Marketing automation is a software that efficiently harnesses the power of digital technology to streamline and automatically perform different marketing and sales activities. Most people, when they hear of automation, picture robots taking over and doing all the work, but marketing automation is much better than that. It works quietly in the background, takes over, manages, and monitor repetitive tasks.
Marketing automation services, such as automated email marketing services, when utilized effectively can be useful for all businesses especially small businesses and those in the starting stages. The main benefit of a marketing automation service is that it presents a unified communication platform, where the marketing team can easily track and understand the marketing journey of the customer in real time and take swift action for conversions.
There are many kinds of marketing automation software, some popular ones include
- Customer relation management, which is an automated sales process to manage customers data. Sales force automation for the sales team, and it provides analytics.
- Automated email marketing services which are the most popular of marketing automation services. These include various services such as lead generation, product introductions, and abandoned cart mails, as well as generating a variety of reports to track the success of email marketing campaigns.
- Social media marketing automation such as content scheduling, monitoring, and analysing the campaign and content to give insights into the marketing policies.
- Marketing automation workflows which relive human resources Lead management including lead scoring, lead generation, and use of sale and marketing leads.
- Pricing automation, which compares the competitive pricing structures and is especially helpful in the ecommerce environment for small businesses. Digital advertisement and promotion, such as creating ads, placing them strategically, etc.
There are many different types of marketing automation services. Some vendors give a single point service, and some offer integrated all in one solution. Whichever one you chose, it will greatly benefit your small business and help it succeed.
Why should you adapt marketing automation services for small businesses?
Researches have shown that employing automation improves the sales productivity by 14.5% and gives about a 12% reduction in the marketing overall overhead. These numbers also point to the fact that good marketing automation sees a 451% increase in qualified leads and 47% higher nurtured leads. If you are still not convinced, here are some more advantages of marketing automation services for small businesses:
Saves time and resources on repetitive tasks
- Automation takes over time consuming tasks such as managing social media posts, and scheduling campaigns. For example, when you employ an automated email marketing service, it will take over the task of sending welcome emails, birthday and anniversary messages, reminders, order confirmations, and follow-ups etc.
- Enhanced lead generation and nurturing: Automated marketing tools can efficiently track, segment, and engage leads as they move up the sales funnel. This helps the small business as they can use this data to send targeted messages to prospects based on their behaviour and interactions. For example, if a lead downloads an eBook, the email automation sends nurturing emails in a sequence based on given information of more value and enticing a purchase.
- Improved efficiency and productivity: When you have qualified leads, it is easy to modify your campaign accordingly, and then the automation runs on its own. This means that small businesses can do more with fewer resources and focus more on strategic activities. For example, an automated email drip campaign can send personalized emails, social media scheduling becomes easier as instead of posting every day, marketing automation does the process on its own.
- Weeding out ineffective campaigns: Automation services such as the CRM and Lead generation campaigns give a clear visibility into what’s working and what’s not. This means that you can gauge the effectiveness of the campaign and make informed decisions, such as continuing, modifying, and investing in the campaign. This will save your business from financial loss.
- Marketing and sales on one page: Using automation helps align the company goals and efforts. The process of passing leads from marketing to sales becomes easier and simpler, and both can update the qualified leads in real time. This also helps in generating more leads and increasing sales. The purchasing cycle becomes simpler, refined and more efficient than ever.
- Personalization to the hilt: With the amount of data marketing automation can handle in just minutes, concise personalization becomes a breeze. For example, email marketing automation can categorize customer email interaction based on demographics, behaviours, and preferences and send recommendations on the customers based on their history. If someone reads the newsletter about the new product launch, then the lead nurturing email will be inviting them to the product demo or offer a free trial.
- Lead scoring and qualifications: Lead scoring for small business is a godsend to qualify leads based on engagement and behaviour. The marketing team will get a notification of the hot lead, which will become a sales qualified lead. For example, in email automation services, scores can be based on actions like email opens, downloads, website visits, signing up, etc.
- Detailed Analytics, Insights, and Accurate Reporting: Automation is easily programmed to offer detailed tracking and analytics on how the email campaign is working. For small businesses, it means easy to measure the success of your marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions. You get the high level seat of the overview of the entire process, which makes it easier to remove friction points and solve complications and areas where things are going wrong. For example, by tracking click through rates, open rates and conversion for email campaigns, the email automation service will point out to what resonates most with customers.
- Boosted customer retention at low cost: With marketing automation, small businesses can easily stay with the customers consistently, nurture fruitful relationships, and improve engagement over time. All this can be done within limited budgets, with the help of automation. In a simple example, automated email marketing services can set up follow up emails, offer product tips, give discounts, generate sales, and offer a high ROI.
Read Also: How to Choose the Best Email Marketing Service for Your Business
In simple words, good marketing automation is directly proportional to enhanced customer experience, increased conversion rates, and long-term customer loyalty for a small business.
Written By – Amit Bhateja
Amit Bhateja is the co-founder of enrcloud and helping brands and Unicorns from the last 15+ years and overachieve their Engagement and Retention goals. He is passionate about solving customer problems with modern technology, new age solutions, and consultancy approach. Besides Building ENR, He enjoys reading books, spending time with his family and Teammates, traveling, meeting new people, learning new things, and love to close the business deals.
