Is marketing automation a new buzzword that online marketers created or does it actually hold value to businesses? We are here to give you all the right answers.
First and foremost marketing automation is not a buzzword. It can bring some real-world value to any business owner looking to improve their marketing efforts or optimize their time.
Using marketing automation is one of the great ways to keep up with trends, challenges, and any other issues that can arise.
Let’s get started.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is a software-based system that allows you to streamline your marketing efforts by linking various software programs together and getting rid of repetitive tasks.
These automation tools can range from email marketing, to CRM software, to sales forecasting. Essentially, marketing automation connects all of these elements and more so that you can effectively and efficiently deliver your message to your customers at the right time.
The use of marketing automation software is designed to be “hands-off”, it can free up your marketers and sales team to focus their time and energy on other areas of the business, such as customer service and relationship-building activities.
72% of successful businesses have implemented a marketing automation software.
How does marketing automation work?
Let’s face it, marketing can be difficult. It’s about data and developing the right strategies for your target market.
But with so many different tools and processes involved in marketing a company, this can quickly become an overwhelming process for even the most organized marketer.
To make things even more challenging, marketers are also facing new challenges such as increasing consumer engagement, shorter attention spans and a constant stream of content from competitors – this is where marketing automation comes in.
Marketing automation doesn’t have to be complicated. The key here is automation. Marketing automation can give marketers more time. Instead of doing repetitive tasks, this kind of software can perform those repetitive tasks for you.
It gives you more time to be productive in other ways and focus on those more important marketing tasks.
However, it’s not necessarily purchasing this software and letting it run. It’s going to take time to set up campaigns, enable tasks and ultimately get what you want out of marketing automation.
91% of marketing automation users value it for success.
If you use Breadstacks’ marketing automation it can gather customer information automatically so you don’t have to waste time.
The data is collected from customer interactions, shopping habits and visiting trends enabling Breadstack to make recommendations and provide insight to give you better information about your business. Interested? Schedule a demo with us!
Having this added knowledge you can then plug into the marketing automation to have more tailored campaigns that create meaningful interactions with your customers in the right place and the right time.
Tips for marketing automation
Choose your marketing automation platform
Before you can automate your marketing, you need to choose the right marketing automation platform. While there are many options out there and many of them are quite similar, it’s important to select the right one for your business.
Start by identifying the goals you want to achieve with your marketing campaigns and then choosing the tools that will help you to achieve them.
Create campaigns that actually convert
After you’ve selected your marketing automation software, you can begin creating your campaigns. This process usually involves starting with a trigger, or the event that initiates your marketing program.
For example, you may want to send a welcome email when a new lead is added to your database. You can then create an automation sequence or the order in which your marketing messages are delivered.
Set up automation triggers to always be ready
One of the key benefits of marketing automation is that it can be set up to occur automatically, without needing any human intervention.
Set up triggers so that when a specific event happens (such as a new lead being added to your database) the marketing software is activated and your sequence is triggered.
Review and evaluate for success
Keep track of the results of your campaigns and pay careful attention to which marketing strategies are proving most effective for your business. This will help you to determine what needs to be added to your automation sequence, and what can be omitted.
It’s important to constantly review and evaluate your marketing automation strategies so that you can ensure they’re still effective and providing the results you’re looking for.
Why does marketing automation matter?
We get it, as a business owner, there are a million different new terms being created each day that guarantee to help you optimize your business and give more value to your customers.
But as we all know you can’t believe everything you read on the internet – except when it comes from us.
Automating isn’t a fancy new term that’s new and it’s not something that has no value in the real world. Companies have teams that complete tasks on a day-to-day basis and a good portion of these tasks, unfortunately, are repetitive.
These repetitive tasks are wasteful, they eat up company time, resources and energy. Adding automation to these tasks gives you back all the benefits it’s been taking.
Marketing is about customer data, audiences, behaviours, trends, etc. The more information you have the better your marketing efforts will be. A lot of customer information data can be automated to give more time to focus on important tasks.
Companies using marketing automation saw a 53% more conversion rates.
Remember, writing essays on paper, it’s time-consuming right? The same goes for those repetitive marketing tasks your team spends time. We’ve stepped away from writing essays on paper, for good reasons, the same goes for marketing automation.
Of course, we always need the benefits behind something, before we go through with it. Here are 3 main benefits marketing automation can do for you.
