What Is Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation technology and software helps to streamline repetitive marketing tasks to increase productivity and efficiency within both the sales and marketing sectors of your business. The aim is to ultimately attract new leads, generate sales and increase revenue in the easiest way possible.
Many surveyed companies have on average 23% of their total sales to thank automated email marketing for and for every £1 spent on automated email marketing, this proven successful strategy generates an average £38 in ROI. Therefore you are six times more likely to create a lead from an email than a Twitter link.
Marketing Automation Benefits
- Boosted sales readiness of your leads
- Improved marketing and sales productivity and efficiency
- Increased sales revenues
- Increased customer engagement through enhanced targeting
- Deepened and maintained customer relationships
- Can see how each person is interacting with your brand
- Frees up time to focus on closing the leads and generating a sale with the leads that matter
- Helps you to see which marketing campaigns bring in the most sales
Examples Of Marketing Automation Software
- Hubspot
- Sharpspring
- Active Campaign
- Pardot
Here's How To Successfully Implement Marketing Automation:
1) Invest In Training
Introducing a Marketing Automation strategy into your business is an exciting process, however it can often be quite daunting for many of your employees who are not familiar with this particular software. Therefore investing in some training for your staff will be very beneficial as it will boost confidence along with lots of other long term advantages.
Providing extra training for your team is a way of proving to them that you are committed to their success, which will ultimately improve performance of employees resulting in a more profitable business overall.
2) Be Realistic
It's massively important to be positive and to have a big vision for your company, however there is a fine line between extreme optimism and biting off more than you can chew.
In order to successfully implement Marketing Automation, baby steps are the answer. It is not a good approach to overwhelm your marketing team, especially with a new project.
Aim to hit small but regular targets, this will enable the business to achieve the larger goals in the bigger picture.
3) Have A Plan
It is absolutely critical that there be a plan and a strategy in place when implementing a new marketing campaign such as Marketing Automation. This is so no jobs get left behind and everyone involved with the project is on the same page. Some things to consider in your plan include:
- Identifying the admins, users and rules for governance
- Working with sales to define what constitutes a qualified lead
- Determining if/how the platform will integrate with other systems
- Migration of contacts, opt-outs and hard bounce list from current email platform
- Integrating contact forms/subscription forms/lead gen forms on your website
- Setting up subscription management
- Adding visitor tracking code to your website
- Designing email and landing page templates to match your brand
4) Data Analysis
Your new business database will be constantly accumulating information and it is vital that you utilise this and analyse as much as you can. This is valuable material that will be the making of the success of your business' marketing automation. From this data you can create client segments and really understand their wants and needs.
Here are a few other articles related to Marketing Automation than you may be interested in:
- How Much Does Email Marketing Automation Cost?
- 12 Reasons Why Marketing Automation Works For Small Businesses
- Marketing Automation Tools Comparison – 4 Of The Best Platforms
Hopefully these steps have helped you understand how to successfully implement Marketing Automation a little more and its purpose. If you have any queries, please comment below or call us on 01332 343281 for an informal chat.
