Digital marketers are always on the lookout for a boost to their marketing activities. They want to outperform their competitors in the race to success.
Marketing automation can be a great help in that.
Having the appropriate marketing automation systems helps digital marketers to speed up several things. When things speed up, they can bring more leads and do better conversions.
Sometimes even better than the competitors.
When 91% of marketing automation users agree with its significance for digital marketing success, you can’t overlook it.
But when you are new to marketing automation, you may feel hesitant. So, let me explain to you in detail.
6 Ways Marketing Automation Impacts Your Strategies
Over the years, more and more digital marketers are using marketing automation for their work. They have started tweaking their strategies according to the automation tools.
I consulted with a few digital marketers regarding this. Most of them have started using marketing automation recently and shared their thoughts on the changes.
So, here they are:
Automated Welcome Programs
Welcoming your customers is the most important part of the buyer’s journey. You need to give a warm welcome when your potential customer visits your website for the first time. When you get this right, you can build a lasting relationship with the customer.
However, manually welcoming each and every customer is not that easy.
But if you are using a marketing automation tool, you can welcome your customers perfectly at the right time.
For example, if you use an email marketing automation tool, you can send welcome emails to every customer whenever they subscribe to the newsletter.
This helps in better customer acquisition.
Welcome automated emails also provide a chance to gather more information about the customers. You can ask for information or request the customer for a specific action.
The marketing automation tool also records the actions from thereafter.
So, by using this you can get a holistic idea about what your customers are doing after receiving the email.
Smart Segmentation
One of the challenges in the marketing world is the segmentation of the customers. Before the arrival of the marketing automation tools, marketers were unable to segment a large number of customers.
It directly impacted the customer interactions. Every customer has different needs. When marketers are unable to provide them with personalized services or products, they often feel dissatisfied.
Giving personalized services or products helps in building better customer relationships.
Customers always want to feel special.
So, a marketer cannot ignore this activity.
But segmentation is a time taking process. When professionals try to do market segmentation, there are chances of mistakes, especially when the numbers are high.
That’s why you need to take help of marketing automation.
They can help in proper market segmentation.
These tools allow marketers to understand the different segments and provide them the exact service or product they want.
Marketing automation’s segmentation helps in better targeting and eventually achieving the various marketing goals.
Better Customer Retention
When customers are going through your website or application, it isn’t easy to keep up with their movements. However, marketing automation tools provide the facility of tracking user’s movement through the different pages.
They allow the marketers to provide nudges to users to take action at the right time. For example, personalized recommendations on the homepage may make users check out the products.
It will eventually stop the user from abandoning the website quickly.
Thus marketing automation helps in retaining a huge number of users or leads and turning them into customers.
It won’t have been possible without a marketing automation tool.
It’s not easy to track a user’s movement on a website manually.
So, marketing professionals are taking the help of different marketing tools to track their lead’s journey on the website.
Marketers who use marketing automation tools have experienced a 451% increase in high-quality leads.
Thus using these tools has helped in better customer retention.
Here is a case.
Zappos, a popular shoe and clothing ecommerce company, used marketing automation to track a woman who ordered specialized shoes. Her feet were damaged due to harsh medical treatments for which she needed the shoes.
When the company learned this, they sent her flowers.
It became possible only because they had tracked the woman’s journey through the website.
And thus, they were able to provide special attention and service to impress the customer.
Efficient Multi-Channel Marketing
Digital marketing strategies involve marketing through various channels. Customers don’t always visit the website from a single source. Instead, they arrive from multiple places such as social media, Google search engine, and more.
So, it becomes crucial to market in every channel possible. It helps to find leads from various places. When there are a vast number of leads, there are more opportunities for conversions.
However, when there are too many clients on hand, it may be challenging to maintain all the different channels.
Marketing automation can help in that.
It accumulates the data from every channel and presents it on a single screen. Several marketing automation tools also allow you to perform activities on different channels from a single screen.
So, marketers have started using such tools, so it’s easier for them to keep an eye on all these places.
Whenever marketing campaigns run on different channels, the marketer can view the real-time data using these tools.
You can use automation marketing for various multi-channel marketing such as:
- Email marketing.
- Social media marketing.
- Online advertising.
- Lead generation.
- SEO marketing.
- Chat marketing
And more.
Accurate Analytics and Reporting
In digital marketing, data becomes vital in the long run. The future actions are planned according to the analytics of the current marketing campaigns. So, digital marketers always need accurate data.
However, it takes a lot of time for professionals to dig into everything and come up with data. At the same time, it’s also essential that the data procured is absolutely correct.
So, professionals are going for marketing automation tools to track and report every campaign. As these work on algorithms, they provide error-free information.
Marketing analytics help in several things:
- Tracking real-time marketing campaign data.
- Calculating ROI for each campaign.
- Comparing the marketing data.
- Converting data into useful information.
- Creating infographics for case studies.
- Preparing reports to show to customers.
- Segmentation of the data.
And more.
For example, Netflix uses marketing automation software to gather massive chunks of data and information about its viewers. Then, they use the data to figure out what type of content their viewers want to watch.
It has helped them come up with original series which get higher engagement every year.
Effective Testing
Digital marketers have to work with multiple contents for different customers. It can become a laborious task to find out which content works best for the audience.
But marketing automation tools help you run tests and optimize your contents accordingly.
When you have two versions of an advertisement, you can run a test to finalize which one works better. The tools give you the facility to experiment two different contents simultaneously with a few audiences.
After the test is over, you will learn which one the audience loved the most. You can then use it for the rest of the audience. In this way, you can save time and get quality content for your audience.
Most email outreach automation tools come with A/B testing features. You can use that to figure out which email version is the best.
Ready to Incorporate Marketing Automation in Your Digital Marketing Strategies?
Marketing automation tools can supercharge your digital marketing activities. However, the key is to use it the right way. Your strategies should align with these automation tools.
Over the years, marketing automation has helped businesses to grow massively. This has led more and more marketers to use these tools for their marketing activities. They help in improving analytics tracking, customer retention, cross-channel marketing, and more.
So, start using marketing tools and comment on your experiences below.
