Do you face challenges around those trivial, time-consuming marketing tasks within your organisation? Are you lacking customer data, which can help you segment your audience? If you recognise these challenges within your business, it could be time to invest in marketing automation software.
By 2023, investment into marketing automation technology is expected to double. Organisations are becoming increasingly aware of automation technology and the benefits in can provide.
CRM software provider, PragmatiQ Solutions, review what marketing automation is, some key statistics, signs you need automation software and the overall benefits.
What is marketing automation?
To put it simply, marketing automation software streamlines, automates and schedules tasks within an organisation, from lead-nurturing to campaign planning. As a result, businesses save time, have more sales-ready leads and increase revenue.
How do I know if my business should automate our marketing?
Marketing teams’ days consist of juggling multiple, time-consuming tasks, and automation tools have become a problem solver.
However, the information out there can be overwhelming, and you might be questioning how you can tell you if an investment into marketing automation software is right you.
Below are a few key signs to help you determine if it’s the right time to consider a change:
- You’re lacking customer data, making it hard to segment your audience
- You’re struggling to reach your target audience
- Sales and marketing teams are disconnected and working in siloes
- Your marketing efforts aren’t working quite as well as you’d like
- Many leads are falling through the cracks
- You’re unable to manage all channels from one, single application
- You’re not currently nurturing your leads
Benefits of marketing automation software
There is no lack of benefits of marketing automation software, however this would be a very long blog post if we listed them all. Below are five main ones:
Enhanced customer insights
Alongside the standard name and email address, marketing automation software provides businesses with extra information, like location data, behavioral insights and job titles; making segmentation much easier and allowing your marketing teams to communicate with your audience more effectively. If you’re lacking this customer data, you may be missing out on ways to stay one step ahead of your competition.
Personalise the customer journey
According to a recent study, 77% of buyers want unique and targeted content at each stage of their research. Getting the right message, to the right person, at the right time can be a challenge for businesses; one which marketing automation software solves. Alongside this, the technology captures information after the content has been distributed, such as email clicks, conversion rate. This data can then be used to drive your overall marketing strategy and make it as effective as possible.
Generate better leads
Generating better leads is the goal for any business. In order to achieve this, you need a detailed view of potential customers and their behavior, so you can market effectively to them. Marketing automation tools allow you to achieve this goal, allowing you to understand your audience more than ever. Tracking methods such as following a user’s journey through your website, allows your marketing team to understand the intent of your visitors and what stage of the funnel they are at. As a result, further communications can then be customised and the leads your business generate will be of a higher standard.
Sales and marketing alignment
Sales and marketing teams working in siloes within businesses is not uncommon. The problem with this however, means your business isn’t as efficient as it could be. Automation software bridges the gap between teams and enables marketing to hand-over better-qualified and nurtured leads, to the sales department. To assist with this, lead-scoring functionality within the software evaluates these leads level of interest based on a pre-defined set of signals and ensures they are qualified, before you follow up with them. Teams are more productive as a result of this and your organisation will see both an increase in conversion rates and efficiency.
Gain a 360-degree of your business
Leads do not just come from one place for most companies; email, website, social media, surveys and more are commonly used. It is critical that the data from these is stored in one single application for quick and easy access for all teams, however, this can be challenging with disparate systems. Marketing automation software resolves these issues manages these channels and provides you with a 360-degree view of your marketing efforts, meaning you’re able to be more productive and leverage the data much faster.
A few key marketing automation statistics:
In case you weren’t already sold on marketing automation from the benefits, here are a few statistics that might change your mind…
- On average 49% of companies are currently using marketing automation, with more than half of B2B companies (55%) adopting the technology. (emailmonday, 2019)
- 74% of marketers say that “saving time” is the biggest benefit they see from automation. (Demand Gen Report, 2018)
- Marketing technology spend is now higher than the advertising spendfor companies. (Gartner, 2016)
- 91% of the most successful users agree that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels. (Demand Gen Report, 2018)
- Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. (sessioncam, 2016)
In Summary…
We understand there is a lot to consider when looking at marketing automation software, however, it is worth conducting the research in order to determine the right tools for your organisation.
Hopefully, this blog post has provided you with an insight to determine whether you need to automate your marketing and the benefits of this, alongside the tools available.
Stuart Goldwater is the Managing Director at PragmatiQ Solutions, a CRM software provider supporting businesses to increase sales, customer retention and employee productivity. Twitter: @PragmatiQSols; LinkedIn: PragmatiQ Solutions
Marketing automation stock photo by EtiAmmos/Shutterstock
