What is Marketing Automation?

You have probably heard about marketing automation before, by a marketer talking about marketing automation and email marketing interchangeably. The fact is, email marketing is a component of marketing automation, but the two are not the same. Marketing automation is a greater category overall, combining customer acquisition and retention channels to shuttle consumers down your company’s unique conversion funnel.

By definition, marketing automation works to automate your marketing communications program. It is a category of technology that allows companies to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows, to increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster. It is used in all sorts of business capacities, including B2B and B2C companies.

So, how does it work?

Marketing automation is focused on the long-term path with the customer. To aid in this goal, it connects with your audience on multiple touch points and marketing channels, including social media, content marketing, and email marketing.

Although automation has a cold, impersonal sound to it, in reality these programs allow for greater personalization of marketing efforts. With these targeted emails and campaigns in your arsenal, you can focus more energy on the overall quality and messaging, without worrying about strengthening your communication with each individual. With the data you collect, the automation process makes it even easier to add personalized touches and custom-tailor offers to each customer.

I am intrigued. But I can do this stuff on my own…right?

When your email list gets bigger than five people, trying to cater your marketing efforts to each customer gets far more labor intensive. As you scale up, so does your technology needs – along with the increasing number of channels you are required to manage. All of the processes involved in marketing (lead generation, segmentation, lead nurturing, cross-sell and up-sell, etc.) require support like:

A central marketing database: A location to collect all your marketing data, including detailed prospective and customer interactions or behaviors, so you can segment and target the correct message to each customer. Basically, a large record of your audience.

An engagement marketing engine: An environment for the founding, managing, and automating of marketing messages across all platforms on- and offline. This is the conductor of all your marketing efforts.

An analytics engine: The system that helps you track, test, measure, and optimize marketing impacts on your ROI and total revenue. This is the science lab that helps you discover what works, what does not, and why.

Can you show me a real world example?

Sure. Here is what an automated email workflow could look like:

Step 1: Send out an email invitation to download your latest ebook to a targeted list of contacts.

Step 2: Thank all the folks that downloaded your book.

Step 3: After a few days, you send a follow up email to the people that downloaded your book, offering them a case study related to that topic.

Step 4: When someone downloads that case study, your sales team gets a notification to follow up with them (this person is now a much more qualified lead and more likely to continue down the process).

With an exchange like above, the persons on the receiving end of the emails are much happier with the targeted quality of messages. Instead of random email blasts from the company, they are receiving messages based on interactions, which makes it feel much more personalized.

The Dos and Do Nots of Marketing Automation

Now that you know the basics of marketing automation, here are a few key tips to keep in mind. While automating everything seems like the logical step, take a moment to revisit your goals before getting started.

DO Integrate marketing automation with your inbound marketing strategy.
Inbound marketing is about providing valuable content for your customers, that aligns with their interests. Adding automation should only enhance this communication, allowing you to share the content customers want, when they need it.

DO NOT send out general email blasts.
These are unnecessary. At best, these emails will be marked as spam; at worst, your audience will unsubscribe.

DO send targeted, specific content to a segmented audience.
Put yourself in their shoes. Make sure the content you are delivering is congruent with past information they have received and shown interest in. Provide content they want!

DO NOT overlook current customers.
Do not get so wrapped up in generating new revenue that you disregard your current customers. They already love what you are doing – help them keep loving it.

DO create campaigns designed to keep current customers engaged.
As I have said before, it is easier and more profitable to keep a current customer than to try and acquire someone new. Nurture these relationships with customer-only content that enlightens them about the company and leadership, and keeps them coming back.