We hear more and more about marketing automation, but not everyone knows what it is and how it works.
It’s not just a strategy or a technology, as the name might suggest, but rather a set of processes using software to help companies with their digital transformation and grow their business.
In this JOurnal article we will explain what marketing automation is, how it works and the rules to follow to improve your communication strategy.
Table of contents
What is marketing automation?
Nowadays it is essential for companies to develop increasingly effective marketing strategies to become more competitive in the market. This can be achieved by marketing automation, which uses software to simplify, automate and improve a company’s marketing activities.
Marketing automation is part of a process known as demand generation, which is the phase in which relationships with new potential customers are created and consolidated until their trust is earned.
In the process of digitisation, personality and creativity are not neglected and, at the same time, useful data and metrics are provided to analyse the activities of companies. In this way, the right people are reached at the right time. To summarise, the main operations that can be carried out and integrated with each other through marketing automation are:
What to integrate in market automation
To summarize, the main operations that can be carried out and integrated with each other thanks to marketing automation are:
- e-Mail marketing
- Landing pages
- Campaign management
- Contact predition/scoring
- Lead management
- CRM integration
- Social media marketing
- Marketing analytics
Marketing automation: how does it work
We have introduced the concept of marketing automation, but what does it really consist of?
It is developed through two fundamental activities: automation and data measurement. These allow you to monitor the performance of your website, create landing pages or customised content, acquire new potential customers, carry out comprehensive reporting activities or assign scores to those entered in the database. Specifically, these two activities are:
- Automation, i.e. the possibility that marketing automation offers users to simplify the processes with which they manage their multi-channel communication campaigns. This means that multiple tools such as email, social platforms, e-commerce, etc. can be used simultaneously in a personalised and automated way, without the need for continuous intervention by marketers.
- Measurement, which allows marketers to constantly analyse and monitor active campaigns along with all communication, promotion, engagement, sales, etc. activities.
What to know about implementing marketing automation
There are a few basic things you should always keep in mind before purchasing marketing automation software. Let’s see what they are:
- Online presence: every company that wants to use marketing automation must ensure that it first establishes its own online presence and is easy to find. This means creating your own website, offering interesting content and updating it constantly.
- Generate leads: Once you have established your online presence, you need to create your own lead generation, acquiring new customers and retaining old ones. Here, marketing automation optimises the acquisition process and increases conversion rates.
- Marketing channels: Companies need to be clear about which communication tools they can and want to use. Often the focus is on web, email, social and mobile. The latter two, in particular, are growing rapidly and it is advisable to develop effective marketing strategies on these channels to acquire new customers and improve engagement.
- Data integration: it should be considered that the migration of some data needed for the automation of a process, if coming from another system, could lead to additional maintenance costs.
Taking this into account will make it easier for companies to optimise their processes.
Conclusion
Marketing automation is a great opportunity for companies that want to keep up with the times, improve their business and retain their customers. Nowadays, it is of paramount importance to take advantage of every digital tool to continually increase one’s competitive edge, which is why marketing automation should not be overlooked.