Do you wish to convert your leads into successful sales and customers? Why not automate your sales and marketing efforts! Well, using a range of marketing automation tools can help you automate anything between managing omni-channel marketing campaigns and bulk email delivery.
Wondering what it means to automate marketing tasks? Read on…
As per the International Data Corporation, the total amount of accumulated data in the digital world will expand from 33 ZB to 175 ZB by the year 2025. Marketers believe leveraging this ever-increasing pile of data to their benefit can be difficult and it is here that the need for automating marketing tasks comes into the picture.
Here’s everything a marketer needs to know.
About Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is the practice of utilizing software for automating repetitive marketing tasks. It is the process of using advanced technology for streamlining marketing efforts and making them more effective. Generally, tasks are automated for two major reasons – to boost the efficiency of marketing and sales teams as well as delivering a personalized experience to the customers.
Automated tasks allow the teams to spend more of their time on tasks like workflow planning, marketing strategy, customer journey mapping, by reducing manual actions. By automating tasks, companies can effectively send the correct message to the right user at the ideal time. Here lies the importance of marketing automation.
What Is It Used For?
From “ad campaigns” and “push notifications” to “email marketing” and “social media marketing”, marketing automation is used increasingly for automating and streamlining the everyday marketing process. Besides that it tracks and analyses the buying patterns and online behavior of the customers. Furthermore, this is used for segmenting target audiences and delivering personalized messages.
3 Key Benefits Of Marketing Automation
- Increased Efficiency & Creativity
One of the greatest benefits of automating tasks is that your team won’t have to focus on mundane tasks that are previously scheduled for execution by an automated platform. They can direct their attention to come up with better creative ideas that, in turn, enhance the efficiency of your team and deliver better output.
- Better Customer Retention
Rely on the advanced automated marketing tools for providing a seamless experience to customers by connecting with buyers through various channels during their purchase and keeping them engaged with meaning content. If a customer has great experience buying from you, it is likely that they will stick around and turn into loyalists of your brand.
- Personalized Customer Experience
Another key benefit of “marketing automation” is, basically automating your marketing tasks and provide a personalized better experience to your customers. By capturing necessary data from your marketing channels that helps you analyze the behavior of your customer, automated tasks helps you in delivering tailored content to every buyer at the right time.
Salient Features Of Marketing Automation
One of the most common places where companies start utilizing marketing automation is email marketing. Some of the most powerful features are-
- Real-time alerts of sales- sales representatives can easily set parameters on when to follow-up with the leads.
- Visitor tracking– Track site visitors and the pages they go to. It is seen for how long they visit the pages and what their web visit patterns look like.
- Lead nurturing– Automated marketing software helps in delivering the right messages to prospects automatically, thus leading them to useful content and ultimately to conversion and sales.
- Custom fields and tags provide users with a way to segment or group their contacts, thus communicating with various segments in a personal and effective way.
- Visual automation builders provide users with a convenient way to build a complex way for guiding customers through a unique customer journey.
- Forms, emails, attribution and site tracking allow users to understand and communicate with the behavior of customers.
- Pipelines can manage sales processes effectively since it allows marketing teams to convert leads to sales efficiently to close the deal.
- Reporting brings in all the data and enables users for measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of their marketing.
What Can One You Do With Marketing Automation?
- Get a detailed and rich picture of the behavior of prospective customers
- Improve the marketing return on investment
- Deploy broader marketing campaigns
- Predict the future investment much more accurately
- Allows you to establish clear and objective measures of progress
Is Marketing Automation Suitable For B2B?
Yes, automated marketing tasks are very well-suited for B2B markets, owing to the longer sales cycles, multi-stage procurement processes and complex decision-making dynamics. This can automate the tracking and targeting of marketing campaigns, interactions, generate leads as well as personalize customer experience for encouraging repeat business. Usually, B2B markets are highly focused as well as relationship-driven, making production-building and awareness-building important.
Is Marketing Automation Apt For B2C?
B2C marketing includes familiarizing customers with business brand as well as product set, giving them compelling reasons to buy. Not only does B2C marketing automation support the nurturing process and computerize the sales process so that it is fast and needs no or minimal involvement from the sales team. While B2B automated marketing is about long sales cycles, marketing in any consumer-facing environment are about convincing prospective buyers over a shorter time frame.
Final Thoughts: Strike The Right Balance
Data sets are expanding rapidly and machine intelligence can help us act upon instantly. Marketing automation is thus the need of the hour for every business- regardless of its size or industry.
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