Automation has revolutionized the way we handle processes in our business. Gone are the days when marketers used to spend hours collecting data and analyzing it to optimize marketing campaigns. Now, businesses are in a strong position to convert those manual tasks into automated tasks. What’s the result? Companies get to enjoy the benefits of marketing automation. It has significantly reduced the time spent on repetitive tasks and improved productivity. Marketing automation has now helped marketers streamline their efforts and amplify their focus on other critical business projects.
Marketing Automation
To use a simple term, marketing automation refers to the process of automating marketing activities. All those activities that are involved in marketing, e.g., data collection, social media posting, sending emails, lead generation, customer support, and more. All those activities that needed human involvement have now been automated. The need for this technology spiked during the pandemic when human interactions were restricted. Now, this has become the new normal for businesses to automate their marketing efforts.
In your business, there are various areas where you can implement marketing automation. In this article, we’ll highlight the best areas to hit with automation to increase ROI and improve standards. But first, you must know about the types of marketing automation.
Types of Marketing Automation
To better help you understand how marketing automation works, you must know about its types.
Social Media Marketing Automation
Social media has become a part of our lives, and for businesses, it is an integral part of marketing. Marketing on social media is now being automated with the help of automation tools. This type of marketing automation uses social media to engage with customers. It helps businesses enhance and automate social media posts to expedite their marketing campaigns.
Furthermore, you can listen to your audience and interact with them with automated responses in real time. This will help adjust your marketing efforts on social media.
To clearly understand it, using automation tools, you can set alerts for any mentions of your brand and product. You can analyze the number of interactions and the engagement rate. Monitoring competitors on social media is also part of marketing automation. You can track their activity using different tools.
Email Automation
Email marketing automation is one of the most common yet successful automation processes. This type is used to generate leads and increase customer engagement. Based on a lead’s interest and actions, you can improve your email marketing efforts.
You can send automated, personalized emails to your new subscribers to attract them. Email marketing is used to re-engage with customers who have made purchases in the past but have not been active in a while. Frequently using this tactic increases the chance of conversion.
Mobile Marketing Automation
Mobile marketing automation refers to automating marketing activities using mobile devices. For instance, when you go to a retail store to purchase the right pair of shoes for your graduation ceremony, when you buy them, you may be asked to give your phone number for brand updates and deals. When you provide them with your number, you may receive notifications from that brand. This is an example of mobile marketing automation. Brands create one message about new deals and send it to all the customers who have made purchases from the store in the form of a push notification.
It increases brand visibility and keeps its name alive in the minds of customers. This is a valuable way to engage with your customers. It lets you reap the benefits of marketing automation on a wider level.
Analytics Automation
This is something you want to know when you run your marketing campaigns. Measuring the performance of your campaign helps you identify where you are leading. There are automated analytical tools that help you track a campaign’s performance. Also, you can analyze your ROI, which helps you optimize your campaign to get better results.
CRM Automation
This is a common type of automation that helps you manage customer relationships. Businesses that make their marketing decisions by acquiring data find CRM automation helpful. With CRM automation, you can automate data collection, send follow-up emails, and nurture leads by creating different customer segments.
You can keep track of your customers, identify their needs, and adjust your marketing activities.
Sales and Marketing Automation
When we see the bigger picture of business, the two main heads are sales and marketing. Automating sales and marketing using different tools helps automate certain parts of marketing. It saves time, makes you work on other productive tasks, and increases your ROI.
Marketing and sales are holistic systems with different processes. From contact management to posting social media posts and analyzing ROI.
Ways to Automate Your Marketing
There are plenty of ways to automate your marketing activities. We have compiled a list of the best ways to automate your next marketing campaign to get maximum results.
Drip Emails
One of the best ways is to establish drip email campaigns. As the name suggests, something is pouring. It means emails are dripping into your inbox. These are automated emails sent to the potential candidate who has been in contact with your brand or made a purchase.
