
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is a technology that manages marketing processes and multifunctional campaigns, across multiple channels, automatically.
Marketing automation is a technology that manages marketing processes and multifunctional campaigns, across multiple channels, automatically.
With marketing automation, businesses can target customers with automated messages across email, web, social, and text. Messages are sent by the technology, according to sets of instructions called workflows. Workflows may be defined by templates, custom-built from scratch, or modified mid-campaign to achieve better results.
Marketing and sales departments use marketing automation solutions to automate online marketing campaigns and sales activities to both increase revenue and maximize efficiency. When automation is used effectively to handle repetitive tasks, employees are free to tackle higher-order problems, and human error is reduced.
Marketing automation helps with lead generation, nurturing, and scoring and with measuring overall ROI on campaigns. The time and cost-saving effects of automation increase as an organization grows in size and complexity. Good marketing automation systems are designed to scale alongside your business.
In its most basic form, marketing automation is a set of tools designed to streamline and simplify some of the most time-consuming responsibilities of the modern marketing and sales roles. From automating the lead qualification process to creating a hub for digital campaign creation, automation is all about simplifying a business world that is growing far too complex, much too quickly.
Marketing automation lets you implement a digital marketing strategy without having to manually press “send” on each and every email, message, campaign, or post you create. Good automation tools help you identify your audience, design the right content, and automatically trigger actions based on schedules and customer behavior. Once your campaign rolls out, you can focus on other tasks, then analyze and tweak your marketing plan as results start coming in. An automated marketing strategy can save time and resources, driving revenue and ROI while you focus on growing your business.
You collect customer data through many interactions, such as emails, website visits, app usage, social media posts, and so on. This data helps create a 360-degree view of each customer.
From there, marketing automation does all the work by streamlining segmentation and targeting processes to determine the right audiences, quickly and at scale. Tailoring messaging to each customer automatically based on their profile. Creating relevant and personalized messaging across email, mobile, social, web experiences, and beyond with a few simple clicks. Delivering personalized experiences for your customers, whether you have 100 or 100 million, efficiently and effectively.
Imagine a marketer is hosting a webinar to showcase your product or service. Here’s how marketing automation steps in:
Customer journeys are the sum of individual personalized experiences with your brand. With marketing automation, you can tailor every interaction based on customer data to create ongoing, seamless journeys through every brand touchpoint.
Marketing automation creates relevant content and messaging at scale across many channels. Send email messages with dynamic content that personalizes far beyond sticking a customer’s first name in the subject line. Integrate mobile messaging with your email and social campaigns through SMS/MMS, push notifications, and group messaging. Generate digital ads that appear for the right person at the right time. Plus, recommend the right products on your website for each individual user — automatically.
With marketing automation, you can reach customers along their journey no matter where they are in the customer lifecycle — from acquisition to advocacy. Deliver timely, relevant content that reaches customers when, where, and how they prefer — converting prospects into lifelong brand advocates.
Marketing automation isn't a magic fix for everything, but if you use it well, it can boost your prospect and customer engagement strategy to drive increased revenue. Here are some best practices to keep in mind when designing your marketing automation strategy:
Yes! Marketing automation is all about ease of use. You can create campaigns with a single click and control all aspects of your digital marketing strategy in one place with:
Marketing automation uses special software to do marketing tasks on its own. You set up rules or workflows that tell the software what to do when certain things happen. For example, if someone downloads a guide from your website, the software can automatically send them a follow-up email. It collects data about customer actions and then uses that data to deliver the right messages at the right time, across different marketing channels.
Marketing automation offers many advantages for businesses. It saves a lot of time by handling repetitive tasks automatically. This also helps reduce mistakes that can happen when doing things manually. Automation can send personalized messages to many people, which often leads to more sales. It also gives you valuable information about what's working, helping you make smarter marketing decisions.
You see marketing automation often! One common example is a welcome email series that new subscribers get automatically after signing up. Another is an abandoned cart email, which reminds someone to complete a purchase if they leave items in their online shopping cart. Businesses also use it to schedule social media posts in advance or to send birthday discounts to customers on their special day.
To begin with marketing automation, first, decide what goals you want to achieve, like getting more leads or improving customer loyalty. Then, understand who your target audience is and what their journey looks like. Next, choose a marketing automation software that fits your business needs. Finally, set up your first simple automated campaigns, like a welcome email, and then measure your results to improve over time.
Marketing automation can improve ROI by:
Common mistakes include:
Marketing automation uses software to automate repetitive marketing tasks, such as email marketing, social media posting, and ad campaigns. This allows businesses to nurture leads, personalize customer experiences, and measure marketing effectiveness.
The "best" marketing automation software depends heavily on your specific business needs, budget, and technical expertise. However, popular options often include Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot. It is important to compare your needs to the features of each platform.
When selecting marketing automation software, consider factors like:
Many CRMs integrate with marketing automation tools. Salesforce is a very popular CRM that integrates well with many marketing automation platforms, including its own Marketing Cloud. The "best" depends on the needs of your organization.
Key features include:
For more information, read the article on marketing automation tools.
Explore a wide range of marketing automation apps for Salesforce on the AppExchange.