What Is Marketing Automation And How Does it Work?

Your marketing campaign contributes significantly to your business’s overall success.

After all, it can be a great way to reach out to new customers or better connect with existing ones.

Either way, it’s a great way to boost conversions and sales, meaning it’s important that you are always on the lookout for ways to improve your marketing strategy.

You can achieve this goal by using marketing automation software and technology to your advantage by creating a marketing automation strategy.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation helps to reduce the number of hours spent managing marketing campaigns by automating certain time-consuming tasks.

For example, marketing automation software can be used at every point in the sales cycle, such as in email marketing campaigns, social media channel management, or for lead generation.

When you are able to automate repetitive tasks on behalf of your marketing team, you free up extra hours in their day to dedicate to other duties.

However, beyond this, marketing automation can also be used to personalize marketing campaigns, which strengthens your relationship with your customers by making your interactions feel more personal.

Businesses that use marketing automation platforms often see great results.

In fact, according to a recent study from Invesp, 80% of marketing automation users saw an increase in the number of leads they received, and 77% saw an increase in sales conversions.

What are the benefits of marketing automation?

There are many benefits associated with using marketing automation tools. After all, marketing automation:

• Saves time, resources, and money
• Improves the customer experience.
• Increases your reach.
• Reduces employee burnout.

Saves time, resources, and money.

Perhaps the biggest benefit associated with marketing automation is the fact that it can save you time, resources, and money when it comes to curating an effective marketing campaign or improving your marketing strategy.

This is due to the fact that it eliminates the need for certain marketing processes to be carried out manually while still bringing forth excellent results.

For example, you can use a marketing automation tool to track each stage of the buyer’s journey, from their interactions with your brand on social media to the time spent on your website.

Improves the customer experience.

As discussed above, marketing automation software can add a personal touch to your marketing campaigns.

For example, the software can be used in your email marketing campaigns to greet customers by name instead of using a generic greeting.

This form of personalized messaging increases engagement and helps when it comes to building customer loyalty.

This is because it helps customers feel valued and respected and adds a more human touch to your interactions by making it feel like they are speaking to a sales team member instead of receiving an automated response.

The customer experience is also improved through marketing automation as it can be used to generate the kind of content that your target audience are more likely to seek out.

As a result, it plays an essential role in customer relationship management and customer retention.

Increases your reach.

Marketing automation software can also be used for lead generation or to help redefine your target audience.

As such, this can increase your reach quite considerably, which in turn can increase your overall sales.

For example, a recent study has found that the average marketing automation ROI is $5.44 per dollar spent.

Reduces employee burnout.

Employee burnout is becoming an increasingly common challenge across all industries, especially within small businesses who often have a limited number of employees working on-site.

However, by automating repetitive tasks, you can help to keep burnout at bay as you’re actively reducing employee workload without limiting your output or putting customer satisfaction rates at risk.

These tools enable employees to work more efficiently, ensuring that productivity remains at an all-time high.

As such, you must find the right marketing automation solution for your business sooner rather than later.

How does marketing automation software work?

Marketing automation software works by gathering pre-existing customer data to automate certain marketing tasks.

For example, it may rely on the following data to carry out its operational duties:

• Website visits
• App usage
• Social media habits/engagement
• Emails

By pulling upon this data, you are able to tailor your marketing campaigns and efforts to each individual customer.

The results?

Improved sales and increased customer loyalty.

Who can benefit from marketing automation?

Marketing automation can benefit marketing teams in just about every industry, especially as the process of curating relevant content and sending it out to your target audience, be that through social media or emails, can be incredibly time-consuming.

Furthermore, as it brings forth a wealth of results, it can be instrumental in the overall growth of your company.

How to be successful with marketing automation.

Decide which aspects of your marketing you’d like to automate.

The first step toward being successful in the world of marketing automation is deciding which tasks you’d like to automate and which you’d like your marketing teams to carry out manually.

Marketing automation tools can be used for a combination of the following:

• Lead generation
• Audience targeting
• Loyalty programs
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing

Lead Generation.

If you are unfamiliar with the phrase, lead generation refers to the process of identifying potential customers (leads) so that you’re able to better target your products/services/marketing campaigns toward them.

Automating this process allows you to receive better results, as it means leads are obtained through reliable data.

Audience targeting.

Audience targeting is the aspect of marketing automation that enables you to personalize the messages you send out to potential customers.

For example, you may employ audience targeting tactics to ensure your social media campaigns are sent directly to the feeds of those most likely to engage with them based on user demographics.

As a result, you can begin to generate leads automatically.

Loyalty programs.

