You may have heard of the term marketing automation, which is no surprise given that 51% of all companies are now using this technology. But maybe you still don’t know exactly what it’s supposed to be – that’s okay as far as it goes.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing Automation is a software platform that exists with the aim of performing marketing actions (i.e. publishing social media posts, sending emails and updating contact information) without any manual effort.
These systems collect all your campaign, contact, email and website data in one organized space for easy access. They can also post to multiple social media accounts from their platforms and create fairly detailed webpages from pre-made templates.
Why should I use marketing automation?
This is easy as marketers using it generate more leads, sales teams using it close more deals and companies using it reap the revenue benefits. Here’s the proof (for those who like statistics):
- Best-in-class marketers are 67% more likely to use a marketing automation platform and experience 14% overall revenue growth.
- Businesses using marketing automation see 3.1% higher revenue growth than non-users.
- Almost two-thirds (63%) of all larger companies use their marketing automation systems extensively.
Why marketing automation matters
As marketers, we often find ourselves being pulled in a million different directions and our to-do list never seems to get any shorter. After all, you only have 24 hours a day to do whatever you need to do. This is exactly why the marketing automation industry is growing so fast. Marketing automation tools deliver sales and marketing benefits that marketers could only dream of about 10 years ago. Many experts claim that marketing automation has become even more important than SEO.
By simplifying routine organizational and marketing tasks, marketing automation effectively eliminates repetitive manual processes by replacing automated solutions. This saves you time and valuable cognitive resources. But that’s not all! In addition to increasing productivity, you can.
Marketing Automation:
- Easily collect and report data
- Reach customers in a personalized way across multiple channels
- Ultra-target customers at scale
- Manage leads and seamlessly pass them from marketing to sales
- Predict customer needs and decisions
- And much more!
If you still don’t want to invest in marketing automation or just need to sell it to your boss, check out the resources in this section.
Marketing technology was born sometime in the 1980s when computers became powerful enough to store large amounts of customer information. In 1986, ACT! developed the first database marketing software, basically a primitive CRM platform.
Marketing Automation: Tools
Numerous marketing automation platforms with better user interfaces and more complex functions have emerged in recent years. Marketing automation tools can be divided into the following software types:
- Customer relationship management software
- Email Marketing Software
- Marketing Automation Software
- Social media marketing software
- Marketing Analytics Software
Most automation tools on the market fall into one of these categories. However, there are also many all-in-one platforms such as HubSpot and Infusionsoft.
Something that does not belong directly to the marketing automation tools, but is nevertheless closely related, is the respective company logo. Ultimately, you want to ensure that customers get to the company’s website, and a good presentation is very important for this. In this regard, you might want to try making your own logo online.
The wide availability and ever decreasing cost of marketing automation tools has created a new conundrum for marketers: are you figuring out what tools you actually need and who is the best provider of those tools? Luckily, the resources in this section will help you put together the perfect stack of marketing technology tools for your business.
Conclusion: Email marketing in the course of marketing automation
Although email marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, it still offers the best ROI in the business. No wonder, then, that this is also the most widely used digital marketing channel. However, one of the main issues with email marketing is scalability, which is where email automation comes into play.
Email automation software allows you to automate the messages you send to contacts, whether they’re based on a trigger (triggered by an email recipient’s behavior) or an email blast ( triggered by the email sender). This enables large-scale distribution of personalized messages to your contacts.
Because email automation works on a basic trigger and action system (i.e. when a specific trigger occurs, send that specific email or set of emails), you are limited only by your creativity and Limited to your business needs.