These emails are not written manually each time you send them. Instead, these are automated and can be sent in tailored forms for different customers. Drip emails are also used to remarket or retarget your brand to potential or existing customers. Some of the most common examples of automated drip emails are thank you emails upon signing up for your business. Follow up emails to complete your purchase if you left in the midst of the buying phase.
These automated emails help you catch the attention of your customers in the way they want to see it. You can use them to automate and improve your marketing campaigns.
Personalized Content
The second-best and most successful way to automate your marketing is to personalize content. As most businesses now rely on the customer’s needs and preferences to make informed decisions and build campaigns, This goes without doubt: tailored content increases the chance of conversion. With automated personalized content, you can show visitors content based on their demographics.
You can personalize content by collecting data from automation tools to offer relevant products and services that cater to the needs of your customers. You can segment your audience as per their demographics, interests, and preferences and offer them the most suitable option.
Lead Attribution
The ultimate goal of any business is to drive more traffic and convert it into leads and, finally, customers. Marketing automation is used in this process by tailoring content based on leads preferences and interests.
Benefits of Marketing Automation
To know more, here are some benefits of marketing automation that you need to know.
Saves Time
It goes without saying that automation saves time and expedites tasks. What you need is to create your marketing strategy, your campaign, and run your tasks on automation tools. Sounds great!
Whenever a visitor visits a website, they might enter their email addresses at some point in their buying journey. It is automatically recorded in your system. When you run your email marketing campaign, you have the email addresses to send automated emails. Prospects receive emails that are relevant to their purchasing behavior. Also, you can send reminder emails about cart abandonment. These tasks are all automated.
Improves Lead Nurturing
Marketing automation helps remove the guesswork and gives you real-time insights on customer behavior and interests.
As we know, an effective way to generate leads and nurture them is to know your buyer’s persona. Knowing your customers helps you create an effective strategy that resonates with their needs. You can keep track of your lead’s data and focus more on ‘why’ and ‘how’. When you offer relevant content to the leads on your website and in emails, it increases the chance of conversions. Marketing automation makes it easier to analyze behavior by collecting data to make informed decisions.
Market and industry leaders now put extra emphasis on using automation tools to enhance business productivity and reduce employee turnover. Using these tools helps employees save time and better focus on other areas of the business. This is one of the many benefits of marketing automation.
Makes Buyer’s Journey Easy
Automating your website’s visitor’s journey makes presenting tailored content easier. As we mentioned above, personalization is a great benefit when it comes to marketing. With automation, you can collect data and connect with your visitors with tailored content as per their interests. Automation tools help you present personalized content on landing pages when visitors arrive on your website.
Doing this will also increase the chance of conversions as the visitors get to see what they want from your business. Then, it makes their buying journey easier than searching for the product and navigating through different categories.
Increases the Chance of Conversions
Automation is an active and efficient way to increase the chance of conversion. When you choose to automate your processes, they become personalized and respond in real-time. It compels leads to turn into customers, which directly impacts your bottom line.
Reduces Cost
As automation streamlines and covers various aspects of sales and marketing, it helps reduce staffing costs. Often, there are times when a staff of 20 people is used to create, run, and measure marketing campaigns. Thanks to automation tools, which have minimized the need to hire staff for different roles, Marketing automation tools can cover various tasks that were assigned to different people; they can do them all by themselves.
Therefore, this is how the benefits of marketing automation tools also cover staffing costs. It needs a few people to provide input to build automated campaigns.
Improves Efficiency
In a fiercely competitive world, you need to be efficient to be successful. Though this statement has long been used by successful leaders around the world, we can actually see its practicality in the form of automated tools. Using these tools enhances efficiency by saving your team’s time. It lets you free up your team from sticking to one project for a longer time. Instead, these tools help them complete and expedite processes in real time. It allows your teams to spend more time brainstorming and getting their creative juices flowing for other tasks. As a result, it improves efficiency and makes processes faster and easier.
Accurate Reporting
Automated tools offer more accurate reporting. Manual reporting takes ample time to gather data and make consolidated reports. With automated tools, you get the feature of reporting, which keeps you informed about your campaign’s progress through each phase. In fact, these tools offer an overview of the progress of your campaign or project. You can monitor trigger points and touch-base complications and take steps to overcome them in real time. With accurate reporting, you can further nurture your lead generation process and improve your marketing efforts.
