With the increasing demand for automation in the market, you will discover 7 reasons how marketing automation is a boon for businesses in this article.
Every business/organization’s foremost aim is to convert leads into customers incrementally. To achieve this aim, various marketing platforms and strategies are implemented. Nowadays, ‘Marketing Automation’ is considered a more effective way to execute all strategies and track them to achieve our targets within time.
Let’s Learn First What Is A Marketing Automation
The word automation generally means performing any task using tools and machines without human interruption. The same way phrase marketing automation in the digital world means using software or tools to perform a repetitive task in predecided intervals, like social media posting, email marketing, ads, etc. The motive is to increase efficiency and to provide a more personalized experience for their customers. It is a technology that helps you work smarter, not harder.
Example:
Earlier lead generation and nurturing by educating them about products were tedious and door-to-door processes. In this automation era, we can quickly develop respect for our brand in the potential customers by supplying valuable content via repeated mails and posts. Further, when the lead shows their inclination towards a particular product, you can reach out with targeted messaging. We can also thread up all the customers sharing the exact needs and interests and nurture them all together with the help of various tools. In this way, only a qualified and well-understood prospect is transferred automatically to the sales team.
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Major Tasks Perform By Marketing Automation
- Development And Analysis of Marketing Campaign and Potential Customers
- Analyzing CTR, Open Rate, and Conversion Rate
- Storing And Organizing Customer Data
- Converting Leads to Customers
- Managing Marketing Campaigns
- Measuring Engagement level of Leads
- Integration of Multiple Touch Points Like Email & social media.
- Lead Management
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Three categories of marketing automation
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Marketing Intelligence
Marketing Intelligence keeps track of customer action on digital platforms, like which social media or thread they followed. A customer clicks on which link on the email or which search term is used to access the website.
These records will help to know our target customers. We get the idea about developing a nurturing program focused on their interest and the vertical market. The data collected in Marketing Intelligence is used for making three major decisions
- Knowing Competitors
- Marketing strategy of a particular product
- Consumer trends and behaviors
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Marketing Self Operating
Marketing self-operating is the automated process of converting the leads to sales-ready leads. Prospects are judged based on their activities. Then further nurturing their first interest through to sales.
Best Marketing Self-operating tools for 2021 are:
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- Marketo
- Eloqua
- Customer.Io
- Constant Contact
- Hubspot
- ExactTarget/Pardot
- Userfox
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Automation Of Advanced Workflow
Workflow automation is a technology to automate manual work like data entry, lead nurturing. It uses rule-based logic to perform these manual tasks. Some repetitive tasks such as sending emails and social media posts can be easily automated with workflow automation. Each department in the business can benefit from workflow automation as it saves time and money, increases productivity, and minimizes errors.
Three main departments get benefited from it are – Human Resources, Marketing, & Finance.
Best workflow automation software for 2021
- Nintex
- Kissflow
- Integrify
- Zapier
- Flokzu
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Here are 7 reasons how Marketing Automation is a boon for businesses:
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Lead Generation and Nurturing
With the commencement of automation, the process of lead generation and further nurturing got eased.
Consider the traditional way of marketing, wherein the marketing team uses various techniques like advertising, email, etc., to achieve the main aim of converting leads to sales. The sales team further nurtures them into customers with the help of the Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) software to track and evaluate progress.
In this case, there can be a disputation between both teams. The sales team can point out that the leads generate by the marketing team are not effective vice versa marketing team can complain about the sales team not doing up-to-date work.
These traditional conflicts are removed with lead generation software that aligns the sales and marketing processes. It moves automatically real-time data collected for each lead into the sales team’s CRM system, thus reduces conflicts with less human intervention.
Benefits we get in lead generation and nurturing after automation are:
- The repetitive process like advertising, content marketing, email marketing, lead nurturing campaigns, and SEO that attracts and nurture leads becomes efficient.
- It helps to merge or move in parallel all processes of lead generation altogether.
- Automated campaigns educate leads based on persona over a while, which results in sales-ready leads.
Yes, we can say that the process of lead generation and nurturing benefits with the help of automated tools and Technology.
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Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is the process of ranking a lead based on predecided criteria and data points and assigning points to those criteria to judge their sales readiness.
In automated lead scoring, the marketing system generates numerical scores of each customer based on the extent of interaction with the company. In this way, we get an idea about qualified customers who have more engagement with your brand. These leads are then further moved for communication with the sales team.
Benefits from automated lead scoring:
- Increased sales efficiency
- Increased marketing effectiveness
- Improved sales and marketing alignment
- Increased revenue
- A systematic approach to the lead in less time
These days lead scoring comes built-in with various sales and marketing tools; some of them are listed here:
- Active Campaign
- HubSpot Marketing Hub
- Pipeliner CRM
- Platform Ly
- Salesmango
- Sendinblue
Automated vs Traditional Lead Scoring
An automated lead generation uses various tools to automate the process of entering scoring attributes and give numeral value to each lead without human intervention.
Whereas in the traditional method, we have to manually generate criteria and decide the scoring of each lead. This process can be person-biased and take lots of time if there is a great list of potential customers.
Hence Marketing Automation has eased the functioning of businesses.
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Relationship Marketing
Relationship marketing is a strategy that promotes a deep relationship with customers by providing them content and information specific to their needs. The primary purpose here is to gain customer loyalty instead of a short-term goal of customer acquisition.
To target new customers is almost 7 times more expensive than continuing with existing ones. In a real-time Relationship, Marketing strategy focuses more on understanding existing customers’ behavior instead of acquiring new ones.
Relationship Marketing is enhanced noticeably with CRM and marketing automation software.
