Category: Automate

11 Marketing Automation Basics to Boost Your Business Growth

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Congratulate yourself if this is probably the first time you are hearing of Marketing Automation and you own an online venture or blog. Marketing is increasingly integrating with technology and as experts advice; marketers will soon be spending more on technology than Tech specialists. Marketing automation, with the help of platforms and technologies, helps marketers reach the relevant audience, analyze activation performance and deliver measurable results.

One of the biggest trends for businesses this year, marketing automation can help your online business analyze the impact and manages your marketing campaigns. It can also collate customer data to help further leads conversion. And the greatest advantage that you can gain over your competition is implementing this before them.

A Dose of Insight: Less than 5% of non-tech companies are currently using marketing automation software which opens up a wide opportunity for your business.  (Source: venturebeat.com)

Here are the basics of marketing automation to get you started

Part I: Understand your customer

what-are-the-criteria-for-coustmer-tracking

Track Users with Cookies

One of the widest used marketing automation features is tracking the user across websites to nurture, qualify and finally convert a lead.

Study What Customers Do on Your Website

With predictive tools rooted in real-time data analysis, you can gather data on your customer’s purchases and habits. With a clear emerging pattern, you can act on such insights to increase conversion and subsequently sales.

Understand How Your Consumers are Different

Traditional marketers also use segmentation as a tool to understand their consumer base. This aspect of traditional marketing is equally important to consider for online marketing. With intelligence from segmentation, you know the products which might be more pertinent to a particular segment of your customers.

Reach Your Customers at the Best Time and Day

Marketing automation software can even deliver your e-mail campaigns to you customers’ inbox the time of day and day of the week when they are most likely to check their e-mails.

Part II: Engage With the Customer

engagement-with-the-coustmer

Use intelligent and personalized contact forms

Marketing automation platforms enable you to collect a lot of information about the visitor on your page. Converting them or gathering the most relevant information such as their phone numbers can be easy with a customized call to action highlighting the product or service they are interested in (already clicked on).

Remarket with Customer Data

Use ad networks to talk to your customers and further your engagement with the customer. You may remind them of their last action on your website and further your lead to conversion.

Don’t Forget Offline Online Integration

If you have an offline store, to make your online pitch you must customize your online content and ads to your customer. The data from your CRM can help you segment and better advertise to the same customer online.

Never Ask Twice for the Same Information

You must never ask your customers for any information that you have. For instance, if you already have a visitor’s contact details from your marketing automation tool, make sure that the contact form does not pop up in this case.

Part III: Close the Deal with Marketing Automation

how-to-close-the-deal-in-marketing-automation

Reminders about Abandoned Transactions

The average abandonment rate for online shopping carts is at a high 67%. You can recover these lost leads and potential revenue by automating you’re tracking and setting up visual reminders on other websites or through e-mail. An automated follow-up e-mail receives a higher open, click-through and conversion rate. The conversion rate using abandoned cart e-mails can go up to 40%.

Update Customers about the Price Drops

A few of your customers may abandon cart due to the price. Automating a personalized e-mail to such customers increases the chances of conversion up to 6 times. They have already established the purchase intent and you could capitalize on it by sending them emails whenever there is a price drop on the products they inquired for.

Reward the Engaged Customer with Discounts

A new format of loyalty programs being used by online portals is adjusting discounts based on user activity on their website. For instance, a website may offer an engaged active customer who regularly visits a website. Leaves reviews and feedback with a special additional discount. Web sites may also want to e-mail discount codes, marketing offers to engage and make active some accounts which have been dormant for a long time.

Marketing automation after all this may sound like a magic wand however, these can’t be one magic glove fits all as a solution. Before you decide to buy a Marketing Automation Tool, research and understand the features you need and the features you don’t. Have a plan in place and understand both its’ strong points and limitations. From your selected vendors (each of which will have their own advantages and disadvantages), ask for free trials and plan to launch accordingly to see what works for your business. Some of the known brands in market automation include Oracle (formerly Eloqua), Pardot, Infusionsoft services, Marketo, Hubspot, and Sales manager.

