5 reasons why marketing automation is essential for retail marketing

Society is embracing automation.

Introducing new and advanced technology to take over from manual, laborious, and technical tasks that we don’t enjoy doing. Tasks that technology can perform at an increased scale, with greater speed, accuracy, and impact.

In terms of marketing, this is the role of marketing automation. And for retailers, it’s becoming increasingly essential.

The retail automation market is expected to be worth more than $18.9 billion by 2023. Expanding at a compound annual growth rate of more than 10.9% between this 2017 and 2023.

Impressive.

But why is automation proving to be so important for retailers? And why is it essential for your retail business?

Read on to find out.

Increased engagement

Roughly 86% of shoppers abandon a website without making a purchase.

This means that you’re losing over half of your potential revenue to website visitors who are changing their minds or simply forgetting to checkout.

That’s why it’s so important to keep these potential customers engaged.

Want to know the trick to improving engagement?

Send the right message. At the right time. To the right person. Via the right channel.

And marketing automation offers countless ways to do just that.

Email and website personalisation. Recommended products. Welcome campaigns. Re-engagement campaigns. Recommended content.

All of the above ensures that you are cutting through the noise and grabbing the attention of your potential customers. Before your competitors do.

Loyal customers

Personalised, well-timed experiences help your customers to feel engaged with, appreciated, and connected to your brand.

In fact, research has shown that 44% of consumers say they are more likely to become repeat buyers after a personalised experience with a brand. And of course when your customers keep coming back, their lifetime value also increases.

Marketing automation is the key to enabling this.

Send out highly targeted and effective content and communications at each stage of your customers’ journey to keep them engaged and coming back for more.

From targeted emails through to personalised chatbots. Automation is key to keeping your customers happy.

Scalability

An underappreciated benefit of marketing automation is that it helps businesses to increase the scale and scope of their marketing campaigns.

After all, having your processes and campaigns running smoothly in the background with no requirement for you to manually send, and little need to intervene, is going to save considerable time.

By using automation, you can catapult your marketing capacity beyond the constraints of team size.

Instead of manually having to design, proof, test, send, and review individual campaigns and communications, team members can create one automation flow that runs continually. Sending the right message at the right time.

This means that instead of one campaign, your team can work on multiple. Adding to your campaign portfolio regularly and building a marketing powerhouse.

Without the need for additional team members.

An empowered team

Which brings us neatly onto our next point.

Now that your team isn’t bogged down with fiddly, time-consuming, manual tasks, they have room to become more creative, strategic, and accountable.

If automation is taking care of the marketing execution, your team can engage in workshops, strategic sessions, and industry research. All of which elevates your marketing so that both your strategy and execution is the best it can be.

And of course the comprehensive reporting that comes with automation software means that your whole team can quickly see how your marketing activities are benefiting the wider business.

Empowering your team to take a high-level view of activity, and make changes where needed.

Increased revenue

Let’s finish with (arguably) the main reason why automation is essential for retailers.

Revenue.

By using marketing automation, retailers won’t just save time and money. They’ll make more of it.

In fact, product recommendation automations alone are responsible for an average of 10-30% of eCommerce site revenue, according to Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru.

This could include replenishment campaigns, abandonment reminders, and up-selling promotions. Just like the email below.

Not convinced?

If this post hasn’t helped you buy into the power of automation, then we’re confident our team of experts can.

Get in touch to have a chat about how marketing automation can transform your retail business.