Better ROI
Perhaps most importantly, marketing automation helps you to measure and improve your Return on Investment (ROI) by tracking the sales that you generate from specific marketing processes.
By tracking metrics such as the number of leads generated by a given campaign, the average amount of time it takes to close a sale, and the cost of each sale, you can create a baseline that allows you to measure the value of each marketing activity.
All of this data helps determine which campaigns are truly producing results and which ones are costing a business too much and should be discontinued.
Better customer engagement
Perhaps less quantifiable, but also important, marketing automation can help you to increase your customer engagement.
By sending your customers emails that are relevant, timely and helpful, you can strengthen your relationship with your customers and encourage them to make repeat purchases from your business. This can help to increase your sales over time.
Want to overall increase engagement? Check out our “How to increase customer engagement” article to learn more.
More efficient marketing teams
By using marketing automation software, you can free up the time of your marketing team to focus on more strategic tasks, such as developing content and leading relationship-building activities.
This can help to improve the overall quality of your marketing and sales efforts. Breadstack’s marketing automation lets’ you establish real customer data for tailored experiences.
Why marketers are reluctant to implement marketing automation?
Marketing automation, as disruptive as it is, has seen a lot of pushback from marketers.
While they appreciate the benefits that come with this technology, they are reluctant to commit to its implementation fully.
There are three main reasons why marketers are slow to adopt marketing automation:
Fear of losing control
Marketers have always been in control of their brands. They handle their marketing campaigns, social media management and lead nurturing efforts meticulously.
As such, the thought of “outsourcing” these tasks to automation may be a bit overwhelming.
However, marketing automation is not about outsourcing. It’s about strategically managing your team and resources to achieve more with less.
Unclear ROI
Marketers want to make sure that their investments will pay off. And while it’s clear that marketing automation can improve marketing performance, marketers want to know how much it will cost for them to implement such a strategy.
This is why marketers are interested in exploring the cost of marketing automation.
Lack of expertise
Marketers are concerned that they don’t have the right skill set to implement marketing automation.
This is why they want to wait until they have the right team prepared to execute this strategy.
How to successfully use a marketing automation platform
Before you start using your marketing automation platform and implementing various marketing automation tools, you need to make sure your company is ready.
You need to have clear goals and objectives in place, a sound plan for implementation and a strategy for monitoring your progress with everything relating to the marketing and sales teams.
This can help you avoid falling into the trap of having too many marketing automation tools. If you don’t have a plan in place, you may be investing in too many solutions, which will increase your overhead.
Before you begin building your marketing automation platform, there are a few things to consider:
Define your objectives and goals
Before you start implementing marketing automation, you need to determine your objectives and goals. What do you want to achieve with your marketing? What message do you want to send to your customers?
How do you want to engage with your audience? By clearly defining your goals, you’re setting yourself up for success.
Pick the right tools for the job
Not every tool will be a good fit for your marketing automation platform. Some tools may be too basic, others may not be compatible with your company’s goals and objectives.
Define your lead-scoring strategy
Achieving a higher level of lead conversion is one of the main reasons marketers turn to marketing automation.
You can help your marketing efforts to succeed by implementing a lead-scoring strategy.
Lead scoring helps you determine which leads are ready to be sent to sales and which leads are still at the bottom of the sales funnel.
Plan for post-implementation
After you’ve implemented your marketing automation platform, you want to make sure you’re on the right track.
You want to track your efforts’ progress and make necessary adjustments. You also want to make sure that you’re incorporating real-time segmentation and personalization as you go along.
Start using marketing automation
Breadstack’s marketing automation gives you back your time and energy toward marketing efforts.
Stop wasting time on repetitive tasks. Altogether marketing automation is a great tool you should be using to improve your operations as well as your marketing campaigns.
Let out software do those repetitive tasks so you or your team can focus on what matters. Using marketing automation can be a great tool for businesses. It’s not a fancy buzzword that doesn’t hold any value.
75% of companies saw an ROI with marketing automation in 12 months
Breadstack lets you….
Personalize campaigns for better results – Collect customer data that allows you to know them better. Gain real insights that matter.
Offer targeted promotions that work – Check buying or browsing history to offer targeted promotions or individual coupons.
Encourage customers to buy more – Get to know your customer and engage them with relevant product information or promotional material.