Read More On: What is Marketing Automation

What is Marketing Automation?

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All internet users must have experienced marketing automation, even if they are not aware of the term specifically. Think about Infusionsoft, Salesforce.com, Hubspot, MailChimp, Act-on, Marketo to name a few; these extremely popular services can be classified as examples of marketing automation.

Marketing automation

Marketing automation, as the name implies, is the use of IT-based tools to automate aspects of marketing, such as e-mail campaigns, social media posts, polling contests, offers, etc. Automation tools can help you in lead management, conversions, retention and feedback as well as provide insights for evaluation and future planning.

Industry Insight

Marketing automation services are plentiful! There exist offerings to suit

  1. All budgets- Services ranging from 100$ a month to 5000$ a month
  2. All marketing requirements- inbound, e-mail campaigns, social media
  3. All business sizes- serving a target base of a few hundred to a few hundred thousand customers

While it may appear to be the ultimate weapon in tackling all your online marketing woes, one needs to realize that it is simply the contemporary toolkit for a marketer functioning in the internet era. At its core, it still abides by fundamental marketing principles.

What do we mean by that? We mean that having an automation software alone will not help you in achieving your marketing goals. As a marketer, one needs to have a defined game plan, which can be accomplished with greater ease and effectiveness using a marketing software/service.

Remember, marketing automation is a mean and not an end!

What brought about the advent of marketing automation?

Tracing the evolution of the internet in a very general way, we can see why marketing automation became a norm, a necessity:

  • The internet became a new landscape of interaction, with hitherto unseen capabilities that were bound to be leveraged by both producers and consumers.
  • The ubiquity of the internet made it essential for brands to have an online avatar to remain credible.
  • As it went from ‘a virtual place that we visited’ to ‘a virtual space we live in’, brands had to adopt social media and other interactive platforms to be where customers are.
  • Extensive user behaviour tracking enabled greater insights and more sophisticated methods for conducting planned and targeted marketing activities.

With each step of the internet evolution, one can notice the corresponding evolution in the scope and focus of the marketing automation tools.

In fact, some companies in this space might object to their offerings being referred to as tools, and would be keen on emphasizing how they can be considered as platforms with comprehensive capabilities to execute marketing strategies, and not just complete marketing tasks.

What does marketing automation look like?

The best way to bring out the essence of marketing automation is to compare how a standard marketing objective would be accomplished with and without the use of an automation tool/platform.

ObjectiveNon-automatedAutomated Marketing
TargetingBuying bulk e-mail lists-mail blasts and push strategyInbound marketing attracting the right audience through content, social media
Data GatheringUnsystematic and infrequentUsers need to be pushed to provide dataSubtle and incentivized accumulation of dataSystematized and regular to enable analysis
Campaign tracking/managementControl predominantly over marketers actions without adequate information about the target’s responseDetailed behavioural information available, allowing for better analysis and modification if needed
Closing the saleStrong and overt promptsMultiple calls to actionPushing for sale irrespective of the prospect’s level of readinessA gentle experience with the prospect being taken through stages of awareness, persuasion and then a smart call to action
CR MFeedback generated haphazardly follow on based on generic conventions (events/occasions)Prospect sees the effort as another sales tacticEngaged customers (through a web portal, social media, etc.) who can be targeted based on insights to deliver customized messagesProspect sees effort as a value addition
Marketing integrationExtensive effort required to coordinate and synchronize multiple objectives and campaigns might result in a confusing clutter of activitiesAutomation services provide a wholistic perspective of the campaign and allow multiple activities/campaigns to be managed using a centralized system

Conclusion

If you are still not sure about adopting marketing automation for your business, here are some statistics:

  1. According to Infusionsoft, nearly 80% of top companies have incorporated marketing automation in their business.
  2. Investing in conversion rate optimization (CRO) solutions are guaranteed to deliver high ROI, as much as 223.7 %, according to VentureBeat.

Arm yourself with the tools of today and guide your marketing the right way with marketing automation.