Using the right tools will help you achieve all the benefits mentioned above for your business. To get a deeper understanding of tools, we will take this article forward to the best marketing automation tools.
Best Marketing Automation Tools
We’ve listed the top automation tools for your marketing campaigns that you can use as per your requirements. Here are the five best marketing automation tools.
Marketo
The best comes first, and Marketo captures this spot. This is one of the best yet reliable automation platforms to level up your campaigns. You can use this tool to create focused campaigns based on customer behavior and needs. Its best feature is that testing helps you choose the best-performing content for your marketing campaigns. It comes with different pricing as per your business’s needs. You can also customize your plan.
Best Features:
- Easy user-interface
- Real-time personalization
- Email management
- Lead generation
- Event marketing
- Measure ROI
- Analytics & reporting
Hubspot
Hubspot makes the list of the best automation software. It offers a great combination of CRM and marketing. Its live chat features add value to customer relationship management. The tool goes beyond the typical automation features by creating targeted campaigns and managing them seamlessly. This tool is ideal for generating leads and nurturing existing ones. You can track your marketing activities, analyze and optimize them to increase visibility and conversions.
Best Features:
- Use workflows and bot builders for campaigns
- Email marketing
- Connects with outside applications
- Smart lists
- Custom codes
ManyChats
Let’s go beyond email automation and dive into the world of chatbots. Manychats has reduced the manual constraints that affect marketing campaigns. You might have experienced automated chatbots that pop up when you send queries on Facebook Messenger, Instagram direct messages, and other platforms. It is right to say that companies with automated chatbots might be using this tool. This tool offers automated responses, e.g., Thank you for reaching out to us, and similar terms that are used consistently. You can get the various templates for different platforms that have an easy-to-use interface. The benefits of marketing automation go well beyond just emails and push notifications.
Best Features:
- Different tags for different audience segments
- Track & measure chatbot performance
- Lead management
- Social media reporting and analytics
Insider
Insider is one of the best and most recommended marketing automation tools that is used by different enterprises. This tool caters to the marketing needs of the company by connecting it with its customers. It allows a company to predict behavior and personalize it to their needs. Marketers use Insider to deliver services via the web, SMS, Email, WhatsApp messages, and others.
Best Features:
- A/B testing
- Drag-and-Drop templates
- Workflow management
- Email marketing
- Campaign management
LeadSquared
LeadSquared is a profound tool that helps marketers with lead generation. It is a one-stop solution for companies to amplify the reach of their marketing campaigns and generate leads. The tool aids in capturing cross-channel leads. So, it further improves this process by segmenting the leads based on their demographics. Based on their interests, needs, race, age, and country, this tool helps with targeted marketing. Marketers use LeadSquared to get leads via email, SMS, WhatsApp messages, service portals, and others.
Best Features:
- Drag and Drop editor
- Lead generation & distribution
- Quality and engagement scoring
- Reporting & analytics
- Sales and marketing automation
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a growing and popular marketing automation platform for marketers. With its cutting-edge features, this tool has gained popularity in a short time and attracted over 12 million followers. This rapidly growing tool has world-class and over-the-top features that support customer service, create data-driven content, and many other features.
Best Features:
- Customized templates
- Content creation
- Pre-designed layouts
- Custom reporting and analytics
- Email marketing
- Campaign management
Get the Best Tool for the Benefits of Marketing Automation
Marketing automation platforms amplify processes and improve productivity. Choosing the best platform from the above-mentioned list will help you seamlessly manage your campaigns. It is crucial to understand that automation platforms are a dire need for businesses. Using them in your campaigns reduces the constraints of manual processes. Repetitive tasks consume a large portion of your labor force. With this tool, you can reduce repetitive tasks, which also helps save on labor hiring costs. To implement this in your system, you must train your staff to use this technology and enhance engagement and productivity to improve the bottom line of your business.
