Marketing
automation is a category of software that streamlines, automates, and measures
marketing tasks and workflows so that companies like yours can increase
operational efficiency and grow revenue faster.
Marketing
automation is the use of software and Web-based services to execute, manage and
automate marketing tasks and processes. It replaces manual and repetitive
marketing processes with purpose-built software and applications geared toward
performance.
Marketing
Automation a subset of customer relationship management (CRM) that focuses on
the definition, scheduling, segmentation and tracking of marketing campaigns.
The use of marketing automation makes processes that would otherwise have been
performed manually much more efficient and makes new processes possible.
Fact:
·
Marketing automation connects multiple touch points and
marketing channels including social media, email marketing, and content
marketing. One of the core goals of marketing automation is to nurture
prospects for the long-term, which mean focusing on goals beyond direct sales.
Different marketing automation platforms are designed for
different types of businesses. Act-On is just one solution. It’s critical that
your business research marketing automation options—HubSpot, Act-On,
GetResponse, Eloqua, MailChimp, and Marketo to figure out which one is the best
fit.
Most of these companies have free-trial options, so take
advantage of the opportunity to ‘try before you buy’ first hand.
These companies are all awesome in their own right—we’re not
going to recommend any particular one to you. There is no one-size-fits all
approach. You need to choose the solution with
(1)
the targeting features you need and
(2)
(2) the analytics capabilities.
Other features to pay attention to: CRM integrations,
import/export features of customer data, and the ability to implement your own
customizations.
The platform comes with email, website visitor tracking, lead
management, social media, CRM, reporting and analytics. A core value
proposition is that business owners can execute their marketing from one place
to
(1) generate high quality leads and
(2)transform those leads into sales.
HOW
CAN MARKETING AUTOMATION HELP YOU?
Leveraging
marketing automation, your sales and marketing teams can work as a single,
cohesive team to automate and optimize your leads as they move from the top of
the funnel, down to the bottom, where sales are made.
Marketing Automation helps you:
·
Generate more leads
·
Qualify and prioritize your leads
·
Nurture those leads to a sales-ready state
·
Manage all of your email marketing campaigns
·
Report on the success of your campaigns
Marketing
departments save time and resources with an easy-to-use platform that makes it
simple to manage all your campaigns in a single solution. Your campaigns run on
autopilot while you spend time on all the other things you need to do to become
more successful. With marketing automation you have a 360-degree view of how your
prospects are interacting with you and the tools to turn them into customers.
FEATURES OF MARKETING AUTOMATION:
Advanced email marketing:
Create
beautiful emails using pre-formatted templates or a simple, visual editor. Run
A/B testing, view rendering reports, and test against spam filters. Send them
now, or schedule them for later. Track your success.
Lead nurturing:
Set-up
personalized, automated engagement tracks that free up time to focus on hot
leads while preventing early-stage leads from slipping through the cracks.
Blended lead scoring and grading:
Don’t waste
time chasing down dead ends. Understand who’s showing interest in you, and
follow up with only those meeting your ideal customer profile.
Prospect activity tracking:
Understand
each customer’s interest, plus use alerts to know who to follow up with in real
time.
Forms and landing pages:
Easily
collect prospect information using forms and custom landing pages.
Closed-loop reporting:
Gives you
access to reports that tell you just how well your marketing automation
campaigns are working, and where leads are coming from.
7 Marketing Automation Tools That
Could Change Your Small Business :
1. ONTRAPORT’s mission is to
“support entrepreneurs in delivering their value to the world by removing the burden
of technology.” It aims to do this by allowing companies to get a complete
visualization of the customer journey. Knowing that many small businesses
struggle to gain a clear understanding of how their marketing efforts are
paying off, ONTRAPORT is built to help them see how customers respond to
messages — via SMS, email, postcards, and landing pages — through data. This
information, in turn, can be used to build compelling campaigns within the
platform.
2. Delivra is a platform built on the knowledge that
automated email open rates are 95 percent higher than regular email open rates.
With that in mind, the company tries to maximize customer engagement by
offering help with SMS and email drip campaigns; it also assists with direct
mail and uses A/B testing and alerts when engagement or purchase “tendencies”
have been spotted.
3. Marketo is
a marketing automation platform that includes account-based marketing, email,
mobile, social, digital ads, web, and marketing analytics, allowing business
owners to drive engagement through multiple channels from one platform. Its
goal is to help small businesses build long-lasting relationships with
customers and create end-to-end engagement. Its cloud-based infrastructure can
handle hundreds of millions of activities each day, meaning it can scale with
its customers.
Marketo has developed
customized solutions for healthcare, technology, financial services,
manufacturing, media, and higher education, and its Engagement Hub gathers data
so businesses can personalize their interactions as they analyze and adapt.
That adaptation can happen in real time with Marketo’s instantaneous insights
and rich customer profiles.
4. HubSpot
HubSpot is
all about inbound marketing, and it offers a free CRM that helps businesses
organize and track customers — as HubSpot says, its CRM “automates the tasks
salespeople hate.” The platform tracks interactions automatically, and it
compiles data about deals on a single dashboard so the entire journey is
visible. Beyond its CRM, the brand offers blogging, landing pages, email, lead
management, analytics, web, social media, SEO, ads, and integration with
Salesforce.
5. Autopilot’s founders built
the company to create marketing automation software that’s as simple and
straightforward as using a whiteboard; their method of doing this was through
creating a self-service platform offering email, in-app messages, SMS, and
postcards.
6. Infusionsoft
Like
ONTRAPORT, Infusionsoft is
focused on small businesses. It aims to fuel these businesses’ growth by
offering automated marketing technology alongside a community of industry
leaders and consultants. That technology includes mobile, analytics, and a CRM,
as well as e-commerce solutions with a variety of integrations.
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