Marketing Automation as a Technology

Automation is a hot topic these days. I also believe that automation is a game changer in today’s business playground. In one of my latest infographics, I’ve highlighted some of the essential facts about automation in different industries. However, there is one trend that continues to grow in this sector: marketing automation. The technological advancements allowed the development of complex platforms that can automate the marketing operations, in a way in which the team misses no opportunity, and without having to expand it.

Marketing Automation Status

According to HubSpot, marketing automation refers to different software built to automate marketing activities, mostly the repetitive ones. If a company uses the email marketing activities to inform and attract new customers, all these campaigns can be automated through this software. Many other tasks such as social media activities, website actions and so on, can also be integrated with the platform.

The investments in this technology increased significantly over the past years. As Forrester highlights in one of its latest studies, the spending on marketing automation tool will increase by 14% each year, surpassing $25 billion by 2023. Moreover, in the next 12 months, more than half of the marketers involved in the research reported that they would increase the budgets for automation tools to remain competitive.

However, learning to use these platforms might take a while, but companies usually need results fast. In this context, the outsourcing market for marketing automation services is very high. In their study, Three Deep and Ascend2 found that only 27% of the companies that implemented marketing automation technologies are using in-house resourced only, while 73% use outsourced resources for their marketing automation strategy.

Why Do Companies Need Marketing Automation?

The marketing industry is more like time management these days. From who gets to meet the consumers’ needs first, to engage with clients through online channels, everything is about the right time.

In many cases, shifting from one customer to another or between different communication channels is not the perfect way to set a better lead conversion. However, specialists that use marketing automation tools can focus on prospects that are most likely to become customers and also save time and other valuable resources.

With the refinement of analytical capabilities included in the automation platforms, identifying needs and trends is not a challenge anymore. And in the context of changing algorithms in search engines and social media platforms, companies can use automation software to continue their marketing initiatives with better targeting and content personalization options. On long-term, the results are impressive.

What Are The Benefits

In their latest study, Liana Technologies wanted to find what are the main benefits of using such solution in companies. Here are few statistics from their report:

• • Improved targeting of messages (68,5 %)

• • Improved customer experience (45,9 %)

• • Better quality of leads (37,7 %)

• • Getting more leads (34,9%)

• • Improved efficiency / ROI in marketing (32,9 %)

• Higher conversion (30,1 %)

Participants have also reported other benefits of marketing automation such as better collaboration between sales and marketing initiatives, cost efficiency, the ability to analyze data from multiple channels.

Marketing Automation Tools and Software

As the market evolved, the same thing happened to the software available for users. The truth is that each of them has its pros and cons, but the essential factor here is who you work with to make the automation funnel work (in the context of outsourcing resources). However, few solutions available are Salesforce Pardot, Marketo, HubSpot, Eloqua, ActON, SharpSpring or Expiriture.

As time goes on, the marketing automation industry will continue to grow and implement new features for companies interested in improving their relationship with customers. Though, before jumping into this digital environment, make sure to set up business objectives and identify if you have all the resources required by such solution.

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