5 Marketing Automation Examples Every Marketer Should Know in 2021
Are you looking for some amazing marketing automation examples that can inspire you? You have arrived at the right place. But before we dive deep to understand them, let’s try to understand why marketing automation is a hot topic in today’s business world.
Marketing automation is one of the fastest-growing software sectors in the world. Today, nearly 51% of companies are now using marketing automation tools to improve lead generation and nurturing [1]. It is even more interesting to note that around 58% of B2B companies are likely to embrace marketing automation in the forthcoming years [2].
SEE ALSO: Everything You Need To Know About Marketing Automation
Why Marketing Automation?
There are a host of factors why marketing automation tools are becoming increasingly popular. Companies are turning to marketing automation for three main reasons:
- Improve lead generation
- Improve lead nurturing
- Personalize marketing
Although companies identify the need to implement marketing automation, they are at crossroads when it comes to how to actually do it.
The lack of top-quality content and the complexity of using automation tools are the major challenges most companies face while implementing marketing automation.
But if you look at the bigger picture, the advantages of marketing automation outweigh the complexities. If you can pick a tool that is relatively easy to use and compatible with your business, marketing automation can do wonders.
According to Forrester, the net spend on marketing automation will surpass the $25.1 billion mark by 2023 – from $11.4 billion in 2017 [3]. This clearly shows that more and more companies are willing to invest in marketing automation software.
Top Marketing Automation Examples
If you are still hovering around the grey zone and unsure about marketing automation, here are some of the top marketing automation examples that will probably convince you.
Go through these examples to learn how marketing automation can steer your business to new heights.
1. Centrics IT improved lead generation by 59%
Here is the first example of automation on our list, CentricsIT.
Prior to implementing a marketing automation strategy, the company’s lead tracking and nurturing system were all over the place. The new leads were dumped into the inbox of the company’s email marketing executive to sort them and push them ahead to sales.
CentricsIT primarily used batch and blast emails which were replaced by modern automation processes. Since the onset of automation, all the new leads were directly transferred from the landing pages to the sales team.
What happened next? Well, the company’s lead generation saw a 59% increase and a revenue growth of around $1.5 million due to automation.
What worked:
- The transition from sending blast emails to using modern lead sorting techniques and running automated campaigns
- Integration of email with website lead tracking
- The new leads directly reached the sales teams from the landing page
Having said that, there are still some areas that can be improved. For instance, sales are likely to be more productive if they only deal with qualified leads. Hence, CentricsIT could possibly adopt a lead scoring system to fine-tune the entire process and make it more efficient.
2. SmartBear’s lead volumes increased by a whopping 200%
Here is another example that truly reflects the benefits of using automation. SmartBear managed to enhance its lead volume by a staggering 200% due to marketing automation.
SmartBear Software is a B2B cloud mobile software company that has witnessed considerable growth. Naturally, the company started facing difficulties while performing tasks manually. This is when it decided to consider automation.
With an automation strategy in place, the marketing team started testing email campaigns. In addition, the company wasted little time to improve lead-nurturing to cater to the large volume of emails and new leads.
Due to automation, SmartBear’s lead volume grew by 200%. The key takeaway here is that marketing automation provides the right tools and infrastructure to support the growth of a company.
What worked:
- At that time, SmartBear catered to three product groups. The company crafted nurturing paths for every product group to nurture the rising volume of lead generation
While the company managed to increase its lead volume, it could have also focused on quality lead management through progressive profiling, gated content, and using other features offered by online marketing automation platforms.
3. Brainshark saw a 15% growth in online registrations
Brainshark is a B2B software vendor that provides access to a freemium product for its enterprise solution. Besides, it also offered a free trial on some other products.
The biggest challenge, in this case, was to convert the freemium customers into paying customers. The company took matters into its own hands and carried out an analysis to understand why freemium users were not converting.
Brainshark discovered that:
- A lot of registered users never ended up using their product
- Users who signed up for the free product did not use it very frequently
The outcome of this analysis was that Brainshark identified the need to build pipelines to influence non-paying users to buy at each stage of the pipeline. Hence, the company turned to market automation to encourage more users to engage within-trial messages.
Brainshark started displaying messages within the product’s interface and provided guidance at every step. Gradually, this transformed into pop-ups and ads and became an effective communication medium. Each message was very educational and provided tips and tricks.
What worked:
- The company focused its marketing efforts on creating personalized messages
- Personalized messages were displayed when users landed on the sales enablement, onboarding & training, and marketing solutions page
- Brainshark used customized messages to upgrade their current users
4. Mailigen’s behavioral segmentation improved open rates by 9%
Mailigen was having a tough time increasing the open rate of its newsletters. In their bid to stay competitive and go one step further than the median industry average rates, Mailigen adopted behavioral segmentation in email marketing.
To begin this process, the company picked out those subscribers who did not open their newsletters. In the next step, Mailigen optimized the subject line and delivered the email to the list of subscribers who did not open their newsletters in the first attempt.
Even now, Mailgen was not happy with the results as the open rate was only around 20.5%. They added another twist to the tale by tweaking the subject line once again.
What happened next? Almost 8.6% of subscribers who ignored the first email engaged with it now, driving the open rate to 29%.
The moral of the story here is that small changes along with behavioral segmentation enabled Mailigen to boost their open rates.
5. Dell’s experiment with template testing
The marketing team at Dell was looking to optimize and revamp the overall aesthetics of their email templates.
Another objective of these landing pages was to attain better results on the key metrics defined by the company.
Dell wanted to identify the impact of changing the traditional email navigation on the top that is followed by most companies.
According to Dell’s assessment, moving the top navigation bar to the footer of the mail would improve results and overall engagement.
To put their theory into practice, Dell split the navigation bars in their mail. One email version included links to different Dell products that were placed in the header. Besides, it also matched the navigation options that were available on Dell’s website.
The other email version placed the navigation at the bottom of the email. In addition, within this version, the marketing team decided to tweak things a bit. They opted to include iconography within the footer instead of using plain links.
The idea behind this was to minimize the digital clutter and ensure that their main message is the center of attention.
As a result, Dell saw a double-digit increase in email engagement.
What worked:
- A/B testing to evaluate the results of different email templates
- Changes in the call-to-action enabled customers to navigate smoothly
Craft Your Very Own Marketing Automation Workflow
What do all these examples demonstrate? They provide a very clear picture of how a well-made marketing automation workflow can turn things around.
In all of these examples, companies leveraged marketing automation to identify the bottlenecks in their lead generation and nurturing processes.
If you are wondering how you can implement a robust automation strategy, you can start by identifying your requirements. The next logical step is to find the best marketing automation software that caters to your needs.
We understand that research can be a challenging and time-consuming activity. This is why we have compiled a list of some of the best marketing automation tools on our platform.
You can go through our tool reviews, compare tools with each other, and find the best automation tool for your business.
SEE ALSO: Difference between CRM and Marketing Automation: What Is Best for Your Business?
Feature Image Source: rawpixel.com
Image 2 Source: Joseph Mucira from Pixabay
Image 3 Source: talha khalil from Pixabay
Sources
[1] [2] (2018) “Marketing Automation Statistics” 99 Firms [online] Available from: https://99firms.com/blog/marketing-automation-statistics/#gref [accessed June 2021]
[3] Sweeney. E (2018) “Forrester: Marketing automation spend will reach $25B by 2023” Marketing Dive [online] Available from: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/forrester-marketing-automation-spend-will-reach-25b-by-2023/522900/ [accessed June 2021]
