5 Benefits of Marketing Automation
Marketing automation software has become a necessary tool in a marketer’s toolbox. Why? Because it allows you to do more, to be more, and to personalize your marketing as much as you’d like. Marketing automation software can be half your team; it can send, track and make decisions for you. It’s no secret that I think marketing automation is the bomb, and I have reasons why I feel so strongly. Let me share what I see to be the 5 biggest benefits of marketing automation.
1. Get Stuff Done
Remember when telemarketers started robocalling to spread their sales messages faster? Marketing automation software is NOT like this. Some people think it is – they think you’re treating everyone the same, giving them the same messages, and the software is just allowing you to get to people faster. This is not what automation software does.
What the automation software DOES DO, is it allows you to set up personalized campaigns and run them over and over again, as frequently or infrequently as needed. You can schedule things to run based on actions taken, set timers in between messages, and manage the whole thing from an oversight level, versus at an everyday in-the-weeds level. Because of this “set it and forget it” opportunity, you will get more stuff done.
2. Make Decisions Based on Action
A really cool thing marketing automation programs can do is they can make decisions for you. If you programmed a campaign to send email A to all customers, and then only to send email B if customers took no action, the program would automate that decision making for you and save you some manual list work in between email sends. Even cooler would be if you scheduled it to automate a list to generate and send to a print vendor for those non-responders…that would be cool.
3. Channels Work Together There is a misperception that marketing automation software is only for email. While email may be the most commonly used channel with this type of program, it certainly is not the only channel included. Marketing automation programs today include social networks, website interactions, mobile marketing and retargeting strategies, and are able to kick out lists for direct mail vendors. All channels can be incorporated to help you build complete omnichannel campaigns.
4. Work Smarter, Not Harder While marketing automation software is an investment, the cost more than pays for itself in the level of output it can produce. If you consider the time and people it would take to execute on all of the campaigns run through the course of an automated program, you would be hard fought to say otherwise.
5. Retain and Retarget in Real Time Marketing automation software doesn’t sleep like you and I do – it’s on all the time. So that means you can do really great marketing in real time to help you retain and retarget customers. If someone joins your mailing list – automate a welcome series. If someone makes a purchase – automate a thank you series. If someone looked at your website, but took no action – automate some retargeting campaigns. Automation is the 24/7 marketer we all wish we could be.
If you’re interested in running some automated campaigns, contact us at B2E. We have the capabilities to help with omnichannel campaign execution and would be happy to discuss strategy of these awesome campaigns with you.
