Maybe you have already heard about marketing automation, or even implemented the process.

But what is it exactly, and why is it good for your business?

Let’s see the concept first!

Marketing automation refers to the use of software to automate repetitive marketing tasks. Marketers use this software to nurture leads, which is often done through integrations with customer relationship management (CRM) and customer data platform (CDP) software. These platforms are also used to automate and personalize marketing messages and content.

Marketing automation tools help marketers be more efficient. Their goal is to automate and scale lead management and other marketing activities to increase revenue – but it doesn’t happen without proper training and implementation.

Ideally, marketing automation is a combination of software and strategy. It should enable you to nurture prospects with highly personalized, useful content that helps convert prospects to delighted customers.

But it’s not always the case. Because of the popularity of marketing automation, there is a widespread misconception that marketing automation software can alleviate any slowdowns in marketing growth, including the need to generate new leads. Because of this misunderstanding, many marketers have sophisticated tools to automate the middle of their funnel but no solution for generating new leads to nurture in the first place.

As a result, marketers begin purchasing email address lists to nurture instead of generating inbound leads. While it may appear to be a quick fix, it is not a long-term solution, nor does it lay the groundwork for a healthy, long-term relationship with your customers.

On the way to qualified leads

The ultimate goal of marketing automation is to increase conversions, generate qualified leads, and personalize messages. But how can we generate leads with marketing automation for the long term? Qualified leads form the basis of great marketing-sales collaboration. It can aid in the filling of sales funnels and lead to better experiences for business development and sales professionals who want to have meaningful, fruitful conversations with prospects.

Collaboration in marketing and sales

Direct collaboration between marketing and sales is one of the promises of marketing automation software. We’re not going to promise that this will always be realized once a piece of software is released. Automation helps sales and marketing alignment because it creates service level agreements and processes in general on what strategies you’re going to deploy. Marketing automation requires teams to be consistent and shortens the sales cycle, making it easier for the sales and marketing teams to generate leads and convert them into paying customers.

Features of Marketing Automation

Marketing automation has a wide range of features. Some of the key elements of marketing automation platforms are as follows:

• Lead nurturing: this is the process of sending a series of automated emails to prospects in order to engage them by providing relevant information.
• Email personalization: assists businesses in developing stronger relationships with their customers.
• Campaign management: businesses can use email campaigns to nurture leads as they progress through the sales cycle. It enables teams to send personalized and direct emails to large groups of people. 
• CRM integration: enables businesses to transfer lead information from marketing to sales.

How to do it?

• Create Workflows for Visual Automation

With the intuitive builder, you can visualize the buyer’s journey and create marketing automation workflows. To create automation tasks, simply point and click. Extend automation workflows with branching logic to follow your buyers wherever they go. Create specific touchpoints on your lead’s path to conversion by combining tasks and action groups. Instead of sending your leads on a one-track buyer’s journey, set up lead nurturing campaigns and messaging triggers that respond to them.

• Lead Nurturing Increases Conversion Rates

Set up drip email campaigns to engage leads throughout the sales process in the marketing automation platform. Using carefully tailored, automated email campaigns, educate new prospects about your brand, services, and products. Keep your brand at the forefront of people’s minds by sending timely messages that respond to user behavior.

• Lead Scoring Can Help You Focus Your Campaigns

Concentrate your sales team on high-potential customers. To score leads based on engagement, use the digital marketing automation platform. Custom metrics such as page visits, filled-out forms, content downloads, and specific demographic characteristics that fit your sales model can be used to increase or decrease scores. Set a “decay rate” to reduce lead scores, and our marketing automation services will automatically update lead scores over time. Allow your sales team to focus on more important tasks by nurturing leads until they are ready to be converted into customers.

• Boost Marketing Automation with Dynamic Lists

What is the secret to effective behavioral-based customer segmentation? Real-time data that is accurate. Make dynamic lists that update automatically as contacts meet the list’s criteria. Maintain a running list of every lead interested in a specific set of products, comes from a particular location, has a lead score greater than “x,” or visits pricing pages using the digital marketing automation platform. Examine lists to get a sense of how prospects react to your website.

• Make Rich Personas to Customize Your Campaigns

Create your buyer personas, then create dynamic emails and landing pages tailored to each persona. Segment your messaging and lead nurturing campaigns based on personas to deliver hyper-personalized content that converts. Save buyer personas on the marketing automation platform for easy access, and update content and campaigns to reflect audiences over time.

• Email and text alerts keep your team up to date.

Send internal messages to marketing, sales, and customer service teams by activating automation workflows. When you make a sale, land a high-quality lead, or successfully move a prospect along in their buyer’s journey, you’ll receive instant notifications via email and SMS message. Without even logging into the marketing automation application, you can receive actionable data and respond accordingly.

• Using Triggers and Filters, you can keep leads hot.

You can keep the buyer’s journey moving using custom triggers and filters. Set up triggers to send a customized workflow to segmented users. Filter, re-segment and target individual leads based on their responses and interests using the digital marketing automation platform.

If you have questions on how to implement marketing automation or would like to talk about the process, contact us! With our expertise in online content marketing and lead generation, we can support you in any way.