Getting smart with Marketing automation-The Panagora Blog

Getting smart with Marketing automation

Maybe you’ve heard many people discuss marketing automation, but, do you really know what it is and how your business benefits from it? Don’t worry,  let’s take some minutes and list the most basic information about marketing automation.

Nowadays, the word automation has been significantly popular in the world of digital. Although it seems like a complex process, automation can make all work aspects of life easier. To do good business while having time and money saved, automating your marketing plans is a great choice. 

Depending on the business stages and business goals, marketing automation can be used for:

·        Lead generation

·        Customer Development

·        Segmentation

·        Customer Engagement

·        ROI (return of investment) Measurement

·        Customer retention

·        Conversion Optimization

·        And many more.

In this guide, we will show you the reasons that you should have used marketing automation all along since the beginning. Making use of automation tools and methods brings out a lot of potentials to save the working effort of time, money, and efforts as well as scaling up a business.

Definition

Marketing automation is the use of cloud-based software to plan, execute, manage, and automate repetitive marketing tasks and processes across multiple channels. The word automation has created meaning for this term since marketing contains the promotion of a product or service. Marketing automation contains the ways of promoting a product or service that is automatic running, with the help of technology. 

The marketing automation tool aims to streamline sales and marketing processes by automation and analytic marketing tools for any company. Therefore, they can replace marketing automation with very repetitive manual processes. Meanwhile, the returning results of marketing automation are expected to be the same as other campaigns with human error reduced. 

Marketing automation involves the entire life cycle of the customer and answers the tough questions. In fact, It can be used to guide leads via a complex sales funnel, from generating lead processes to the early stage of sales funnel such as nurturing leads that are already built or to closing sales, upselling, even optimizing conversion and retention.

From subscribers into customers, marketing automation can follow the whole life cycle of the customer across channels. Therefore, you can use it to promote the benefits of maximizing customer’s lifetime value, of many customers, by automatic tools, in the same period of time as normal marketing campaigns run by human effort. 

Myths of Marketing Automation

#Myth 1: Marketing automation is email marketing.

To the old original terms of marketing automation, it’s believed that marketing automation refers to the use of email marketing’s autoresponder. Hence, many marketers use the word “marketing automation” and “email marketing” interchangeably. Indeed, marketing automation is broader than that. Actually email marketing is a component of marketing automation. 

#Myth 2: Marketing automation is cold and impersonal.

Because of the word “automation”, many people think that marketing automation is cold and impersonal. However, it’s completely wrong. Marketing automation allows us to personalize every message more easily. In other words, marketing automation helps to build and strengthen the relationships between you and your customers. When automating your marketing, you can concentrate on the content and quality of your campaigns. Besides, it enables your team to add more personal touches to each campaign.

#Myth 3: Marketing automation is a way of spamming people

Marketing automation is not like you keep sending messages to one person regardless of his or her status. Marketing automation is not like your e-mail every person with the same message at the same time. Imagine that you’re just using marketing automation to tailor each of your user experiences, thus nurturing leads and driving the sales conversion funnel.

Benefits of Marketing Automation

#1: Increase marketing efficiency

Normally it takes time to manually prepare, personalize, and send messages to your customers. Now marketing automation tools are here automate time-consuming and manual tasks related to content and customer experience. Hence, it will help you to nurture your leads, improve productivity, and save time for solving other tasks.

#2: Enhance the ability to generate more and better-qualified leads

Marketing automation can utilize and combine multiple fields like demographic and behavioral data with a lead scoring system. As a result, it can give you a complete picture of your audiences, generate and identify sales qualified leads, also well known as SQL.

#3: A multichannel view of customer behavior

Marketing automation runs across multiple channels and devices. Therefore, after running a campaign, it can collect and create more comprehensive profiles and complete views of each contact. All of the processes give you a complete picture of customers.

#4: Streamline between marketing and sales processes

Marketing automation can help align sales and marketing efforts by using a lead scoring system to identify qualified leads. On the other hand, marketing works on defining leads to enable sales to focus their efforts on the most highly qualified leads.

How to choose marketing automation software

There is quite a lot of marketing automation software for you to choose from. But before choosing one, you need to understand your current marketing processes and know-how you measure success and what you want to improve. You can drive yourself through some stages below to find out what you really want.

#1: Identify whether you need a marketing automation platform

Firstly, let’s get to know yourself and determine if you really needed an automation tool. Do a comprehensive self-assessment of your company’s needs, staff capabilities, management abilities, and financial resources. You can use the questions below as a guideline.

1.    Have you outgrown your current marketing system?

2.    Which capabilities of marketing automation are most valuable to your business?

3.    Which parts of your marketing process need improvements?

4.    What are your goals?

5.    How will this software integrate with your existing marketing sources?

6.    Do you need to train staff for using this software?

7.    How will you measure success?

#2: Identify and contact appropriate vendors

When you have been sure that you need a marketing automation software, spend time to research vendors and their capabilities. Follow the steps below:

1.    Make a list of all vendors and their capabilities

2.    Make a list of all the marketing automation capabilities you currently have, those you would like to have, and those you can’t live without.

3.    Narrow your list down to the vendors that meet your criteria

4.    Contact with those vendors and set a timeframe for them to reply.

#3: Prepare a demo

Now it’s time for you to set up a demo with your shortlist of vendors. Besides, you should prepare a list of questions you need to ask them. Remember, this is an ongoing relationship so it’s crucial to feel that all your questions are being answered.

#4: Check testimonials, make a purchase

Before making any purchase, you should check out what the vendor’s customers said about them. It’s better if you read from someone in a business similar to yours. Besides, remember to double-check the price with included features and options to avoid additional fees.

In sum, you should start researching marketing automation. Change to something new can boost sales, whether or not, it’s a possibility, rather than using the same methods with fewer sales. But be cautious when you choose a marketing automation platform.