Marketing automation is a requirement of the present age. Internet users are becoming increasingly demanding, hence it is essential to use solutions that help to reach directly a recipient potentially interested in the product or service. Marketing automation makes it faster, more effective, and most importantly more efficient. What is actually marketing automation and why is it worth including it in sales activities?
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is not only a hot trend in the digital world, but a great convenience, allowing for increasing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and therefore sales. Activities are focused on acquiring, collecting, and processing user data in accordance with the idea of inbound marketing. The information gathered is used to create even more effective marketing campaigns, closely tailored to the needs and interests of the audience. For this purpose, dedicated software is used to improve sales and advertising processes. They are connected to other systems, making user relationship management even easier and more efficient.
One of the most important stages of sales activities is base segmentation, followed by customisation of messages sent. For example, an online store that offers clothing and accessories uses a push notification tool. Internet users sign in to the subscriber base, receiving notifications twice a week. The audience must be divided into relevant segments so that the store owner can send customised messages that are tailored to their audience’s needs, such as women interested in office fashion. Getting to know how users behave by means of marketing automation allows to create even more effective campaigns, dedicated to a specific segment. Lead generation and moving leads down the sales funnel become even easier and more precise.
Marketing automation activity areas
Automation allows for communicating with given customer types at different stages of the sales funnel. One of the biggest problems of online stores is abandoned carts. Potential customers may not trust the seller, not be ready to buy or complain about an overpriced order. Then it is useful to prepare specific scenarios that respond to customer objections – e.g. positive feedback from other customers, offering a discount or free delivery. Segmentation, targeting, and profiling are essential for marketing automation. Campaign performance is based on selected groups of recipients. The first stage, of course, is to create a base of potential customers relying on e.g. provided contact details. The base should then be segmented and the audience stimulated accordingly to convince them to enter into a transaction. An important step is to develop a positive relationship with a potential customer, i.e. interacting through customised content. In order to define the potential of a given segment you might want to assign a score to your audience (lead scoring) based on their behaviour.
Basic communication channels
Marketing automation systems increase the effectiveness of conducted activities in various communication channels. These include:
Push notifications. Owing to notifications, we can create a full customer profile based on their behaviour and interest in specific content. In combination with the marketing automation tool, it is possible to analyse the results of individual campaigns or automation rules in more detail. The effect that we get is always a customised campaign, which affects the optimisation of the costs of conducted activities.
Email marketing. Nobody likes to be flooded with messages unrelated to their interests. Thanks to automation, it is possible to send content tailored to the recipient. As with push notifications, email marketing allows for collecting demographic and behavioural data, plan communication with subscribers, and analyse how many people have opened an email and clicked on a given link.
Social media. By monitoring interactions of social media users with the brand, it is possible to customise offers. Integration of the marketing automation tool with Facebook Custom Audiences allows for even more accurate targeting.
Website. Depending on behaviours and preferences, users can see various content on the site or in the online store. This refers, among others, to showing products that are similar or complementary to the ones viewed. In this case, it is worth using up-selling and cross-selling strategies. Please note that it is also important to make the web page display correctly on mobile devices.
