You’ve had many people talk about it online and you wonder, what is marketing automation?
Simply put, marketing automation is a strategy used by marketers to engage prospects using highly valuable personalized content, using marketing tools such as email, social sites, etc., with the intention of converting prospective customers to customers and turn customers into satisfied customers. This helps companies generate new revenue, therefore providing an excellent return on investment (ROI).
How Does it Work?
With marketing automation, you can easily guide your prospects and customers through a process that ushers them down a sales funnel. The integration of software makes it easy for marketers to create timely structured communication channels with prospects and customers. This process requires you to have:
- A central marketing database that holds your marketing data and detailed information about how your prospects behave and interact with your content; hence making it possible to segment and target the right message to every customer.
- An engagement marketing engine that provides a marketing environment where marketers can create, manage, automate marketing processes, and keep conversations going across online and offline channels.
- An analytics platform that makes it possible to test, measure, and optimize marketing efforts to determine ROI.
Benefits of Marketing Automation
- Helps you manage multichannel marketing using less effort
- Saves time by eliminating repetitive tasks
- Improves overall experience of your customers
- Helps you better target customers and prospects
- Minimizes human error when running campaigns
- Helps nurture and deliver qualified leads
What are the Basic Features and Functions?
The basic features and functions involved in marketing automation include:
- Email marketing
- Sales/Landing page
- Campaign management
- Prediction
- Lead management
- CRM integration
- Social marketing
- Analytics
Still wondering what is marketing automation software and how you can achieve success from it?
Though there exists a number of differences between vendors who provide software for marketing automation, it is important to understand that your success is primarily determined by:
- The strategies and processes you choose to employ
- Type of content you create
- Teamwork
Getting it right at first requires you to invest in the above areas, if you intend to achieve to a solid ROI in your marketing efforts. The secret is being in a position where you’re able to think creatively, create smart ideas and move swiftly.