List of CRM tool:
- Hubspot
- Zoho CRM
- Infusionsoft
- Hatchbuck
- NetSuite CRM+
- Infor CRM
- Lead Master CRM service
- Salesforce sales cloud
With the help of these tools keeping track of customers’ interests and nurturing them, focusing on their specific needs get easy. Technology brings remarkable development in CRM software that helps companies to achieve multiple objectives.
Note: Don’t confuse relationship marketing with CRM. It is just a tool used by relationship marketing practitioners.
Marketing tools reduce the time for moving a lead from the top of the marketing funnel to the bottom of sales. A healthy relationship marketing is judged based on the customer score recorded automatically on software.
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Segmentation
It is the strategy of dividing consumers among different groups based on common characteristics. In this way, you can have targeted communication like adjusting offers and promotions to help each group audience get desired solutions.
Various tools speed up the processes of segmentation and help in coordinating with those leads.
Best Marketing Tools for Segmentation are:
- Cluster Analysis– It analyses the consumer’s information and then further decides which segment he will be added to give him more specific nurturing.
- Segmentation Tree– A segmentation tree is like a family tree with your product name at the top and branches showing your potential market. This market further breaks down into more units offering leads inclined to a specific interest. In the end, you will get a list that will help in evaluating marketing opportunities.
- Zip Code Research– It provides demographic information of a particular zip code to get an idea about needs and interests in a specific area. Various data are gathered for particular zip codes like the population of people living in that area, average income, marital status, number of children, etc. All these data help to segmentize the particular area. Then deals, offers, and other plans are decided considering the need for that zip code.
- Lifestyle Segmentation– This tool helps in understanding the lifestyle of the customer. It collects data like shopping, finance, and technology preference of the consumer.
Tools and Technology increase productivity in the strategies of segmentation. With the help of the software, we can easily divide customers and apply a joint plan of action to them.
Can you see how things are simplified as compared to traditional marketing trends!
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Retention
Retention is turning a one-time buyer into a repeated customer instead of focusing on other leads. Moving leads from the marketing funnel to sales generated leads is a time and cost taking process. So, it is better to improve understanding between already buyers rather than looking for new customers.
Retention automation works to intact the buyers so that no need for the new consumer remains.
Steps of Retention Automation program:
- Automate and simplify data collection
- Develop scoring and segmentation criteria based on data collected
- Know your customers using intelligent metrics
- Integrate your engagement platform to win your customers back.
- Measure the impact of your all strategies on your buyers.
- Fixed the interval of getting updated reports of potential consumers.
- Open for experimentation- as we don’t know what will work for whom, so keep experimenting and sustain your buyer.
These 7 steps Marketing retention automation helps the organization continuously keep track and experiment on customers to remain their buyer in the future.
In digital marketing with Marketing Automation, we can also increase sales and enhance revenue from our old loyal customers. We just have to use a few tools and Technology to do our tasks efficiently.
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Cross-Sell And Upsell
Cross-sell is the strategy to sell related or similar products which customers are currently using.
Upsell is the practice to sell the more expensive or advanced version of services which customer currently own.
For example, you offer your customer a laptop(compatible with the one which he has in the past) with an improved processor, then it is upselling. But if you offer only that laptop, then it is cross-selling.
Both upsell and cross-sell helps in revenue increment if executed at the right time when customers need the product. This can be done quickly if we have automated data of the customer.
However, it seems that online buyer experiences are less personal, but they are incrementally personalized.
Automation has made the upselling and cross-selling more brilliant, let’s see how-
- The recorded data of customers tell the extent of inclination, based on which we can decide whether to go for upselling or cross-selling.
- Sales automation results in optimized cross-sell and upsell by setting some pre-agreed elements in the system.
- Computerized records of a buyer’s buying history help generate the desired deal to achieve our upsell or cross-sell strategy.
Both cross-selling and upselling can increase up to 35% of revenue if appropriately managed using automated records which are errorless.
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Marketing ROI Measurement
ROI- Return On Investment is the process of calculating the efficiency of an investment.
ROI= Profit Of Investment/ Return On Investment
Earlier, measuring the success of your business was very simple. Success was just profit over your investment. But in today’s internet world, success is far more than profit. It could also be more brand awareness, more leads, social media clicks, and enhance engagement.
Even if you are looking into only sales and revenue increments, you must figure out what factors contribute more to increments of your revenue. It may be an Email, social media, or marketing campaign that engages your target audience and converts them into buyers.
Automation of Digital Marketing and various tools and Technology used to evaluate the effectiveness of each marketing campaign give you an accurate ROI measurement. It is not possible to manage these records manually as machines are errorless as compare to humans.
Hence it is proved that Marketing Automation is a boon for businesses.
Tools generally used to measure marketing ROI :
- Google Analytics
- Facebook Insights
- Buzzsumo
- HootSuite
- Cyfe
- Mixpanel
Marketing Automation has taught organizations how to become a better problem solver for your customers. It has changed the process of generating leads and conducting sales. Manual operating has reduced, and we are only left with data analysis and make decisions based on it. Thus, we have a more organized and detailed picture of our customer’s needs, which is very helpful in deciding strategies, organizing campaigns, and taking future decisions.
Here is the summarized list of benefits with the commencement of automation in the market:
- Save Time.
- Reduce Staff and Other Costs.
- Increase Revenue.
- Collect More Accurate Data.
- Better Communication Between Teams.
- Collect, Track, and Nurture Leads.
- Improved Testing.
A day-by-day introduction of new tools and Technology or timely updates in the already in use ease down the marketing process. The productive results and information we get through the software have made us realized “Marketing Automation Is A Boon For Businesses.”
Also Read: How Digital Marketing Affects Consumer Behaviour?
