Everything You Need To Know About Marketing Automation
Today, nearly 75% of businesses around the world are using marketing automation platforms. [1] Many more are anticipated to hop onto the automation bandwagon in the upcoming years.
Modern marketing is infused with technology and there is no turning back. The stiff competition in the current business environment has prompted businesses to innovate, seek new marketing channels, and invest in groundbreaking marketing technologies.
The spending on marketing automation solutions is expected to surpass $25 billion by the end of 2023. To give you some perspective, the spending on marketing automation was only $11.4 billion in 2017. [2]
In the space of five years, spendings on marketing automation are anticipated to witness more than a two-fold growth. This is a clear indication of how companies around the world are willing to invest in marketing automation platforms.
Before we dive deeper into understanding marketing automation, let’s take a look at the contents of this article.
- The emergence of marketing automation
- What is marketing automation?
- Choosing a marketing automation platform
- Benefits of marketing automation platforms
- Final words
Emergence of marketing automation
Traditionally, marketers have successfully managed to find new ways to reach their customers using different means such as radio, television, newspapers, and more. Marketing automation emerged at a time where the majority of marketers were lacking the means to cater to the swelling customer base. They were in dire need of more resources and tools to improve customer interaction and experiences.
The onset of the internet played a key role in transforming how marketers reached their customers. Marketing automation provided marketers a way to communicate with customers using continually increasing media channels.
In simple words, marketing automation gradually developed as a result of the coming together of marketing technologies such as web analytics, marketing and email resource management.
What is marketing automation?
As the name suggests, marketing automation is a process that businesses and agencies use to automate their marketing activities by using technology or software tools. Digital marketing automation is a trend that is here to stay as businesses look to expand with valuable multitasking.
The idea behind automation is to streamline marketing processes to optimize results.
Marketing automation can be used for:
- Email marketing
- Data management
- Sales process automation
We know what you are thinking. How can we trust technology to perform some of the most important marketing strategies efficiently?
To answer this question, it is important to note that the two key aspects of a B2B marketing automation software. It uses flawless algorithms during the implementation stage and performs the automation process without compromising on personalization.
Choosing a marketing automation platform
With a range of marketing automation platforms to choose from, picking one for your business could get tricky.
Before you choose a marketing automation platform, define your goals, identify the areas that require automation, create a list of functional requirements, research, and then make a decision.
In the current scenario, there is a lot of noise within forums, CEO groups, and online communities revolving around choosing the best platform for B2B marketing automation.
Some of the important criteria you should consider while evaluating your options are listed below. Let’s take a look at them.
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Capabilities
Ask yourself what does the marketing automation platform allows you to do? The best marketing automation solutions offer a range of tools that support more than one or two tasks.
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Ease of use
Some of the best marketing automation software is easy-to-use and intuitive.
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Customization
The level of customization offered by the marketing automation tool is an important factor you should consider. You should be able to seamlessly change, develop, and customize templates at your convenience.
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Personalization
Let’s accept it. When it comes to marketing and lead generation, personalization will remain a key differentiating factor. Choosing a tool that can personalize the experience for your customers is important.
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Integration
There are two things you need to consider here. One, does the automation platform integrate with non-marketing tools such as CRM. Two, how integrated it is in general. The higher the integrations, the better for you as you do not have to use a bunch of tools for different tasks.
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Reporting
Marketing has evolved and with it, so have ways to measure, track, and assess marketing campaigns. Choose a marketing automation platform that offers a clear picture of your efforts using visualization and analytics.
Important automation platforms.
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Pricing
Pricing plans vary from vendor to vendor. While some provide free trials for a limited period of time, others provide customized pricing options based on the number of users. There are a few questions that you need to ask yourself before choosing a marketing automation solution for your business.
These questions include:
- How many users or contacts do you have?
- How swiftly will your contact database scale?
- What features are you looking for and how much are you willing to pay for them?
