What is Marketing Automation?

Let us first understand marketing automation.

As the name suggests, the process involves automating repetitive tasks within the marketing function to reduce human error. Marketing automation is based on software tools, digital/online platforms, and technologies – designed to help marketing teams carry out their work more effectively. The channels include social media handles, websites, and email.

The first use of marketing automation was for email marketing. Today, it is applied to the entire inbound marketing process to make the customer journey smooth and more productive.

Marketing automation allows marketers to do much more with less. It is a useful practice for small and medium-sized organizations that may not have the budget or resources for a full marketing setup. 

What is an Example of Marketing Automation?

Two simple types of marketing automation will help us to understand the process.

1. Auto-responder automation process for lead nurturing
   1. The leads generated by a company need to learn about the business, products, services, and where and how to purchase them.
   2. An auto-responder is a set of on-boarding emails which give relevant content to leads at every stage of the marketing funnel.
   3. It helps the leads get familiar with your business and trust you enough to invest in your product.
   4. It is crucial to offer a hook to the leads. It motivates them to sign up on your website or share their email address with you. This hook could be a free product trial, a free report, or just about anything that introduces your company to the lead.
2. Behavior-driven marketing automation
   1. It is a way to engage potential customers by identifying issues in your product or service that turns them away.
   2. This process requires understanding the customer’s problems and giving them the right solutions.
   3. Behavior-driven automation uses buyer personas that help the organization to send out the right message at the right time to the right customer.
   4. It will convince customers that you are the right solution to their problem.

How Is Marketing Automation Executed?

Using technology to automate the marketing processes in an organization requires a shift in organizational thinking and a clear idea of how and where the investment will help your company. It is, therefore, crucial to have a defined marketing automation process to make sure all stakeholders in the organization are involved and committed to it.

Multiple factors come into play for a properly executed marketing automation strategy:

1. Need to engage customers with dynamic, relevant content. Sending the wrong content at the wrong time results in the loss of a customer.
2. Establish a “drip campaign” triggered by a customer’s online behavior. It allows the company to tailor messages to each customer and increase email opening rates.
3. Align various marketing departments before automating the processes. It helps avoid communication gaps and improves collaboration for more effective customer funneling.
4. Nurture the leads and guide them through the purchase funnel to become customers. Moving a customer from an MQL to an SQL stage requires the organization to understand its customers. And marketing automation can provide the data for this.
5. Have a plan to move customers from a lead to a buyer.

Typical Flowchart for a Marketing Automation Process

A marketing automation process flowchart is a map of the entire customer journey, built using a pre-defined logic process. It helps the organization establish a self-sustaining customer engagement cycle. A typical marketing automation process flowchart would be like the following:

Source: https://www.slideteam.net/business_powerpoint_diagrams/omnichannel-marketing-automation-process-flowchart-send-ppt-powerpoint-presentation-visuals.html

How Can Marketing Automation Be Improved?

Marketing automation technology is an investment in time, hardware, software, and people. Every organization – especially small and medium-sized companies – needs to get maximum ROI and ensure the best possible efficiency and productivity in its marketing processes.

Many organizations complain about not getting efficient results out of their marketing automation. It could be due to a lack of technical or process experience and skills, or not having enough resources to manage the complete automation system. Small and growing companies face these challenges frequently as they grow, and their marketing automation needs to keep evolving.

Like for any technology, there are certain “best practices” for implementing the marketing automation technology. These will help any organization develop a framework to better plan their marketing campaigns.

Key Best Practices In Marketing Automation

Although each organization can establish its own best practices for marketing automation over time, certain industry-wide practices are almost a mandatory requirement.

Let us look at some best practices for marketing automation:

1. Goal setting

Marketing automation processes should be designed to set and exceed marketing goals such as lead generation, lead conversion, or contributing to converting potential leads.

2. Define buyer personas

• Who is the customer?

• What are their pain points?

• What do they look for to solve their problems or pain points?

• How can the brand or organization fit into that solution?

Answering these questions helps the organization tap the right potential customers.

3. Define the “lead flow” of the customer journey

• How should the lead travel to the “customer” destination?

Setting up a marketing automation framework without a lead flow is like trying to reach your destination without a map.

The marketing teams will eventually arrive at the destination – converting leads into customers – but this will be through trial and error, and the time spent in it could result in valuable leads dropping out of the funnel.

4. Lead scoring and qualification process

It determines the stage at which the lead moves from a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) to a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).

The qualification thresholds and points assigned to each customer attribute must be reviewed regularly to ensure that the right leads are being converted.

5. Design a workflow based on buyer personas and the lead flow

Design the engagement for each stage of the buyer journey. Each stage – awareness, consideration, decision, and purchase – requires a different kind of engagement.

6. Design the marketing automation process for multichannel engagement–

• Identify all the channels used by the customers.

• Develop content and marketing plans to be used seamlessly across all these channels.

7. Content has to be engaging

The content must match each stage of the buyer persona and his journey along the funnel. While there are many types of content, it should be relevant to the customer. The content should capture their attention and offer them some value in exchange for the information they are providing.

8. Personalize the marketing efforts and content

Every customer is unique. The organization’s marketing automation should deliver personalized content as much as possible. It will help the lead feel welcomed and push them to convert.

9.Maintain a clean database to tap correct leads

• Remove duplicate or false data at regular intervals.

• Install triggers or filters to remove false data or prevent customers from using invalid email addresses.

10.Use “social listening” to identify key customers

Marketing automation can provide the organization with social media monitoring tools. It allows the marketing teams to engage with a potential lead or a current customer as soon as the brand is mentioned on any channel. It is the best way to avoid missing out on customer feedback or a potential lead.

11. Align the internal marketing-to-sales process

It is not enough to automate the marketing campaigns. The organization should first align and automate the internal marketing-to-sales process. It is especially useful for small companies that do not have the budget or teams to manage every activity of the marketing/sales funnel.

12. Track and measure the performance of the marketing automation system

Marketing automation is finally just a piece of software designed to execute a set number of activities to reduce human error and lost engagement possibilities.

It is crucial to monitor the marketing automation system regularly to know whether it matches or achieves the goals. Getting insights will help the organization to continuously refine its goals and adjust the workflows, if necessary.

Summary Visual of the Best Practices in Marketing Automation

Source: https://www.moengage.com/learn/marketing-automation-best-practices/

Conclusion

Customers are increasingly turning to digital channels for their purchases. Their attention span has decreased, while the channels and offers only keep increasing.

It is, therefore, crucial for every organization – small, medium, or large – to have in place a marketing automation system that allows it to capture all possible leads, nurture them through the marketing funnel, and convert them to dedicated customers.

Marketing automation is a reality in today’s digital and hyper-online world. The organization’s marketing automation system should follow established practices and learnings to do the following:

1. Improve lead generation capabilities
2. Provide more personalized content to customers along the funnel
3. Get stronger data for better decision-making
4. Align the marketing and sales divisions to function in harmony to achieve common organizational goals
5. Get a 360-degree view of the customer base by integrating a Customer Relationship Management tool into the automation process
6. And most importantly: Maximize the organization’s marketing ROI and make the campaigns more accurate