Marketing automation is using technology that manages your marketing processes, including multifunctional campaigns and multiple channels, in an automated fashion. But how does it work? Is it difficult to use? Let's take a look at some of the basics.
When you use marketing automation technology, you target your customers using automated messages that are delivered through email, internet searches, social media, and text messages. How and when the messages are sent are determined by a set of instructions called a workflow. Workflows are created using a template that is either custom-built or modified during the advertising campaign to maximize revenue and efficiency. This frees up employees for more important issues in the business while reducing human error. In the meantime, the automated system generates, nurtures, and qualifies leads while measuring the ROI on your campaign.
What is Marketing Automation?
In its simplest form, marketing automation uses a set of tools to streamline the most time-consuming tasks in marketing and sales. Instead of having to manually send emails to every store that expresses an interest in carrying your product, the system handles the process for you. After you've rolled out a campaign, you only need to check the results and make small changes once you start seeing results come in order to customize it to your ideal customer. Businesses who decide to use marketing automation often see a significant increase in their number of qualified leads.
But how does it work? You start by collecting customer data through email, social media, apps, and website statistics, creating a solid view of each customer. The marketing platform then does the remaining work to streamline the segmentation of the audience, target the marketing process for each group, tailoring the message to each customer and delivering a personalized, seamless customer experience. While the platform is doing that, you're handling other tasks for your company.
Why Have Marketing Automation?
When you use marketing automation, this means you'll always have the right message in front of the right customer at the right time. By customizing this message to your prospect's needs and desires, you'll build rapport with them, allowing them to connect with your brand seamlessly, improving the odds of conversion. This is one of the reasons why marketing automation is driving increases in sales productivity and decreases in marketing overhead costs.
So what should you do to make sure you're handling the process correctly when setting up your strategy for marketing automation? Set solid goals to justify your investment. Use diagrams to visualize how the process will work. Consider how you'll segment your customer data. Get your content strategy ready to go. Start slow and stagger your launch so you can analyze and optimize before you start the next section of programming.
