Marketing Automation refers to the technology which helps marketers find, nurture, covert and engage with customers automated tasks and actions, including essential tools such as email marketing, campaign automation, lead scoring and more. Marketing Automation gives marketers the power to produce and distribute targeted strategies across the globe, all at the click of a button.
When combined with a strong digital strategy, Marketing Automation provides marketers with all the tools they need to not only provide content to customers, but also identify them and react to certain triggers based on how specific strategies and responses have been set up. This type of intelligent automation gives time back to marketers who no longer have to manually post on social media or follow up with a potential lead and pass them onto sales. Instead, marketing teams have the opportunity to focus on developing world leading strategies, amazing content and more!
And the benefits of Marketing Automation aren’t just felt by the marketing team. Data also shows automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and 77% of businesses who use automation saw the number of conversions increase.
What does Marketing Automation look like in 2023?
As Marketing Automation has evolved, with it has come new focuses, products and goals which align directly with the current marketers’ values and aims in the year 2023. Social Posting and SMS Messaging are just two of the growing tools our customers are utilizing across B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to customer) industries, within the SMB (small to mid-sized business’) world.
Over 50% of B2B organizations are already using automation technology, with a further third planning to implement it in the near future. These stats are important to highlight as they address the fact that Marketing Automation is the primary technology solution for marketers in 2023, and also bring more attention to its development and potential.
As customer behaviors and needs change so should technology, which is why ClickDimensions has a team of experts consistently improving and updating our solutions and products to match growing trends. Find out what we have been working on and learn more about ClickDimensions Marketing Automation solution by requesting a demo here.
Marketing Automation Tools Explained
We’ve talked a lot about the power of automation as well as some surface level solutions within the technology, so let’s now look deeper into just 5 of the top tools used in Marketing Automation solutions.
Campaign Automation
Possibly one of the most powerful tools within a Marketing Automation solution is Campaign Automation.
Why?
Campaign Automation has the ability to create interactive automations based on customer behavior triggers, by designing unique journeys for customers to follow as they interact with your marketing efforts. This type of automation can send targeted emails to prospects, notify sales when a customer or lead shows interest through their interactions with your marketing messages and nurture leads with the use of triggers until the customer is ready to commit.
All of these actions drive conversions, sales and generate interest in your product without any of the manual hard labor.
Find out more about Campaign Automation here
Email Marketing
Email is the bread and butter of many marketing strategies and automation allows marketers to create, schedule and send bulk emails at
the click of a button using a simple drag and drop template editor.
Marketing Automation technology also reports back accurate data on all of the send, open, click, and bounce statistics meaning marketers gain greater insight into which emails worked well and which ones need to be revisited.
Email Marketing tools can also perform A/B split tests, connect with social media through social links embedded within an email template and allows customers to decide on how often they want to be contacted through personalized experiences.
Find out more about Email Marketing here
Lead Scoring
At surface level, lead scoring helps both marketers and salespeople work out which customers are hot leads, which ones require more nurturing and which ones are no longer interested.
“38% of businesses surveyed experienced higher lead to opportunity conversion rates thanks to lead scoring” – Source
Lead Scoring often works on a points basis where the more a customer interacts and shows interest in a topic, product or service, the more points are associated with their profile. Depending on how a lead scoring model is set up, by using data on existing customer journeys, Marketing Automation solutions will track every activity a customer performs and associate a certain number of points. For example, clicking a link in an email could be 5 points, whereas downloading an eBook could be 20 and so on.
This type of point collection and tracking is then analyzed and if the customer reaches a certain number of points (based off previous data) the customer will then be regarded as a hot lead and passed over to Sales, along with all of the data about what content a customer engaged with, so that the salesperson can provide a personalized experience to the customer.
Find out more about Lead Scoring here
SMS Messaging
As previously mentioned, SMS marketing is gaining popularity, but it is by no means the new kid on the block, instead change is happening in the ways in which SMS messaging is being used to improve conversions. However, for now, let’s talk more about what SMS messaging is and how it can be used.
Marketing Automation based SMS Marketing allows marketers to send bulk SMS messages to their customer base, which can also be personalized to include the customers’ name and more.
SMS messaging is quickly becoming the norm within the B2C world as companies send promotional codes, launch dates and more to customers. Whereas in the B2B world, businesses are utilizing more of an informational approach towards SMS messaging through personalized texts automatically being sent when a meeting has been booked or updates when contracts have been signed and more.
Find out more about SMS messaging here
Reporting
Last but absolutely not least is the power of reporting when using a Marketing Automation solution. Email links, web visits, page views, and forms are captured using reports to gain further insight into the success of your sales and marketing efforts, providing tremendous insights into your customers’ and prospects’ behavior.
This invaluable data acts as the core foundation for both your Marketing and Sales teams as internal teams learn and evolve to ensure they are providing the best customer experience and journey based on the data collected.
Keep your eye on data and tracked links for ClickDimensions as something new and exciting is on its way!
Learn more about Reporting here
Marketing Automation is the most powerful solution marketers can use to automate and improve so many of their daily, manual tasks. Not only to free up time but also expand reach, encourage more engagements, nurture contacts and increase conversions. Above are just 5 of the many tools held within a Marketing Automation solution, with many more such as Surveys and Web Intelligence yet to be explored.
Want to book a Marketing Automation demo? Click here
More interested in how Marketing Automation connects to sales? Check out ClickDimensions Sales Engagement tool to find out more!
