All businesses have the same ambition: faster growth and higher revenue at a lower cost. Unfortunately, most companies struggle to align their workforce, technology, and processes towards these goals. That’s because it’s a bit challenging to handle the growth if your team doesn’t have the energy. And that leads to higher costs, lower revenues, or slower growth. 

But what if I could show you how to automate your marketing to focus on making key decisions in your company? That’s all about marketing automation. And today, we will discuss the nitty-gritty of marketing automation and how this strategy can help you grow your business.

What is Marketing Automation?

In simple terms, marketing automation is an advanced tool that helps complete repetitive marketing activities. We use marketing to grow our businesses. Hence it’s an essential piece of the puzzle. Marketing can be done on different platforms, including but not limited to emails, social media, and other advertising venues. 

When it comes to the online world, technology can essentially help reduce the workload, and that’s what marketing automation will do for your business. Typically, marketing automation lets you schedule your emails for you and will take care of the delivery. But that’s not all! You can also go for the advanced versions of this software that will test the automation, branch the program and work on different platforms. And that’s just the essential functions that advanced software will do for you.

Benefits of using a marketing automation software

I’m sure the only reason you are checking out marketing automation is to see whether this software has many advantages to your company. And Hands down! It does. 

Improves customer relation through analysis

Marketing automation helps you gather information from your customers from your different business platforms and improve their experience. Through understanding your customer’s behavior, the marketing tool can essentially learn how to interact with them on a personal level. Therefore, that will lead to increased sales and qualified leads since your customers will feel like they are talking to a familiar brand. The bottom line is your company will be profitable.

According to a survey that was done recently, most customers will go for brands they feel more connected to. These brands are commonly known for personalized messages. But in truth, the brands are essentially good at marketing and likely using a marketing automation system. That system analyses our interactions with their platform and sends out messages that will evoke some emotional connection from you. 

Perfect timing when it comes to marketing

Sometimes, you put out our content and get zero interactions. But that’s not always the case, right? Well, chances are, you don’t know the perfect time to market to your customers. The best way to get customers to connect with your brand is by treating them as a person and not a number. That goes to show that you need to know the perfect time when people are on different platforms. 

Thankfully, the marketing tool can do that for you. This software will effectively strategize your drip campaigns. Drip campaigns are pre-written emails that companies send to their customers in intervals. This tool will help you understand how long or short the period should be between messages to personalize your marketing. If you are too aggressive with your customers, they’ll turn away, and if you wait too long, then you risk losing your customers to your competitors. 

More time to focus on other tasks

Most of the time, your team will suffer from burnout because of the monotony and repetitive tasks. But the unfortunate part about marketing is that it’s repetitive. And if you’d like to yield any results, your team will have to repeat specific tasks. By incorporating automation in your marketing strategy, your employees can focus on demanding tasks that would otherwise get less attention. For instance, improving customer experiences, resolving issues with a bit of personal touch, and offering extra attention to inquiries made by potential customers. That will overall improve the perception your customers have of your business.

It saves up on time and money

When it comes to business and any other aspect of life, time is money. One of the most significant advantages of marketing automation is that it saves both time and money. Before this tool was available, marketers used to add customer’s names, birthdays, and other vital events in the email messages. 

But today, this automation tool can do that for you. Therefore, instead of your team spending endless hours scrolling through the customer base and figure out personal events, they can use that time to focus on other matters of the company. That will allow your business to grow beyond imagination since your experts use their time wisely and effectively.

Getting started with marketing automation

Now that you’ve understood how this software will profit your business, it’s time to know how it works. The most effective parts of this software rely solely on data. To be more specific, every time a customer clicks on an item, the subscription button, or even an ad, they are feeding your software with valuable intel about their behavioral pattern. 

That said, through this software, you can learn a little bit more about your customers. For example, where they live and how they engage with specific marketing material from your brand. Therefore, this information can be used to tailor your marketing strategy. Various marketing tools do different functions. Regardless, here are some common ways to use your software:

  • Customizing the messages you send to your emails with a personal touch they can connect to.
  • Segmenting your customers in terms of the messages they should be receiving, so it feels personal to them. 
  • Effectively figuring out the circumstances you should send the messages and to which customers. 

With high-quality automation software, you will get the most engagement from your customers. Why? Well, because the software will quickly determine the best time to contact your customers depending on when they are most likely to convert to sales. That’s typically based on the data this tool will have collected. Amazing, right?

Tips on how to get the most out of your marketing automation tool?

This automation tool will still require human intervention at the end of the day, no matter how good it is. That means how effective this tool is solely depends on how you and your team handle it. That said, here are some valuable tips that will help you get the most out of your automation tool:

  • Always set your goals: setting goals will put your team in the right headspace to accomplish all the set tasks. For instance, data monitoring is crucial for this tool. 
  • Understand your audience: even before you’ve incorporated this tool in your marketing, you need to do research on your audience. That’s the purpose of segmentation depending on demographics, needs, location, and interests. It will help if you create a persona for your audience. 
  • Trial and error: you won’t get it right the first time, and that’s normal. Don’t be too hard on yourself or your team. That’s because it takes practice to understand how this software works.