The massive development of technology has been marking a new line in the relationship between company and client, which must be personalized, direct, and immediate. In order not to lose quality or response time, some tools will help you automate this process. This type of strategy to mechanize and streamline processes is called marketing automation. Do you want to know what marketing automation is, its advantages, and the best tools to carry it out? Keep reading!
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is an area of digital marketing that aims to automate repetitive processes and actions of our marketing strategy.
To do this, we need software or technology that works with tags that detect specific user behavior on our website. These user actions will work as triggers for automatic processes. The software or technology must also be able to store a user’s information, be it an email, a phone number, or simply a cookie.
The concept of marketing automation emerged as an email marketing tool. Currently, he seeks to find automated solutions to repetitive tasks in many fields. Programmers insist time and time again on reducing human error and managing complex tasks such as measurement, analytics, or business marketing campaigns in an optimized way.
Among the functions of marketing automation, we find:
- Automate and analyze marketing processes.
- Controlled communication following the list of leads to analyze the sales process from registration to product purchase.
- Generation of automatic responses for new leads
- Organize leads with behavior patterns to offer each customer personalized content.
History and Origin of automated marketing
The evolution of marketing automation has been very fast and has changed the rules of the game. However, one of the aspects that have transformed the most is that these platforms have reduced the supervision imposed on employees, thus empowering staff.
Ever since organizations became aware of the existence of marketing as a way to target their products to potential customers, competition has increased tremendously. This resulted in the fusion of marketing with new technologies, giving rise to modern marketing as we know it.
In the past, marketers looked for ways to reach their audience through media such as radio, television, or the Internet. They were all fighting for a growing customer base. It was then that the marketing automation option emerged. It offered marketers a way to reach audiences through new channels that were constantly expanding.
Its origin can be located in the CRM. At that time, it was limited to electronic diaries and business cards. Businesses needed to collect as much personal information as possible from their customers and over time it became an essential tool. In the 1980s, when CRM was booming, customer service and sales management began to emerge, but it was very expensive, so only large companies could afford it.
Although marketing automation started in 1992, it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that the automation industry started to catch on. The first automation systems revolved around email marketing.
How marketing automation works
Marketing automation is a part of the numerous inbound advertising techniques, a non-intrusive advertising approach that seeks to create value through SEO, social media, analytics, or content and lead generation. In this sense, marketing automation seeks to automate the response to user questions and actions.
The simplest example, but one that defines very well what marketing automation is, is to think of a user who fills out a form and receives an email automatically. But it can also be a more elaborate action, such as a user calling our call center after hours and, just when it opens, they automatically receive an SMS with the message ‘we are now open, call us’.
These responses, actions, or automatic communications are not only carried out through e-mail, they can also be carried out through SMS or a call, a remarketing action through a banner, or even dynamic content on our website that shows one or the other content according to user behavior on the web.
Why use marketing automation?
Among the different advantages that marketing automation can offer us, we highlight:
- Development of complete marketing processes in a natural way
- Costs and staff time are reduced
- Allows you to track the impact of marketing much more effectively and measured
- Planning and publishing content on social media
- Creation of events and webinars
- Innovation in web forms
- Powers lead nurturing, maturation, and automation of databases. We are talking about a technique that allows us to control the key phase of the sales process: from the moment they discover the product to be sold or register on a website until the moment of purchase.
- Efficient use of digital customer records, both their data and their behavior on the network. The so-called lead scoring
In short, it is very useful if we want to recover the user’s attention and interest automatically after a long period of inactivity or without interacting enough. All these are thanks to the programming of automatic functions that, when inactivity is registered, cause different actions such as sending emails, personalized advertisements, or even offers aimed at these customers.
The best marketing automation tools
Next, take note of the best marketing automation tools:
Hubspot
Hubspot is a very complete tool, with CRM, landing generation, pop-up tools… It is one of the most powerful tools in terms of its features and it has a complete growth package with sales, marketing, and support software. They are integrated into the HubSpot CRM. In addition, it includes a very simple visual dashboard where you can create workflows. It offers endless creative possibilities.
Salesmanago
Salesmanago is a very complete marketing automation tool, with remarketing list options for Facebook, at one of the most competitive prices on the market. It offers solutions for businesses in all sectors.
Ortto (Autopilot)
Autopilot tool converted into Ortto. One of the advantages of Ortto is its ease of interpretation. It is a tool that allows you to annotate automation sequences with emojis, stickers, and explanations, making it easier for the different teams involved to collaborate on creating strategies. Additionally, the tool gives you the ability to trigger actions across its various features within the same platform, which saves you from having to set up integrations and makes scripts much easier to understand.
Sendinblue
The Sendinblue platform may not be the most visually appealing, but it is very useful. It is one of the most affordable tools and offers free automation if we have less than 2,000 contacts. To give us an idea of its magnitude, in 2020 the company announced that it had more than 80,000 users who used its services to send 100,000 million emails a day.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is one of the tools of choice for small businesses and one of the best automation platforms overall. In fact, they pioneered the visual automation sequence builder.
Its price makes it one of the most affordable automation tools on the market. And unlike tools like HubSpot that start cheap and get more expensive, ActiveCampaign remains affordable as we grow.
Examples of marketing automation
Now that we are practically experts in marketing automation, let’s see some examples of how we can use them:
Welcome emails
Take advantage of the momentum of having obtained a new lead to create loyalty. To do this, send a welcome email and enhance that first impression. Thanks to automation you will be able to welcome each new user without fail and maximize brand awareness.
Remarketing
Few companies could claim that they have no competition. None has an audience that is 100% loyal to the brand. In this sense, it is possible to strengthen retention rates by automating your remarketing programs to reconnect with old customers.
Personalized content
Your customers expect you to be a market leader and they want your brand to generate quality content. This is a good lead-generating method. This content is more focused and personalized, and to download it, all users must provide their names and email addresses. Once they provide it, it will be sent to them automatically.
Feedback and surveys
A popular method of learning more about customer wants and needs is through questionnaires. These work because they result in personalized recommendations that are truly relevant to the public and that allow you to improve as a brand.
Automate social networks
For many companies, social networks are the first on the list of expendable tasks. However, they offer many long-term benefits, as we need to know where our customers are. With the automation of social networks, we can manage them in less time and be able to regularly publish quality content, boost company engagement and improve our reputation.
Recover abandoned carts
Surveys put the average cart abandonment rate at 75.6%. Still, about 48% of emails that end in cart abandonment are opened. We may use marketing automation to motivate our potential buyers to complete the purchase. Many times a cart is abandoned simply due to distraction. An email, in this sense, could serve as a reminder.
Earn loyalty
Marketing isn’t just about acquiring new customers, it’s also about building loyalty. Keeping our customers close takes time. They want attention and they deserve it. Personalized messages can keep the engagement. They are busy and don’t have time to keep up with all our new products and services. That’s why reminders, sent at the right time, are an effective marketing tactic.
Transactional emails
When our customers make an online purchase they want to know if their order has been completed correctly and when it will arrive. Imagine having to manually send confirmation and delivery details to all customers after each purchase. It would be unfeasible to spend the time on something else! Therefore, we can automate transactional messages and updates of the type:
- Order accepted
- Shipping Details
- Shipping confirmation
How to be a Marketing Automation Professional
With automated marketing you can automate these workflows, reaching the right person, at the right time, with the right message with the right content. This way you will personalize the content to meet the needs of your customers with solutions that they really need, and not receive generic messages without any empathy.