Before we get into the details of marketing automation, let's cover what marketing and automation are separately.
Marketing is any action a company undertakes to attract customers to their products or services and keep them engaged. Marketing includes email campaigns, social media posts, billboards and more.
Automation is the use of technology to perform tasks to achieve outcomes with minimal human input. Automating tasks can improve efficiency and precision while reducing costs.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is using technology to achieve marketing goals. Marketing automation workflows are set up to streamline time-consuming marketing tasks, for example sending emails, managing leads, and sharing data between systems.
Examples of marketing automation include:
- Welcoming new leads
- Onboarding emails
- Recovering abandoned carts
- Confirming orders and purchases
- Sending targeted price drops and inventory alerts
- Upsells and cross-sells
- Pre and post-purchase feedback
- Re-engagement campaigns
- Birthday messages
- VIP offers
- Product updates or launches
Marketing automation can cross channels. This means they are not limited to emails and can include other channels of communication for example SMS messaging.
Marketing goals
Before setting up marketing automation you should know what your marketing goals are. The automation created can then be optimised to achieve the strategic goals of a business.
Examples of marketing goals include:
- Increase brand awareness
- Increase website traffic
- Generate leads
- Boost sales
- Improve customer loyalty
- And so much more
What are automated marketing solutions?
Automated marketing solutions use technology to streamline a company's marketing strategy and help them achieve their marketing goals. There are many software tools available to assist in this process. However, to have the best chance of success a company should be familiar with their customer journey and data. After this, they can begin to craft their content strategy and set up automated marketing. This is where the marketing automation strategy comes in…
What does a marketing automation strategy look like?
A successful marketing automation strategy requires careful planning, implementation, optimisation and analysis. Simply setting up email automation in isolation is not a comprehensive strategy. The tool will only be as good as the team using it and the data informing it. Begin your strategy by:
- Researching your customer data
- Deciding which customers to focus on
- Setting your marketing automation goals
- Selecting the right metrics to track
- Outlining the strategy
- Choosing your campaigns
- Reviewing
- Adapting the strategy as needed
Focusing on a segment of a specific customer group, identifying realistic goals you want to achieve and then figuring out what it looks like when those goals are achieved will put you in a good place to start crafting the campaigns. If you include several groups of customers or have vague goals it is difficult to measure success.
What is a marketing automation workflow?
Marketing automation workflow are the rules that automate the different steps in an automation process. These workflows often use ‘If This Then That’ (ITTT) to organise customers through the automation journey.
For example, a cart abandonment automation workflow could include triggers when a customer leaves products in their cart. The customer could:
- Be shown a pop-up on the page
- Be sent an email with the contents of their cart
- Be sent a reminder SMS
What does a marketing automation agency do?
A marketing automation agency helps identify, implement, and leverage the technology and systems to maximise growth opportunities for your business. This is a specialist service that helps businesses automate repetitive marketing tasks, streamline workflow, improve return on investment (ROI), and make their lives easier.
Marketing automation agencies have the know-how to put everything in place so you can set up systems that acquire, nurture, and convert leads automatically.
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