. This data is then used to build a 360-degree view of each customer.
The marketing automation system carries out the second step. This includes streamlining, segmentation, and targeting various audiences. These processes are done very quickly and at scale.
The marketing automation system will tailor messages to specific customers according to their profiles. It will also create and send personalized messages via different channels with just a few clicks. As a result, messages can be delivered to millions of customers effectively and efficiently.
How Does Marketing Automation Affect the Customer Journey?
The customer journey comprises individual collections of interactions with your brand. Marketing automation systems can use customer data to personalize all interactions. This way, you will develop ongoing, seamless journeys through all touch points of your brand.
These systems also enable you to create relevant content and messages at scale via several channels. With marketing, personalization has to go beyond just sticking a prospect’s name in an email. You should be able to send messages with dynamic content that is personalized.
All this can be made possible by using a marketing automation system. You can also integrate mobile messaging with email and social campaigns via group texting, SMS, and push notifications. In the process, the system will recommend the right products to each customer on your website or app.
No matter where the customer is on their journey, you will reach them with marketing automation. Each customer will receive messages in a way that fits their preferences, including when, where, and how. This personalization enables brands to convert prospects into lifelong brand advocates.
Summing Up
With digital marketing automation, most of what marketers do is to analyze and tweak several parameters. The system will do all the heavy lifting, but it cannot function absolutely on its own.
There will be a need to use the data you get from analysis to make the necessary changes to boost your revenue and grow your business.
If you need help with your marketing automation implementation or are looking to implement something from scratch, please contact me today!
Thanks for reading,
AJ