Welcome to the next installment of Buzzword Breakdown. If you have heard the phrase marketing automation before but are not sure what it means and exactly how you might implement it into your marketing plan, here is a quick breakdown:
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation actually refers to the software that programs and runs digital marketing efforts. Marketing automation in no way replaces marketers, however, its purpose is to maximize productivity for them. An example of one of the most commonly used forms of marketing automation would be an ongoing email campaign.
Why use marketing automation?
Marketing automation can greatly improve the effectiveness of your email campaigns. Instead of sending generic email blasts, you can use the software to create a series of automated steps or workflows. This helps to keep the audience engaged. Below is a three-step example of an automation workflow:
- Send an email to a list of prospects with a call-to-action asking them to download a special offer
- For each prospect that takes action and downloads the offer, you can set up a trigger to automatically send a thank you email to each prospect
- For those prospects that opened the email but did not download the offer, you can send out another automated email a few days later only to this group that features an enhanced offer or incentive to entice them to take action
With marketing automation software, marketers can deliver highly targeted and personalized emails that are tailored to improve engagement by boosting opens, click-through rates, and conversion rates more than a standard email blast.
These actions are good customer service and show your company is in sync with its customers and prospects. The list of options are plentiful to build communication with your audience through a series of emails that are tailored to their needs and interests based on their actions.
When is the best time to invest in marketing automation solutions?
There are several questions you can ask yourself to determine if it’s the right time to invest. Are you creating and publishing good content? Is that content mapped to the buyer’s journey? Have marketing and sales aligned? Do you have good clean email lists? These are all questions to take into consideration when planning out and evaluating your marketing automation solutions.
From the initial planning of an email campaign through to the implementation, SWBR is here to help. We work with many email platforms such as Mailchimp, Pardot, HubSpot, and SharpSpring. Contact us today and we can begin the conversation on how to capture the attention of your email audience.
Get in touch with SWBR to discuss your campaign needs, goals, and objectives. From there we’ll put together a custom campaign specific to your business.
