At JDR we hear the question a lot “What is marketing automation and what can it do for my business?”
Our partners Hubspot sum this question up incredibly well:
“At its best, marketing automation is software and tactics that allow companies to buy and sell like Amazon – that is, to nurture prospects with highly personalized, useful content that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into delighted customers. This type of marketing automation typically generates significant new revenue for companies, and provides an excellent return on the investment required." @Hubspot
Still confused about marketing automation and what it means for your business? Let’s look at it in closer detail.
We have been using marketing automation in our business for longer than we think. Businesses have been using software to automatically insert names and addresses from a database onto letters to send customers for a long time.
Now we have vast amounts of information and technology available to us that when someone visits a website you have the ability to nurture them from a lead into a valued customer by utilising marketing automation.
Amazon is one of the best examples of marketing automation in full flow, and I’m sure most of us are familiar with the Amazon website.
When you visit the Amazon website and you enter your username and password you will find that your name has been added to the website. Not only has personalisation occurred on the Amazon website but you will notice that Amazon now shows your browsing history, past purchases and ‘wish list’. Amazon then do something very clever indeed by also showing you brand new products available on the website and products that you may like to buy, all from your account history.
After leaving the site, we are then sent emails highlighting products that we have viewed or shown an interest in. Emails are also sent from Amazon that highlight new and exciting products that we might want to purchase, all from our viewing history and items previously purchased. This is marketing automation working at full capacity and making sure that we purchase as much as possible from Amazon and return to them as the market leader.
Human and business relationships are the core of modern day marketing strategies. The problem that today’s businesses have however, is that these key relationships are impossible to maintain with older techniques such as calls and meetings. Another way of improving relationships is to use Social Media in the correct way, read this article to learn 4 Social Media Mistakes That Will HARM Your Business.
Marketing automation bridges this gap by taking the grunt work out of your marketing and sales process, and speaks to clients regularly without you having to pick up the phone. This enables you to focus on the important stages of the buyer journey that need human interaction. Marketing automation enables your business to keep in contact with customers throughout their buyer journey and make sure that they keep coming back to you again and again.
Article by Dale Bonser