What is marketing automation?
As the name suggests, marketing automation is the process of using software to automate repetitive marketing tasks.
If you want a more in-depth understanding of this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What is the purpose of marketing automation?
The main purpose of marketing automation is to make the creation and timely delivery of tailored messages and experiences to leads, prospects, and existing customers significantly more efficient. Instead of manually reaching out to each person on your email list, you can just set up predetermined triggers and responses.
This means that no matter how big your customer base gets, the actual amount of effort required to nurture it remains the same.
Question #2: What are its benefits?
The biggest benefits of marketing automation are as follows:
- Time savings. As we have seen earlier, marketing automation significantly reduces the need for you to manually exchange messages with your leads, prospects, and existing customers. This, in turn, frees up time for other important matters in your business.
- Timely communication. Since marketing automation uses predetermined triggers and responses, it allows you to instantly respond to important events in the lead generation, sales, and after-sales stages of the business regardless of when in the day they happen.
- Improved lead/prospect/customer experience. Aside from allowing you to always communicate with your leads, prospects, and existing customers in a timely manner, marketing automation also allows you to effortlessly send the most relevant and useful content to the right person every single time.
- Improved conversion rate. Of course, when your leads, prospects, and existing customers are happy, they are more likely to do what you need them to do (e.g., sign up, download, share, make a purchase, or make a repeat purchase).
- Improved customer retention rate. Since marketing automation makes nurturing your leads, prospects, and existing customers extremely easy, it also makes it super easy for you to retain more of them for longer, ultimately increasing your average customer lifetime value.
Question #3: What are examples of marketing automation?
The most common examples of marketing automation are:
- Welcome emails. These are the emails that people who sign up for a mailing list or service get. They are designed to help you start the relationship with each new lead on the right foot.
- Chatbots. These are essentially email autoresponders but in chat form. They allow you to provide your leads, prospects, and existing customers with timely answers to their questions about your products, services, or company.
- Confirmation emails. As the name suggests, these emails are designed to let your leads, prospects, and existing customers know that the process or transaction—whatever that may be—was a success.
- Abandoned cart emails. These are designed to help you encourage customers who already added items to their cart but left without finishing the checkout process to come back and complete their purchase. They typically contain some form of incentives such as additional perks or discounts.
- Re-engagement emails. These are emails that are specifically designed to get leads, prospects, or existing customers who have been inactive for a while to engage with your brand again.
- Review/testimonial emails. These automatically get sent to people who make a purchase or attend an event or webinar. The goal is not only to keep the conversation going after the main transaction is done, but also to make the customer feel that you actually care about their satisfaction.
- Survey emails. As the name suggests, these are meant to get your leads, prospects, or existing customers to give their feedback on whatever aspect of your business or target customers that you want to learn more about.
- Product launch emails. These are the emails you send out whenever you launch a new product (or service) or update an existing one. The goal is to build hype and encourage your leads, prospects, and customers to try it out.
Question #5: Does it always work?
No, it does not always work. It only works if you stay focused on your leads,’ prospects’, and existing customers’ needs every step of the way. Simply getting in touch with your leads, prospects, and existing customers at regular intervals is not enough. The key is sending them relevant, useful content at the right time every single time.
Check this article to know more about how marketing automation works.