If your CEO put you on the spot and asked, “What is marketing automation?”, could you define it? (We won’t judge you if the answer is no!)
This blog post is here help. First, we explain what marketing automation is in simple terms. Then we discuss ten reasons your business needs to invest in marketing automation.
Read on to learn how to have productive conversations about marketing automation across your business.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation the process by which certain marketing actions are automated. The term also refers to the software that is used to power this. This software normally works alongside your CRM.
The underlying aim of marketing automation is to boost marketing ROI and increase overall revenue. This is achieved by creating a highly personalised customer experience that reduces friction and encourages the customer to move through the buying cycle.
Done well, marketing automation makes the relationship between a customer and a brand more profitable at each and every opportunity.
Some of the activities marketing automation software can carry out include:
- tracking and nurturing leads
- posting content on social media channels
- using real-time data to create customer segments
- sending emails triggered by specific customer behaviour
- serving dynamic content in emails and on a website
- personalising product recommendations
- reporting on campaign performance
Using software to automate these marketing activities is much more efficient than doing them manually. The time and money saved allows your marketing team to focus on refining the success of your marketing efforts.
Ten reasons your business needs marketing automation
Now you get the principle of marketing automation. So, why does your business need it?
Here are ten ” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>marketing automation benefits to help you build a business case for investment.
1) Increases efficiency
Sifting through data to create segments is a super laborious task to do manually.
Similarly, if your team was to have to manually create and send an email in response to every action your customers took, this would totally overwhelm them.
Automating these marketing activities is much more efficient. Automation also makes campaigns scalable beyond the limits your team size may have previously imposed.
2) Reduces costs
With increased efficiency comes reduced costs. Marketing automation can save you a tonne of budget you may have spent on employing staff to do repetitive marketing tasks.
3) Improves accountability
Decent marketing automation software will have reporting capabilities built in. Being able to create detailed reports, automatically, allows you to see the big picture.
Marketing automation reporting gives you a bird’s eye view of how your marketing activities are affecting your sales funnel.
This helps you identify which touchpoints in your customer journey need optimising. Once you know this, you can empower relevant team members to make improvements.
4) Improves customer experience
Marketing automation allows you to create a highly personalised customer experience that makes shopping with you more enjoyable.
Automation focuses on targeting highly relevant messages to specific segments based on their behaviour. This improves customer experience.
Better customer experience equals more engaged customers. And increased engagement leads to the holy grail: increased conversions.
5) Increases average order value
Marketing automation allows you to increase your average order value.
By cross-selling and upselling through automated product recommendations, you can entice your customers to spend more in each transaction.
6) Increases customer lifetime value
Not only can marketing automation increase conversions and average order value, but it can also improve customer retention and loyalty. Ways to do this include:
- automating requests for reviews and feedback
- automating exclusive offers to your highest spending segments
- automating re-engagement campaigns to wake sleeping subscribers
In this way, marketing automation strengthens the relationship you have with your customers post purchase and increases customer lifetime value.
7) Boosts your revenue
We’ve explored how marketing automation increases average order value and customer lifetime value.
It also enables you to recover revenue you may have lost through basket abandonment. Automated basket abandonment email campaigns are a great way to do this.
These factors all contribute to increasing your marketing ROI and increasing the amount of money you can make from your eCommerce website.
8) Embeds an A/B testing culture
Smart marketers know that the proof is always in the pudding. Testing your way to success is always better than relying on unproven hypotheses, however logical they may seem.
Marketing automation makes A/B testing easy. Decent marketing automation software has the capability to A/B test built in.
This means you don’t need to invest in additional A/B testing technology and allows you to embed A/B testing into everything you do.
9) Allows you to predict and shape behaviour
Marketing automation allows your brand to progress from being reactive, to being predictive and influential.
Once you are up and running with marketing automation, every customer interaction gives you more and more data to go on. This is particularly relevant for product recommendations and other aspects of personalisation.
As a result, every week, month, and year, you are better equipped to predict what your customers want.
Knowing this means you are in the driving seat. You can generate demand, and shape behaviour.
10) Creates space for creativity, strategy, and refinement
Automating the marketing activities explored in this blog post, means that your marketing team has more time and headspace. They can use this to get more creative, think more strategically, and refine your marketing efforts.
Being freed from repetitive tasks, means your team can reach their full potential and deliver more for your brand.
Takeaway
We hope this post has equipped you with a clear definition of marketing automation and helped you to understand how it will benefit your business.
Being able to clearly articulate what marketing automation is, and why your business needs it, helps you to have productive conversations about investing in technology to power it.
If you’d like to see our marketing automation technology in action, the button below is for you.
