Is Marketing Automation The Future?
Marketing automation has gradually become an integral way to boost productivity and efficiency for any business. It refers to automating time-consuming activities, which would otherwise have been done physically by you or your team.
58% of B2B companies are planning to adopt the technology to grow, whether it is in the space of customer interaction, emailers, or data collection and processing, and for good reason too. Studies indicate that marketing automation tools are two times more effective for lead generation in comparison to traditional ones. They improve the quality and quantity of leads while helping you save valuable resources. Switching to marketing automation is the best choice for your business in today’s dynamic landscape.
If you’re still on the fence, take a look at how marketing automation solutions can benefit your business.
Marketing Automation Solutions Go Beyond Collecting Data
Automating marketing is not just about collecting data. For starters, it includes customizing messaging and delivering it to the right person, through the right channel, at the right time. In other words, it ensures that your communication isn’t just omnichannel, but highly contextual too. Your business might have hundreds of prospective clients with different needs, each in a different location, with a different back-story, and at a different stage of the purchase journey, and marketing automation can help you check all the boxes.
For instance, consider this scenario: You reach out to a prospect who has already given birth, with a discount on maternity wear. This reflects poorly on your company. It shows that you haven’t done your research and you stand to lose a potential prospect. This is something that you can easily avoid with marketing automation, and it is fast becoming the reason for its widespread adoption.
At the end of the day, it provides a holistic solution that is curated for each customer’s pain points and incorporates the customer’s preferred channel of communication too.
Emerging Marketing Automation Opportunities
As a marketer, you can’t control what a customer buys, but can always influence purchase behavior. The ‘how to’ of influencing is the trickiest and most time-consuming part. Here are some traditional marketing tools and avenues that benefit from an automation overhaul to help you get the job done.
Email Marketing
Almost everyone who is online has an email ID. It continues to be a top requirement to use any platform and the top choice for direct communication too. An email marketing automation tool collects personal details of people visiting your site. After an in-depth analysis, it curates personalized emails. Based on automated workflows, it allows you to send the right communication to the right audience segment. And, who wouldn’t be tempted to open an email that is addressed to them, understands their needs and pain points, and offers a tailored solution?
As a marketer you can keep track of emails sent, opened, links clicked, number of subscriptions, and conversions. With this data, you can keep updating your marketing strategy to drive sales from both new and existing customers.
AI Chatbots
Any visitor on your website would like to be personally attended to, whether they’re looking to resolve issues, make a reservation or get assistance with online shopping. Employing sales reps can become costly, and quite frankly, a tedious affair. Instead, consider AI-based chatbots. They are designed for customer satisfaction. Subliminally, they aid in lead generation and boosting revenue.
Depending on the complexity of the computer program behind a chatbot, it can hold a human-like conversation. Smart chatbots can also learn from the conversation and evolve over time to be more intuitive and helpful.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is at the center of modern digital marketing. Automating it makes for hassle-free social media management. Here, automation involves creating platform-specific content to drive sales, revenue, and branding. This is in addition to automated post-scheduling.
But automation is not simply about creating and scheduling social media content. Smart tools connect with your accounts and track metrics like user engagement too. They also send you a report comprising data analysis, which you can then use to optimize your strategy. What’s more, automation tools identify warm leads and the approximate time needed for conversion. You can use this information to fully nurture the lead and determine what is the most effective way of doing so.
Above all, automation tools have proven to be useful in gaining customer loyalty. Since it facilitates widespread yet more nuanced targeting, the overall customer experience improves exponentially.
Lead Generation
The most efficient way to infuse automation in the lead generation process is to format a content-to-email workflow. The process warms up a prospective lead using content in a step-by-step manner, eventually converting them into a buyer. Your sales and marketing team only needs to design the workflow and leave the rest for the automation tools to do.
The entire lead generation process consists of multiple complex stages if carried out manually. Automation unifies and simplifies them. Moreover, it gives your business better quality leads without you having to invest the time and money that conventional approaches demand.
Relevant Content Creation
Marketing automation software helps you with creating tailored content. Relevant tools automate every stage of a content lifecycle, starting from content generation to maintenance. They also assist in delivering appropriate material to keep customers engaged and involved, irrespective of where they are in the purchase cycle.
Marketing has become more customer-centric, and customers are becoming smarter in making choices. Today, any communication that isn’t hyper-tailored to their specific needs won’t work in your favor. So, adopt marketing automation solutions now so that you can get in tune with your consumers’ needs and provide precise answers and solutions.
