Marketing Automation
- Pam K, Founder
- Max 7min read
Introduction
Marketing your business can come with its fair share of challenges. Not only do business owners struggle to learn and understand the complexity of marketing automation tools, but it is also time-consuming to set up, maintain and track or measure performance results.
While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all marketing automation guide you can follow to guarantee that your marketing strategy and setup will deliver effective results, at the very least, you can automate your communication with new leads and existing customers through the customer lifecycle journey, delivering an engaging and informative experience across multiple communication channels.
In this guide, we explain what marketing automation is, its benefits, how it works and what to look for in marketing automation technology. We will explore:
– What is marketing automation?
– Benefits of using marketing automation software
– Main components of marketing automation technology
– What should be included in marketing automation services?
WHAT IS MARKETING AUTOMATION?
As with any type of automation, marketing automation is designed to reduce the performance of repetitive tasks, thereby streamlining your marketing efforts, and your lead and customer journey. It is the process of automating marketing campaigns, tasks and workflows by utilising marketing automation software with your customer data.
The beauty of automating marketing campaigns comes into play when it is implemented across different channels at scheduled intervals. With personalised information specific to your customer and their journey, it has the capability to wow your customers and skyrocket customer satisfaction levels.
Whether you use online marketing automation software such as for email marketing and SMS campaigns, or offline marketing tools like brochures and postcards, or a combination of both, marketing tools are there to empower you to turn more leads into customers.
BENEFITS OF USING MARKETING AUTOMATION SOFTWARE
There and many reasons to use marketing automation software and here are just a few:
1. Efficiency
Automating your marketing processes across multiple channels improves operational efficiency while saving on staffing costs by a reduction in man hours, availing your marketing team’s time to work on more strategic tasks. For example, instead of manually sending new leads an email or posting new blog articles on social media everyday, these tasks can be fully automated freeing up time for your team to take on more creative work like brainstorming or strategising.
2. Sales and marketing alignment
Any good marketing automation software will have inbuilt sales tools like pipelines, invoicing, communication recording and sales analytics. Combining your customers’ sales and marketing data in one place allows your business to align your marketing team’s efforts with your organisation’s sales goals. Advanced automation campaigns can be tweaked to tailor marketing campaigns with sales or lead data so as to increase conversion rates and revenue. Data management has never been easier.
3. Get a 360 degree customer view
Having all your customer data in one place gives you a high-level view of overall sales and marketing data. When combined with customer and process segmentation, marketing analytics and reports will help you see where you can improve the customer journey so as to create a frictionless experience. For example, you could see where new leads are unsubscribing in a particular email sequence or dropping off during a sales process.
4. Personalised customer communication
One of the biggest drawcards to using marketing automation is the ability to fully personalise your communications throughout the customer’s journey. When hyper-focused communication is used in conjunction with customer microsegmentation and behavioural marketing, you have the potential to target your ideal client persona and deliver the most relevant content to them. Naturally, this increases engagement and, in turn, increases conversions at scale.
5. Reduce abandoned carts and lead leakage
The average cart abandonment rate in 2022 is 69.99%. Recovering just half of those leads could potentially DOUBLE your revenue. One of the most effective ways to recover those lost leads is by marketing automation. One example of an effective cart or site abandonment marketing strategy is to use an exit intent popup with a free shipping coupon to get their attention (and their email address). Sending a well-timed sequence of emails to create a sense of urgency and scarcity is another. Finally, cart recovery emails are another great marketing strategy.
6. Scalable marketing
Unlike manual marketing processes, marketing automation enables organisations to grow big without the worry of outgrowing your marketing team. Before embarking on setting up your shiny, new marketing automation software, be sure to consult an experienced marketing strategist to ensure your campaigns and customer data is set up to scale with your organisation’s growth.
MAIN COMPONENTS OF MARKETING AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGY
When considering what components to include in your marketing automation development, it is important to understand which features are business-critical. The following are the main components most essential to a holistic marketing automation strategy.
1. Central customer database
This is where all data about your leads and customers are stored. A good database should include the ability to record interactions, communications and behaviours, and the ability to hyper-segment the acquired data.
2. Engagement engine
The marketing engine is where the magic happens. This is where you build and manage your automation campaigns. It should have the ability to allow connections or integrations with external software, such as with your website or workflow automation tools.
3. Analytics and reports
No marketing automation strategy is complete without tracking and analytics. Tracking the performance of your marketing campaigns is essential to its success with ongoing optimisation. Detailed reports should include analytics on engagement rates, sales stats and enrolment trackers at a minimum.
4. Marketing technology stack
Oftentimes, marketing automation goes beyond just a CRM, making connections with external software necessary. The most common software applications used beyond the Customer Relationship Management includes social media management, workflow automation such as with Zapier and Make.com, external databases, project management tools and SaaS productivity suites.
WHAT SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN MARKETING AUTOMATION SERVICES?
In order to grow your business, marketing automation success goes beyond the lead capture process. Improving engagement across the customer lifecycle with automated marketing campaigns is a big drawcard to using marketing automation – turning one-time buyers to lifelong customers with nurture sequences.
The high stakes involved means outsourcing your marketing automation requires due diligence in finding the right marketer for your brand and needs. Some of the service inclusions should encompass:
1. The setting of clear, concrete and measurable goals for your campaigns.
2. A structured on-boarding and staff coaching process.
3. Complete set up of advanced automation campaigns and email templates with segmentation according to your business’s needs, after automatically validating email addresses.
4. The know-how of connecting to external software and/or integrations with third party SaaS.
5. Regular account monitoring and cleaning of your contact database.
6. Ongoing development of automated campaigns.
7. Ongoing support, and regular workshops and Q & A sessions to support you in your goals.
8. Performance tracking and analytical reporting.
Successful marketing automation campaigns have everything to do with developing a relationship with your captured leads and clients while providing the best possible customer journey. Knowing what your marketing goals are and which repetitive activities you want to automate is the first step to a long and fruitful marketing journey where your audience gets to see the best of you and your business.
Siliceous Solutions is a top marketing automation services provider for businesses in a variety of industries, from manufacturers to not for profit organisations. We offer highly personalised ready-to-launch marketing advanced automation campaigns which you can set up in minutes, or have us do it for you.
We continue to help organisations to fix broken customer journeys and increase their revenue with reliable marketing automation services tailored to your business and your marketing spend.
Enquire now about our marketing automation services so you can start getting the results you deserve.
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