How to Implement & Succeed With Marketing Automation
Last update: 8 December 2022 at 12:34 pm
3.00/5Whenever we hear the terms “implementing marketing automation” (or email marketing), conjure up images of the Autobots handling all of our marketing pop our heads! Wouldn’t that be really great? Perfect marketing automation workflows without any human intervention are the dream of every marketer!
Over the last decade, marketing automation implementation has skyrocketed, with no signs of slowing down. According to a recent Forrester report, marketing automation software spending would increase to $25.1 billion per year by 2023, up from $11.4 billion in 2027.
According to a study by Act-On and Econsultancy, 53% of B2B companies already use marketing automation technology like CRM software, and 37% expect to use it in the future.
The question boils down to why marketing automation is important and how a marketing automation platform can help?
Before we dive deeply into ins and outs of marketing automation, let’s learn what marketing automation is!
What Is Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is an umbrella phrase for any solution, platform, or technology that “allows businesses to streamline, automate, and measure marketing operations and workflows in order to improve operational efficiency and revenue growth.”
It includes automation of actions such as emails, social media, blog posts, web pages, and other tasks, making them easier and less time-consuming. As a result, marketing automation implementation allows for the creation of strategic and creative campaigns that provide results.
Let me give you an email automation example:
If you are into middle-of-the-night shopping, you know immediately after making a purchase you receive a confirmation email. And, that’s what is known as marketing automation! Hope you didn’t think that there was a poor employee sitting behind his computer at 2:00 AM waiting for new purchases to come through, did you?
However, how does marketing automation help your business become more revenue-generating? Read on to know more!
Key Benefits of Marketing Automation
Efficiency
First and foremost, implementing marketing automation improves the efficiency of your entire organization. You may be able to save money on an internal team while allowing your team to focus on more critical and strategic issues.
For example, you can use an hour tracker to track the time management of the company. It ensures a company’s efficiency, success, and productivity. Time management, regardless of the type of service or business, is one of the most effective techniques to increase efficiency and is required in the workplace.
Increased revenue
The more leads you nurture, the more likely they are to become users. Implementing marketing automation enhances revenue by converting more leads into paying clients. Also, when a marketing automation workflow is in place, the money spent on employees is reduced which increases revenues.
Looking for |
Discover the most relevant agencies for your project based on your own specific requirements.
Find an agency!Increased conversion rate
When it comes to raising conversion rates, implementing marketing automation can help your team work more efficiently. Your marketing automation tool will track your leads, and you may even use it to retarget non-converting website visitors, increasing your conversion rates.
Marketing automation, once again, should offer your team more time to review your marketing plan and decide how to convert visitors.
Personalized marketing strategy
Implementing marketing automation converts website visitors to leads, and once you know who they are, you can segment them based on their behavior or attributes.
You may target your persona across many channels using marketing automation. Indeed, you can reach out to them using social media, search ads, or email campaigns.
Your leads will receive personalized messages, and you will be able to track their interaction.
Accurate reporting
Implement marketing automation to organize time-consuming marketing operations, track work, and analyze activities and their results. Generate automated reports with your marketing software. Suddenly, a difficult chore becomes much easier!
Furthermore, marketing automation tools can provide you with a high-level picture of your entire process. This will assist you in identifying problems and points of friction. You can understand where things are going wrong with reliable, efficient reporting.
Lead nurturing
Lead nurturing can be set up in marketing automation software to develop drip email campaigns and track their progress using marketing automation software.
Indeed, it will help you to alert your sales team when a lead transition from marketing qualified to sales qualified. As a result, no time is lost and your sales team may contact prospects right away.
Increased customer lifetime value
We all know that retaining an existing customer is less expensive than gaining and developing a relationship with a new one. Although this is a cliche, it is true! That’s why it’s critical to turn one-time consumers into long-term customers of our product, service, or platform.
When the implementation process is automated, you can target similar customers by sending them similar emails. Email marketing automation strategy can be used to keep them hooked by telling a story about what your brand can offer and how it adds value to their living.
It enables you to automate requests for reviews and comments, deliver unique offers to high-spending groups, and launch re-engagement efforts to subscribers who have fallen out of touch.
8 Steps for a Successful Marketing Automation Solution
Recognizing the potential perils of digital marketing automation adoption and implementation, here are eight ideas to guarantee your organization gets off to a good start!
Step 1: Define your goal & target audience
Set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely, i.e. use the S.M.A.R.T. framework. Choose and track your key performance indicators (KPIs). Make a realistic growth outcome choice. Determine the tools and timetable required to achieve your requirements. Finally, think about your target audience and how different people will receive the message.
For example, if you’re selling a new iced coffee drink, your marketing leaders might want to target younger folks rather than older ones. If you’re selling winter clothing, on the other hand, your marketing efforts might have better luck at older age groups.
Step 2: Conduct a thorough marketing automation research
It’s critical to choose the marketing automation software solution to adopt after a company has determined its requirements and set a budget (at least a range). Every day, the marketing automation sector becomes more fragmented, with a plethora of feasible options. Hence, conducting thorough research is important.
For example: you may be wasting much too much time managing personnel scheduling to provide enough coverage at your company.
Many marketing automation tools include extra capabilities that let you automate scheduling based on specific employee information. You’ll appreciate the convenience if you’ve ever spent a frustrating afternoon.
Step 3: Organize your data
Automating with disorganized data is counterproductive. Get rid of any information that is outdated or erroneous. Then, arrange your data so that it is scalable, versatile, and future-proof.
- Make sure that your naming conventions are consistent.
- Keep file names to a minimum.
- Maintain a consistent versioning system.
- Create a data dictionary to standardize categories
Step 4: Align the marketing automated process with the sales process
The sales team must be engaged in marketing automation. They have significant insights into the best type of automated system to use and how to enhance the customer experience and customer journey. Indeed, they’ll be able to better qualify your leads and turn them into paying clients.
Step 5: Create a timeline for the marketing automation software
Taking a step-by-step approach to automating your marketing activities is a good choice. It’s not a good idea to make radical changes all at once. A better strategy would be to automate certain components of your marketing on a regular basis.
If you’re using marketing automation to boost lead generation, for example, you might concentrate on email marketing automation strategy and developing an online community.
Step 6: Provide effective training to staff for the new software
Your staff needs to know what a marketing automation system is, what it does, and how it might help them. They should also be aware that the overuse of automation might have negative consequences. Changes should be data-driven, in addition to making decisions on marketing content utilized for automated procedures like email marketing, campaigns, and analytics.
Step 7: Start simple and build
As tempting as it is to jump right in and use all of the exciting new tools and features you’ll have at your disposal, one of the greatest pieces of advice is to start by deploying what you’re already doing and then add other features once you’ve gained confidence in the platform. Start small with your present uses and expand as you go, learning from the analytics and fine-tuning your efforts based on your results.
Step 8: Keep on reviewing the results from marketing automation results
Automating your marketing procedures isn’t something that emerges by itself. As a result, it’s critical that you keep track of your investments and evaluate the results. Making the proper improvements will be easier if you use the analytics you collect from the endeavor. It will also serve as a baseline for the types of technologies or tools you may need in the future.
On the Growth Trajectory
The global market for marketing automation, estimated at $3.9 billion in 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of $6.3 billion by 2026. Hence, marketing automation implementation is the need of the hour to take you on the growth trajectory. Automation tools aren’t a replacement for your human marketing team but an aid to managing your online marketing programs. Yet, having the right approach is absolutely necessary for ensuring success!
We have tried to cover everything about marketing automation implementation, but if you feel we’ve missed out on anything, please feel free to reach out to us through the comments section below!
