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Marketing Automation: The Basics
Most people don't get into marketing because they're passionate about tracking clicks. At its heart, marketing is about creativity, ingenuity, and human connection.
But it can't all be about colourful designs and kick-ass content.
A lot of mundane work needs to happen if campaigns are going to get anywhere. This is where many marketers fall down. Many of us are bright, enthusiastic ideas people, but show us a spreadsheet and we wilt. Analysing data? Tracking interactions? Lead scoring? "Please, no!" is a common cry.
Enter marketing automation software. While it can't do everything for you, it can take on a lot of the donkey work. Handing the repetitive, process-driven tasks of marketing to software frees up human marketers to do what they do best: connect creatively with customers.
How Can Marketing Automation Software Help You?
- It can streamline your marketing by organising campaigns and content under tags, timescales, and more.
- It can quickly spot patterns (for example, in how customers interact with content) and flag interesting or problematic things for your attention. If online content is getting a lot of comments, for example, the software will quickly let you know.
- It can track interaction with your content, which helps with marketing essentials like customer segmentation and lead scoring.
- It can help you create a smooth and intuitive "flow", guiding customers through their journey.
- It can gather and present data, and even analyse it (to a certain extent!).
- It can send specific data and processes to the right departments quickly and efficiently, leading to a fast resolution for both customer and company.
- It can help nurture leads and make sure your content is seen by the right people at the right time.
All in all, it's a very useful tool. In fact, it's a necessary one if you do a lot of marketing online. Tracking customer interactions, gathering data, and getting content seen by the right prospects would be a hugely time-consuming task without automation.
That said, it's a mistake to remove the human element entirely. Marketing automation software works best with a little guidance. Let it do the boring, repetitive, data-gathering work. But you need to tell it what data to gather, and then use that data in the right ways.
How Can You Get the Most from Marketing Automation Software?
Here are a few tips:
- Revisit your strategy before automating any process. This makes sure the automation you set up is on the same page as your overall marketing tactics, messaging, and goals.
- Use it to enhance communication, not replace it. Marketing software lets you reach more people than you could otherwise. It's good at finding people. But relying on it to communicate well with those people is not always a wise strategy. Keep the human element, and focus on personalised communication over flat, automated messages.
- Use your software to nurture customers, not just to sell, sell, sell. Automation is a great way to keep checking in with current customers or manage customer journeys. But, as always, make sure the software creates chances for human communication rather than standing in for it!
- Use the data to gain valuable insights. Marketing automation software is at its best when it shows you data on customer interactions and behaviours. But it's not enough to glance at the patterns and leave the machines to it. There's a huge amount you can do with the data. From improving your lead scoring to optimising content creation, the information can boost your marketing no end. But you need to pay attention to the data and put its insights to work.
For more great tips on marketing automation and finding the right tools for the job, check out Email Vendor Selection.
If you'd like help creating your strategy, a review of the technology you're currently using, or advice on where to start, get in touch with us.