Although most companies provide their pricing structure on their website, getting in touch with the support team may be an easier way to gauge what pricing model will be the best for you.
Top marketing automation platforms
There are hundreds of B2C and B2B marketing automation platforms in the market and evaluating the pros and cons of each one of them could take a lot of time. Here, we have listed some of the best marketing automation solutions for marketers.
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HubSpot
We believe that you have heard about HubSpot and for the right reasons. HubSpot is one of the most user-friendly and well-integrated digital marketing automation solutions. It offers real-time analytics, performance monitoring, email marketing, and a content management system.
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Marketo
Marketo is another popular marketing automation software used by millions of marketers around the world. Some of its key features include automatic emails, budgeting tools, personalized messaging, campaign management, and visitor tracking.
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ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign gives us plenty of reasons to fall with it. It allows you to customize automation while simultaneously providing resourceful analytical data, customer relationship management, and sales support.
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Customer.io
Customer.io is all about communication! The automation platform utilizes data from customer interactions to create tailored email messages and trigger actions on the basis of customer behavior.
Specially developed for marketing teams whose primary focus is to increase sales. Pardo accelerates the pipeline by using lead generation, nurturing, and scoring along with personalized email marketing and social media integrations.
Benefits of Marketing Automation Platforms
Before we explore the benefits of marketing automation platforms, here are a few interesting marketing automation statistics.
- Around 67% of marketing leaders around the world use some sort of marketing automation platform. [3]
- In 2017, the predicted year-on-year growth for the adoption of marketing automation platforms was around 31%. [4]
- Nearly 68% of business organizations around the world use automation in one way or another. [5]
These statistics are just the tip of the iceberg but do a good job in proving the benefits of marketing automation.
Automation offers immense benefits ranging from improvement in marketing alignment, higher sales, time savings, and reduction in customer acquisition costs (CAC).
Time savings
If a marketer could get his/her hands on Alladin’s magic lamp, the first thing they would wish for is the expedition of manual tasks to save time. In today’s hustle and bustle, time-saving is an asset for most companies.
Marketing automation solutions play an important role in automating tasks. The strides taken by technology over the past couple of decades have reduced the time spent by marketers to complete redundant tasks.
Effective spending management
It’s simple! Since time is money, and automation saves time, your marketing budget is likely to be less tied up in labor costs. According to Invesco, nearly 63% of marketers are likely to increase marketing automation budgets in the near future. [6]
Automation of various marketing tasks allows you to concentrate on important tasks that can take your business to the next level.
Improves sales and marketing teams relationship
Are you aware of the term ‘frenemies’? If not, sales and marketing teams are the primary examples of it. It’s no secret that sales pressurize marketing teams for more leads. On the other hand, marketing points fingers at sales for missing out on leads.
Marketing automation is the olive branch businesses were waiting for as it strengthens ties between the two teams. Marketing can reach out to more prospects and create a larger pipeline which provides sales more opportunities to seal the deal. A win-win situation for both parties!
Final words
It is hard to deny that marketing automation does not work for businesses. With the e-commerce boom around the world along with advancements in technology, automation is a growing trend. Businesses that have invested in marketing automation solutions have reported higher revenue returns and conversion rates.
Whether marketing automation will work for you or not will primarily depend on how much money and time you invest in it. Marketing automation requires frequent reviews, creation, and on-going planning to provide the best customer experience.
There is no doubt that there is a lot to gain from automation. Cost savings, high efficiency, high productivity, insightful analytical data, and seamless customer support are some of its key benefits.
The increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is set to open up the floodgates to new and exciting automation trends in the coming years.
Sources:
[1] [6] Moran.M (2021) “Marketing Automation Statistics” Funneloverload [online] available from
[2] Linnemanstons. G (2019) “What is marketing automation and how it is being used?” Weidert Group [online] available from
[3] [4] [5] (2021) “Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics 2021” Hubspot [online] available from