Marketing automation can strengthen your relationship with your customers in numerous ways, meaning it can also be used to increase membership to your customer loyalty program.

For example, whenever a customer attaches their email to your order, you can send them a personalized thank-you message and give them the option to join your loyalty scheme.

This can help you to continue to build meaningful relationships with your customers.

Email marketing.

Marketing automation software can increase your chances of success within your email campaigns by ensuring that emails, whether they be promotional or relating to your loyalty scheme, land in the right inboxes at the right time.

This, of course, will help increase conversions.

Social media marketing.

Maintaining multiple social media channels can be incredibly time-consuming, especially as each platform uses a different algorithm to push (or bury) content.

However, you can reduce the amount of energy required to launch a successful social media marketing campaign by using automation software or a CRM system to generate and schedule content.

Use marketing automation software.

The next step in the process is choosing which automation software you’d like to use within your business.

This step of the process may require some significant research, as there are many different forms of software around.

As such, you may want to base your decision on customer reviews or on how equipped the software is when it comes to its intended purpose within your business.

More recently, the growing popularity of ai software means that ai tools are quickly being considered to be the best marketing automation tools around.

However, regardless of which software you choose, it’s important that you teach every member of your team how to use it correctly – whether they be a sales rep or marketing expert.

This will allow you to enjoy the true benefits of marketing software, whether you are trying to increase sales or nurture organic leads, by ensuring it is implemented correctly.

Analyze the results.

As always, when introducing a new form of software into your business, you should carefully analyze the results in the weeks and months that follow to ensure you are using it correctly and achieving the kind of results you need

For example, you should check over customer data to see which email campaigns are encouraging customers to head over to your website.

However, as opposed to only measuring who clicks onto your site, you should see how they spend their time on your site – do they spend time on the landing pages or head to your pricing page?

Do they buy anything or end up clicking away anyway?

Studying this data will allow you to make meaningful changes that ensure you are making marketing automation work for you.

Marketing Automation with Optimio

Optimo is a form of AI technology that can be used by marketing teams in any industry to improve their marketing campaigns in a matter of seconds.

When it comes to marketing automation, it can be used to carry out a range of tasks.

For example, you can use Optimio to generate a wealth of marketing campaign ideas that help when it comes to advertising products and lead scoring.

To a similar effect, you can use Optimo to carry out market research into your chosen industry or target audience so that you can ensure that your future marketing plan is ticking all the right boxes.

Again, this can be a great way to obtain quality leads or streamline the buying process to keep customers happy.

When it comes to running effective social media channels, you can use Optimo to generate social media post ideas, which can heighten the engagement (likes, shares, and comments) your posts receive.

This could be particularly useful for business owners who are unfamiliar with the world of social media, meaning they don’t know their tweets from their TikToks.

For example, Optimo can be used to create Instagram Reels or put together a content calendar.

Top Tips For Marketing Automation.

If you are looking for a way to improve your marketing and sales strategy, then marketing automation is a great way to do so.

After all, marketing automation makes your life a lot easier.

However, you should ensure that:

• You think carefully about which aspects of your customer lifecycle you’d like to automate, whether that be lead generation or email marketing messages.
• Choose your marketing automation platform or software carefully, keeping your long-term goals in mind.
• You take time to analyze the success of the tools once they have been incorporated into your marketing efforts, making changes when necessary.

As new software and tools are introduced to the market each month, you should also pay close attention to these developments to see whether there is something new you can try in order to enhance your marketing campaigns moving forward.

Final Thoughts.

The many benefits of marketing automation tools, whether they relate to ROI or improved employee satisfaction rates, make it clear that this software should be implemented within all businesses moving forward.

After all, when you free up time in your employee’s day, you’re not only reducing burnout, but you’re also giving them the chance to work on other projects or tasks, both of which can contribute greatly to your overall success and help your business grow from strength to strength.

Furthermore, this can be a great way to combat poor employee attrition rates.

Furthermore, as marketing automation is excellent when it comes to fostering a stronger relationship with your customers, it can help give your business or brand the longevity it deserves.

Furthermore, in a world where personalized interactions are valued above all else, it can be a great way to grow your customer base and obtain organic leads.

As such, now is the perfect time to research different forms of marketing automation and incorporate these practices, tools, or software into your daily operations – regardless of which industry you work within.

Doing so will help your business grow and develop while also promising an excellent return on investment.

Furthermore, this could be a great way to ensure you stay ahead of the curve, which helps separate you further from your biggest competition.

If you’d like to find out more about how Optiomo can be used for different marketing automation tasks alongside content curation (and more), please do not hesitate to get in touch today.