Many small business owners try to do their marketing manually. And that works. For a while.
But as a business grows, is it really cost effective to be spending time on someone who hasn’t shown an interest in making a purchase?
This where marketing automation can make marketing efforts more efficient.
In this article, I answer the question, what is marketing automation?
What marketing automation isn’t
There are a few misconceptions around marketing automation. So, before I show you what it is, here are some things that marketing automation isn’t.
- It isn't just another name for email marketing.
- It's not a tool that is only for marketers.
- It isn't only used by big companies with big marketing teams.
- It's not a way to send lots of spam.
- It definitely isn't a simple solution to all of your marketing problems.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is the use of software to automate marketing activities. It can help a business by taking on repetitive tasks such as email marketing, social media posting and even advertising. By using marketing automation, you’re not just making your marketing more efficient, you can make a more personalised experience for prospective and current clients.
An analogy is always good.
If you’ve ever started a garden, you’ll know that you need good soil, seeds (or seedlings), water, and light.
Marketing automation is no different. The soil is a good platform on which leads (our seeds) are nurtured. With nurturing (water and light) leads grow into paying customers (plants). Those plants continue to grow. Maybe for years. (returning customers)
The right message to the right person at the right time.
Why is marketing automation SO important?
Companies that use marketing automation see more web traffic, more buyers, and spur greater retention and loyalty.
Coupled with personalization engines, marketing automation engages prospects and customers through highly relevant content that, in turn, converts them into loyal customers.
By streamlining this process, you’re able to build personalized, one-to-one connections with a seemingly endless number of customers, at scale.
Before I jump into the juicy details, let’s first look at some key stats related to marketing automation.
An analogy is always good.
If you’ve ever started a garden, you’ll know that you need good soil and need seeds. Water and light are other important elements.
Marketing automation is no different. The soil is a good platform on which we nurture our leads (our seeds). With nurturing (water and light) we grow these leads into paying customers (plants). We want our plants to continue to grow. Maybe for years. (returning customers)
Key benefits of marketing automation
For any business, you need more ways of getting your messages to the right consumers for higher conversion rates and increased revenue. But how exactly can marketing automation platforms help you do more with less?
Let’s look at some tangible benefits for a retailer
Reduce cart abandonment rates
For an ecommerce store, cart abandonment is a problem. The average cart abandonment rate is very close to 70%. (Baymard Institute).
When you send a follow up email to people who have not completed their purchase, you can increase your sales by an estimated 20%.
Increase email open rates
There are many factors that can affect your email open rates. Poor subject lines, poor pre-header text, poor sending times, content seen as spam by service providers. Using techniques such as A/B (also known as split testing), you can fine tune your emails for optimal outcomes.
Boost revenue through up-sells
Upselling works but upselling based on the products your consumer has recently purchased is gold. Using marketing automation you can recommend products B and C to someone who purchase product A or product A and C for someone who purchased product B.
Automate loyalty programs
Trigger email offers
Behavioural marketing is the key to customer retention. For every action a consumer takes, you deliver a result.
Using behavioural marketing results in non-stop of engagement with your customers.
How you can use marketing automation
Through marketing automation, your business can engage prospective and current customers using email, websites, social media, and SMS. Messages are sent automatically, according to one or more defined processes called workflows. Workflows can be designed in many ways including using and modifying existing templates, built from scratch, or even changed as your business needs change.
Marketing automation doesn’t work on its own. You must have a strategy that you’re going to implement. Creating overall marketing goals and then creating specific gaols that your automation is going to help you achieve.
If you have a sales team, and that could be just you, isn’t it better for them to spend time talking to customers who are genuinely interested in your products or services?
How does it work?
It’s starts with you collecting data about your customers. Depending on your business, you may collect data through emails (sent and received), website visits, app usage, social media engagement, and so on. The more data you collect and use, the more accurate your view of you customer is going to be.
Once you have data, it’s time to use it. Segmenting your customers is the first task. What do subsets have in common that meet our business needs? Is it age, gender, location, purchasing history? The list can go on.
When you segment your list, you can tailor messaging to each customer based on their profile. Creating relevant and personalised messaging across email, mobile, social, web experiences, and beyond with a few simple clicks. Delivering personalised experiences for your customers, whether you have 100 or 100 million, efficiently and effectively.
Related article: How to segment your email list
It’s not just about you
What does marketing automation mean for your customer?
A customer’s journey is their experience with your brand. Using marketing automation, you can customise every interaction with them based on what it is you know about them.
Marketing automation creates relevant content and messaging at scale across many channels. Send email messages with dynamic content that personalizes far beyond sticking a customer’s first name in the subject line. Integrate mobile messaging with your email and social campaigns through SMS/MMS, push notifications, and group messaging. Generate digital ads that appear for the right person at the right time. Plus, recommend the right products on your website for each individual user — automatically.
With marketing automation, you can reach customers along their journey no matter where they are in the customer lifecycle — from acquisition to advocacy. Deliver timely, relevant content that reaches customers when, where, and how they prefer — converting prospects into lifelong brand advocates.
How to start
- Define your goals. Not just in terms of marketing automation, but in your marketing over.
- Visualise the customer journey. Create process diagrams of how you want your automations to ‘flow’.
- Create a content strategy. What is it you’re going to send them? Consider your sales funnel and each stage of the customer journey.
- Plan for a slow rollout. Don’t try to get everything done at once. Focus on one flow and get that right.
- Analyse as you go. Look at what’s working and what’s not. Check your reports.
5 signs that you need marketing automation
Marketing automation is not the solution for all of your marketing problems. Ideally, you’ll be struggling with manual tasks now which can be automated to give you more time to spend on prospective clients further down the sales funnel and existing customers.
Long sales cycle
The longer your sales cycle is, the more touchpoints you will have. Keeping on top of each touchpoint can be frustrating, time consuming, and inefficient.
Your CRM can’t automate tasks
You have a CRM that simply reminds you when a task needs to be completed and can’t do anything for you. If you don’t have a CRM that can send reminders to prospects, send promotional emails to different groups of clients, or send a series of welcome emails to new clients you could need marketing automation.
You need more customer data
If you would like to segment your customers but don’t have the information you need to get more information about your customers. You need more than a first name, last name and email address.
Struggling to engage with prospects
You have enquiries but they don’t result in bookings because you need to be nurturing your prospects. Telling them about you and your business. Building trust. Doing this manually is time consuming.
Wasting time on tyre kickers
Are you spending unreasonable amounts of time on price shoppers? Using some of the tactics we’ve talked about, you can identify those people who are genuinely interested in your offer.
Wrap up
I hope this article has help you understand more about marketing automation. Remember that marketing automation isn’t the solution but it can be part of the solution. A big part.
