The term “marketing automation” is one you would have come across if you’ve spent any time researching or discussing modern digital marketing strategies. Marketing can be difficult and time-consuming, and strategies like marketing automation are designed to make things easier for you and your team.
What’s more, automating your marketing processes can help free up your time and leave you with more energy to spend on other tasks. In this article, we take a close look at exactly what marketing automation is, how it’s implemented, why you should be using it, and finally, we round things up with a list of marketing automation tips and tricks.
What Is Marketing Automation?
In simple terms, marketing automation involves the use of modern software platforms to automate various marketing processes. These tend to improve efficiency, but they’re also great because they offer more personalized experiences for individual customers.
There are a few different aspects of marketing automation. On the simplest level, it can be used to send automated messages across social media, text, email, and other digital platforms. Larger marketing campaigns can be fully or partly automated.
The one downside of marketing automation is that it’s difficult to use it to generate new leads. It’s great for nurturing existing leads and encouraging sales, but it’s not an all-in-one solution.
Why Should I Be Using Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation may be a relatively new thing, but it’s something that you should absolutely and definitely be using. For starters, it’s designed to save you time and money. But automating menial tasks, you will free up more time for you and your team to work on more important things.
In addition, marketing automation tends to offer personalized service, which is great for nurturing new leads. People are much more likely to respond to marketing communications in a positive manner if they are personalized, and this in turn will increase your conversion rate and make your overall marketing campaigns more successful.
Marketing Automation Tips and Tricks
Marketing automation is a little complicated at times, and everyone likes a nice little list of tips and tricks to help them get started. Here are a few of our favourites:
- Make sure you have clear goals that you can use to direct your marketing automation and validate its results and ongoing performance.
- Spend a little time selecting the right platform. Different marketing automation software comes with different tools and features, and the right option for most people won’t necessarily be right for you.
- It’s worth putting in the time and effort to build a clear list of interested leads before and during the implementation of your marketing automation platform.
- Contact segmentation is a good strategy that ensures the relevant content is reaching the relevant members of your contact list.
Overall, the most important thing is to realise that although marketing automation is useful, it’s certainly not the only thing you should be using.
The Bottom Line
Marketing automation involves using some sort of software or third-party program to help you automate daily marketing tasks. When set up and used correctly, marketing automation software can be extremely productive, driving more conversions by providing personalized service to existing leads.
The bottom line: If you’re not using some form of marketing automation, it’s something you should at least be considering.