Introduction
How are 92% of companies improving campaign effectiveness, lead generation, and revenue? -Investment in marketing automation is the answer.
Take for example, the multinational media company Thomson Reuters. Frustrated by a high volume of weak leads in email marketing, Thomson Reuters introduced marketing automation to create ideal customer profiles and a scoring system to target quality leads. This transformed the speed and quality of Thomson Reuters sales, with revenue from marketing leads increasing by 175% and lead conversion time dropping by 72%.
With proven results, marketing automation is a great way to maintain competitiveness, increase revenue and improve user experiences. That’s why in this article, we’ll discuss marketing automation in detail, its benefits, how it works, and some best practices when automation is introduced.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is an effective way to manage production tasks. It allows companies to automate repetitive processes like email marketing and social media posting, target quality leads, and efficiently market across many channels. This helps companies save time, improve productivity and increase revenue.
How does marketing automation benefit your company?
Here are some key benefits to your company:
- Reduce the risk of human error
- Avoid repetitive tasks and save time
- Streamlined processes
- Personalized targeting & better customer experience
- Increase production productivity
- Increase lead conversion rate
- Improve campaign measurability and targeting
How marketing automation impacts your company
Let’s take a closer look at how marketing automation targets certain areas to drive revenue.
Qualifying Leads
If you have an automated system in place to measure customer behavior, email interaction and surveys, your lead qualification process will be much more effective and successful.
Nurturing Leads
By sending targeted and personalized automated emails based of customer actions, potential high-quality leads won’t be missed.
Track your customer journey
With marketing automation, you can track the customer journey to determine what marketing information is vital for purchase and the products that provide the highest conversion rates.
Social media posting
By using automation to post, you’ll save time, create brand consistency, and transform your approach to content creation.
Responsive chatbots
When built effectively, chatbots answer customer queries quickly and easily and are a great lead generation tool. This is especially important since 80% of customers claim query time influences loyalty chatbots.
Automated reports
Instead of spending hours developing reports, automation allows you to create PDF reports in a few seconds.
Follow up emails
Send follow-up emails to customers who explore your website, leave their basket unfilled, or contact you through customer support. In addition, email marketing can be automated by providing reminders of any next steps customers need to take.
Invoicing & payments
Automate the billing process for clients and handle payments following accounting policies.
Our best practices for your company when introducing marketing automation
For companies to feel the benefits of marketing automation, it’s essential the automation is fully understood and is used with proper direction.
Here are 5 of our best practices for marketing success:
Understand your customers
Create campaigns with your target audience in mind. You should know your customer’s demographic, interests, motivations, and pain points. This will help tailor the content of your automated campaigns to their needs and avoid generic messaging.
In addition, customer understanding expands to the journey. By providing customers with the right material for each stage of their journey, automation can help customers progress to the final purchase or another specific goal.
Collect the right data
By having valuable customer data, you’ll deepen your understanding of customers and will have the ability to run campaigns that fall in line with emerging patterns.
Set up lead scoring
You’ll need automated workflows to set up lead scoring, where points are based on customer behavior. Their score will indicate how valuable they’re to your business. Once your lead scoring system is set up, you’ll know the leads that are suitable for sales and those that need additional nurturing.
Have multi-channel experiences
Increase the chances of customer engagement by communicating with them in various ways.
Track your progress
Continue to monitor your marketing automation outcomes to help you determine what is and isn’t effective. These insights will help you make any necessary adjustments to your workflows and will inform your future marketing strategy.
Our final thoughts on marketing automation
Marketing automation can be a lifesaver for many companies. When combined with a good strategy, it can help nurture leads, boost conversions, and create more efficient and effective workflows. From this, companies can scale more effectively and save time and money in day-to-day activities, building a brighter, more cost-effective path forward.
FAQ:
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation automates repeat processes and helps companies effectively manage a range of production tasks.
How do I choose the best marketing automation solution for my company?
When choosing a marketing automation solution, consider what you want to achieve and how the long-term goals of your company.
Other Insights
Reuse, Refresh, and Repurpose: How AI content scaling will change your marketing strategy
January, 2nd 2024
Outsourcing allows you to tap into a vast pool of professionals, resources and tools that…
Why global brand consistency will help you build a loyal customer following
December, 28th 2023
In today's highly competitive world, where customers have endless options, having brand…
Looking to expand? How a local partner will help your global reach
December, 4th 2023
Local partners offer invaluable insights into local consumer behavior, cultural nuances,…