Marketing Automation - The Basics
Most people don't get into marketing because they're passionate about tracking clicks. At its heart, the art of marketing is about creativity, ingenuity, and human connection.
But it can't be all about colourful designs and kick-ass content.
There's a lot of mundane stuff which needs to happen if campaigns are going to get anywhere. This is where a lot of 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 often cried!
Enter marketing automation software. While it can't do everything for you, it can take on an awful lot of the donkey work. Giving the more repetitive, process-driven tasks of marketing to software frees up human marketers to do more of what they do best – connect creatively with customers.
So how can marketing automation software help you?
• It can streamline your marketing by organising campaigns and content under tags, timescales etc.
• It can quickly pick up on patterns (for example, of customer/content interaction) and flag interesting or problematic things for your attention. If online content is drawing a lot of comment, for example, marketing automation software will be quick to let you know.
• It can track interaction with your content, which helps with a number of marketing essentials, including customer segmentation and lead scoring.
• It can help marketers to create a smooth and intuitive 'flow', guiding customers through their journey.
• It can gather, present, and even (to a certain extent!) analyse data.
• It can pipe particular data and processes through to the relevant departments quickly and efficiently, ensuring a speedy resolution for both customer and company.
• It can help with nurturing leads and ensuring that your content is being seen by the right people at the right time.
All in all, it's a pretty useful thing. A necessary thing, in fact, if you do a large amount of marketing online. Tracking customer interactions, gathering data, and getting content seen by the right prospects would be a stunningly laborious task without automation.
Having said that, it's a mistake to remove the human element entirely. Marketing automation software works at its best with a little guidance. Sure, let it do the boring, repetitive, data-gathering stuff – but you need to be telling it what data to gather, and then using that data in the right ways.
How can you optimise your use of marketing automation software?
Here are a few tips:• Revisit your strategy before automating any process. This will ensure that the automation you set up will be 'on the same page' as your overall marketing tactics, messaging, and goals.
• Use it to enhance rather than replace communications. Marketing software enables you to access and reach out to more people than would otherwise be the case. It's good at finding people. But relying on it to communicate effectively with those people is not always a wise strategy. Keep the human element, and emphasise personalised communications over flat, automated messaging.
• Use your software to nurture customers as well as to sell sell sell. Automation is a great way to keep checking in with current customers, or to manage customer journeys. But, as always, ensure that the software is providing access points for human communication, not acting as a stand in for that communication!
• Use the data to gain valuable insights. Marketing automation software is at its best when presenting you with data on customer interactions, behaviours etc. But it's not enough just to glance over the patterns and leave the machines to it. There's a huge amount you can do with the data gathered by your software. From enhancing your lead scoring activities to optimising content creation, the information the software provides can up your marketing game no end. But you need to pay attention to the data and put its insights to work.
For more great tips on marketing automation that will help you find the right tools for the job check out Email Vendor Selection. Smart Insights also have brilliant guides with best practice tips on marketing automation for both B2B and B2C organisations.
If you’d like help creating your strategy or a review of technology that you’re currently using or help on where to start, get in touch with us.
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About the Author
Jenna Tiffany is a Chartered Marketer and Fellow of the IDM. She is the Founder & Strategy Director at Let'sTalk Strategy providing consultancy services across the digital marketing mix. Jenna has over ten years' marketing experience within B2B and B2C and both client and agency side.
Industry recognised expert as an elected member of the prestigious DMA Email Marketing Council. Jenna provides marketing consultancy to brands worldwide. As a proven thought-leader, competent public speaker and publisher, Jenna can be regularly seen sharing her latest trends and key industry topics internationally.