Marketing automation is the software-based process of automating the management of marketing activities. Marketing automation has several benefits for businesses. It can help marketers stay on top of their marketing campaigns, target their audiences more accurately and efficiently, and get more order repeat business from customers by connecting marketing activities like email marketing, social media posts, and website calls to action. 

In this blog post, we will explain what is marketing automation and its uses for different functions within a company.

Struggles in Marketing

Marketing has always been one of the most important activities within an organization. But, the struggle persists in how to measure success. From the founder’s perspective, they want to know if they are succeeding or not. From the business’s perspective, they want to know how their marketing activities are affecting their revenue. 

From the customer’s perspective, they want to know if their company’s product is suitable for them to buy. These needs have been the core problems in marketing. This is why marketing automation services have been growing in popularity. 

Marketing automation can help with the struggle of measuring success and revenue. Also, marketing automation can help with the struggle of understanding your customers as they engage with your brand.

Getting Started with Marketing Automation?

Businesses spend a lot of time and effort on marketing activities like email campaigns, social media posts, lead generation, and website calls to action. But the return on investment is not always the same. 

It depends on the quality of these activities. If the activities don’t lead to a concrete result, it is a waste of time and money. Unfortunately, it is not easy to tell if these activities are successful or not. Marketing automation can help with these struggles. 

With it, marketers can set up a series of rules or conditions to trigger when certain actions take place. With this automation, marketers can create a workflow that automatically manages their marketing activities.

How Does Marketing Automation Work?

A marketing automation system has three main components: data, rules, and workflow.

Data

In order for marketing automation to work, marketers need data. This data should be about their customers and their business. That’s why, for successful marketing automation, marketers need to create reports and dashboards about their customers and their business.

Rules

Based on the data, marketers can create rules that determine when the system triggers an action. The trigger could be based on when a customer opens an email, clicks an email link, signs up for a mailing list, purchases something, etc. 

Workflow

The final component is the workflow. It is the series of actions that marketers set up to automate their marketing activities.

Marketing Actions You can Automate

If you’ve ever needed to send an email to hundreds of your customers, then you know how much of a pain it can be to manually create the emails. Luckily, some tools allow you to collect leads, create and send emails, and track your marketing activity from one location. Here are some of the numerous uses of marketing automation:

Contact Management

Automating the process of managing your contacts allows you to better manage your relationships with customers. Let’s say you use a CRM (customer relationship management) tool like Salesforce. You can use marketing automation to collect leads, create email campaigns and nurture your relationships with existing customers. 

You can also use marketing automation for prospecting. With marketing automation, you can set up a campaign to collect emails from prospects, set up a campaign to get new customers, and set up campaigns to get referrals from past customers.

Email Newsletters

Email advertising is a great way to promote your products and services to potential customers, but email newsletters are even better. With email newsletters, you can send personalized emails to each customer once a week, or once a month, depending on their preferences. They’re great for keeping you in front of your customers, promoting new products, and building your brand. 

Automating the process of creating your email newsletters allows you to create emails that are more relevant to your target audience. You can use tools like ConvertKit or Intercom to create and manage your email newsletters. You can also use marketing automation to schedule emails that are delivered at specific times. 

You can use Zapier to create a Zap that automatically creates a new email when you create it in your email management tool. You can also use automation tools like HubSpot Sales to collect customer information like emails, addresses, and product preferences, and put that data into Trello. You can also use tools like Sprout to collect customer feedback and marketing ideas from your customers.

Delivering Content Downloads

It’s important to lead your customers through the download process, not only to get the content but to get their permission first as well. With marketing automation, you can create a campaign that starts at the time of the customer’s download and ends at the time that the customer chooses to use it. 

There are several ways to track content downloads, including using your customer’s browser history or software or using third-party tracking tools. Once you’ve collected downloads, you’ll be able to see which customers completed the process and which ones didn’t. This will allow you to make tweaks to your campaigns to better appeal to your customers.

Inbox Filtering

E-mail is a busy place, and it can be overwhelming for customers to have a lot of emails in their inboxes. With marketing automation, you can create a campaign to filter the emails that go into your customers’ inboxes. 

There are several ways to track filtered emails, including using your customer’s browser history or software or using third-party tracking tools. Once you’ve collected filtered emails, you’ll be able to see which customers completed the process and which ones didn’t. This will allow you to make tweaks to your campaigns to better appeal to your customers.

Benefits of Using Marketing Automation

There are many benefits of using marketing automation. Here are some of those:

Better Tracking

Marketing automation can help with better tracking. It can help with understanding where a customer came from, how they heard about your brand, and how they interacted with your brand. This will allow marketers to better track the source of their business growth. 

Increased ROI 

Marketing automation can help with better tracking. This means that you will get a better return on investment. You can determine which email campaigns are actually leading to sales and which campaigns are just leading to clicks. 

Increase in Sales

Marketing automation can help with better tracking. With it, marketers can set up a series of rules that trigger when certain actions take place. For example, if a customer buys something, then marketers can send them an email with a discount coupon. In this way, marketers can increase sales.

Better Customer Engagement

Marketing automation can help with better tracking. This means that marketers can see where their customers are coming from, how they are interacting with your brand, and what they are saying about your brand. This will allow marketers to create better content for their customers. 

With marketing automation, your customers will feel like they’re getting more from your company. They’ll appreciate the personalized emails, tracking features, and content that’s relevant to them.

Reduced Costs 

Marketing automation can help with better tracking. With it, marketers can set up rules to determine when email campaigns are profitable and when they are not. This can reduce the costs of email marketing as you only send emails when they are profitable.  

Increased Revenue

Marketing automation can help with better tracking. With it, marketers can create a series of rules that trigger when customers sign up for a mailing list. This means that marketers can increase the revenue from their mailing lists.

Conclusion

Marketing automation is an essential tool for marketers, whether they have one product or many. This process allows companies to collect leads, create campaigns, track those campaigns, and ensure that the right content is delivered at the right time to the right people. 

With the right marketing automation software, marketers can increase their revenue by delivering more relevant content, making it easier to track customer engagement, and avoiding common mistakes that can lead to poor customer experiences.

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