Today, marketing is not just about sending a single offer or discount to customers. Companies need to map their customers’ journeys and offer relevant content at the right time and place to increase the ROI of their marketing efforts.

Marketing teams need to collect as much information as possible about their audience, interpret this information and use the insights to offer the best possible customer journey. They must strive to lock their customers to their product or service.

All these activities and processes are time-consuming and require dedicated resources and investments. Small companies and start-ups, that are more focused on active lead generation and conversion, may not have the means to manage these processes. Large companies, with a huge digital presence and a number of touchpoints for their customers, run the risk of missing out on vital customer information or feedback that could help improve their product, service or overall customer experience.

Marketing automation software packages are designed to automate routine marketing tasks and allow marketing teams to concentrate on work that adds more value to the company.

Marketing automation was initially designed to simplify the email marketing process. Today, it covers almost every digital marketing and content platform that an organization can use to identify, engage and retain customers. 

Marketing automation platforms can automate different kinds of marketing and content initiatives such as:

• Content creation
• Content management (CMS)
• Email marketing
• Workflow management
• Social media posts management
• Marketing processes
• Analytics

What is WordPress?

It is an open-source content management software that was created in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Written in the PHP language, WordPress is paired with a proprietary database such as MySQL or MariaDB. It can be used to create any type of website, thanks to changes in its core code and the availability of a number of plug-ins and themes. WordPress is used to power numerous websites and is considered one of the most popular systems to create an e-commerce site.

It is important to note that the source for WordPress is www.WordPress.org. This site is sometimes confused with www.WordPress.com, a third-party hosting solution that helps users set up their own site and run it for free as a subdomain of WordPress.

Benefits of WordPress:

WordPress is one of the most popular content management software platforms available globally today. It is used by nearly 45% of the top 10 million websites and helps individuals, big businesses and even government entities build and operate their websites. Some prominent users of WordPress include the websites of the White House, USA, The Rolling Stones and Microsoft (for its blog pages).

WordPress has many user-friendly benefits:

• It is an open-source and free software
• It is extremely easy to install
• It can be modified endlessly, even by people who are not tech-savvy
• It is very flexible
• It has a huge ecosystem of helpful resources such as blogs, website forums, Facebook groups and tutorials

Why should you use WordPress for marketing automation?

Most organizations likely use WordPress to design and run their websites. Once their website is up and running, it has to be fed with regular and relevant content. It must provide a smooth and hassle-free browsing experience to the site visitors. The website also needs to be used for continuous and in-depth customer engagement to drive visitors through the marketing funnel and be converted from leads to buying customers. This is where marketing automation steps in with a solution.

As we have seen, marketing automation improves content personalization and helps companies design unique experiences for their customers. Marketing automation software can be programmed to run various initiatives such as email management, feedback gathering, customizing campaigns as per user preferences and running a drip process to engage anonymous website visitors.

WordPress is a leading content management system that offers many third-party integrations or plug-ins. This ecosystem of plug-ins can be used to design marketing automation processes such as lead-generation forms, setting up chatbots and giving relevant product recommendations to visitors.

This unique combination of content management and automation makes WordPress a very useful automation resource for companies of all sizes.

Benefits of using WordPress for marketing automation:

Marketing automation helps marketing teams allocate their time and resources more effectively towards better messaging and marketing recommendations, instead of just concentrating on one or two initiatives at a time.

WordPress marketing automation plug-ins have features that handle repetitive tasks seamlessly and make various processes user-friendly. Major benefits of WordPress for marketing automation include:

• Cost-saving: As a free/open-source software, the cost of installing and using WordPress automation plug-ins is not as high as the cost of a dedicated automation software platform. Even after considering the cost of premium plug-ins, the overall cost of running a WordPress marketing automation platform is quite low.
• Time-saving: This is the fundamental promise of any marketing automation software, and WordPress plug-ins perform this function effortlessly.
• Possibility of running multichannel campaigns: WordPress plug-ins allow companies to use multiple digital and social media channels to connect with their audiences, leads and customers.
• Good user experience: A good user experience is a critical element in marketing today. WordPress plug-ins allow organizations to customize on-site and off-site experiences to make their own and their customers’ journeys richer and more useful.
• Data generation: The more data the marketing team has, the less it has to guess its customers’ behavior, purchase intentions or comfort with the content. WordPress plug-ins provide a lot of actionable data points that teams can use to increase lead conversion rates.
• Richer marketing campaigns: WordPress plug-ins provide better access to data and the possibility of running more effective A/B testing, which helps marketers to run highly targeted and productive campaigns to generate more revenue.

Finding Marketing Automation WordPress plug-ins?

Free WordPress plug-ins can be found in the plug-in directory on www.wordpress.org. Companies can also source them directly from the WordPress admin area. Individual developers and third-party companies design and sell premium WordPress plug-ins, which can be purchased. Websites such as www.wpbeginner.com also offer tutorials and recommendations for plug-ins. 

WordPress offers a large number of marketing automation plug-ins that an organization can choose from. The following are the most popular options available today:

• Zapier: Creates a ‘zap’ to connect different apps into one seamless user experience.
• SendinBlue: It offers a machine learning-based artificial intelligence tool that facilitates bulk email marketing and helps keep track of email open rates.
• MobileMonkey: A key feature of this plug-in is the chat box or live chat facility.
• HubSpot: It offers many conditional workflows which can be adapted to dynamic company requirements.
• CoSchedule: This is mainly designed for social media content planning.
• Pardot: This popular cloud automation software from SalesForce includes a comprehensive suite of marketing campaign elements presented on a single dashboard.
• ActiveCampaign: It provides businesses with an integrated CRM solution and email marketing capability.
• Drip: Designed especially for e-commerce companies, it helps create personalized content and automate marketing campaigns. It can be modified automatically in line with customer behavior.
• Affiliate WP: As the name suggests, this plug-in is designed for affiliate marketing companies and is a basic and user-friendly tool for first-time users.
• Retainful: This is a plug-in designed for e-commerce companies. Its key feature is the possibility of contacting users who abandon their shopping carts.
• Ontraport: This plug-in has inbuilt email marketing, e-commerce, reporting and landing page functionalities.
• InfusionSoft (Keap): This is designed for small business owners to help generate leads, acquire more customers and improve revenue by increasing lead conversion rates.
• GetResponse: A simple and easy-to-use marketing automation plug-in that offers all the key tools required for an organization to start using marketing automation.
• AutoPilot: From timed response tasks to targeting and messaging tasks, this plug-in offers a seamless solution that is also visually rich and easy to navigate.

Conclusion

Marketing automation today is at the core of a marketing department’s activities irrespective of the size of the company. The digital and social channels and platforms that run these activities are constantly evolving and marketing automation keeps getting better at managing, executing and forecasting successful marketing campaigns.

Marketing automation can help increase lead conversion rates by 200-300% and is a very important investment for any organization today. The biggest buyers of marketing automation software are small and medium businesses, and this trend is growing exponentially.

WordPress plug-ins allow organizations to add features and new functions to their WordPress website. With nearly 50,000 plug-ins available for the WordPress ecosystem, these plug-ins are the most useful tools for an organization to optimize conversion rates, improve marketing strategy and design, and implement extremely targeted content.