What is Marketing Automation and How Does It Work?

Your business is growing, which is a good thing, but that’s more time and more energy, and unfortunately, as a business owner, you have neither.

A strategy for automating your marketing campaigns will help you generate more leads, increase sales and save time. This will free up your time to focus on the more important matters like growing your business.

Marketing automation is the future of digital marketing, and it’s never been easier to get started. Take the next step with email automation, or automate text messages, Facebook Ads, lead nurture, lead scoring, and any other part of your customer lifecycle here.

In this blog post, we’ll explain to you what marketing automation is, how it works, and then we’ll share with you some strategies that you can start using immediately.

By using automation, you can learn about your customers to enhance user experience. If done correctly, the customer will feel like they're being understood and that your business knows what's important to them - which leads to more qualified leads along with growing sales! Automation also makes marketing processes profitable since it reduces costs in man-hours while increasing ROI (return on investment).

Customers are willing to spend more if it means having a great experience. That is why the ability to analyse and categorise customers with marketing automation, including by age, interests and shopping habits, matters so much today. It also gives you the option to send automated messages, including SMS marketing messages, to a certain group of customers. CRMs can help you keep track and organise your customer base’s consumer habits.

According to customers, the best way for a company to gain their business is by treating them like people and not numbers. This can be done through email drip campaigns in which pre-written emails are sent out at specific intervals based on customer categories.

The perfect time to send another marketing message depends on how long it’s been since you have interacted with your customer. If the interval is too short, customers may feel as if they are being stalked by a marketer and choose to opt out of an email list entirely. However, pushing back interactions for too long risks them taking their business elsewhere

By streamlining your marketing practices, you will save time and money by focusing on key tasks. By using this extra free time to improve customer experience, offer more attention for inquiries that need it the most and resolve issues in a personalized way, you can gain an edge over other businesses offering less than stellar service.

Marketing automation is a great time saver as it can create personalised marketing emails and posts on social media channels for you, freeing up your team to do other productive tasks instead of wasting their time doing this work manually.

When people purchase from your store, subscribe to your email list or click on an ad you placed online, they are providing valuable data. After all, the more information you have about them, the more it can help improve customer service and increase engagement rates across platforms.

Here are some of the most common ways businesses utilise this type of information:

• Preparing messaging for campaigns.
• Determining which contacts should be targeted for different messaging approaches.
• Deciding the circumstances of when to send the message to customers.
• Engaging contacts at the right time using high-quality marketing automation tools.

Here are some of the most common ways to use marketing automation tools.

1. Email

Email marketing remains as one of the best ways to market your business, but it takes some time and consideration from the get-go. You need to figure out what kind of funnels you have for different customers so that you can send them relevant emails in line with their interests or needs at certain points in time during their usage of your product/service. For example, a welcome email might be sent when someone first signs up while an abandoned cart reminder could go off if they leave without buying anything on a website checkout page after putting items into their shopping bag. 

Post scheduling is an effective way to automate your social media marketing channels. You can take advantage of social media automation by writing your posts in advance and using a tool for automatic posting depending on various factors, such as time zone (using automated bots for private messages), and signing up with an ad service that will automatically create content based off parameters you set.

Retargeting is a great way to encourage your potential customers into reconsideration. Automating this process will help increase the chances of making that sale. You should try out different ways in order to nudge them towards it.

Some ideas for how you can test the effectiveness of your automated retargeting include how seen they received the last email after the last contact, the number of times you sent an email to them, the frequency between follow-up emails, and the content of your emails.

Targeted marketing similar to this has a better click-through rate compared to emails without targeted strategies. To see which type of email will be more effective for your business, try out different scenarios and test the results.

The customer journey is a map that allows marketers to visualise how users consume digital content and predict the behaviour of consumers if they tweak certain marketing techniques to appeal to their purchasing instincts. This tool is incredibly helpful for automation marketers, especially for those who think about customers’ experiences in terms of cognitive, sensory and behavioural aspects.

A/B testing is a way to analyse the effectiveness of two different versions of an email or landing page. When you A/B test, conditions are kept as similar as possible so that comparisons between click-through rates and engagement can be made.

Optimisation automation includes:

• Production recommendation. Upon clicking on a product, the customer will automatically receive a recommendation of other similar items they may want to purchase.
• Dynamic content. This type of content changes based on the user’s behaviour, preferences and interests.

Prior to making a purchase, the three cycles that consumers go through are awareness, consideration, and purchase.

An automated contact system can build trust by sending valuable content to potential customers. When they receive emails containing information that is relevant, people are more likely to read them and feel comfortable about spending time on your website or app.

It's also an excellent way for you to showcase a promotion or loyalty program as it allows customers interested in those offers the opportunity to sign up through their inbox without having to go out of their way trying to find such deals elsewhere. Because let’s be honest, what’s better than getting an epic deal? Nothing.

No matter your goal, whether it’s to acquire new leads, retain existing customers, or drive more sales, these strategies will help you excel in marketing automation:

A crucial part of setting achievable goals is to monitor the data you currently have and develop your marketing automation through it. Data monitoring will allow for accurate progress measurements, which are needed when adjusting goals in order to enhance customer retention efforts.

People enjoy seeing ads that are relevant to them, and this is what makes segmentation so effective. The more targeted your campaigns towards a group of people, the better they will be received. Customers are often divided into four different segments: demographics (age/gender), interests (what someone likes or finds appealing) needs (what their specific needs are), location (where they are situated geographically). After you’ve divided people up according to their group, it becomes easier for marketers to have an idea about whom exactly they should target with those advertisements, potentially increasing the number of quality leads that come in.

If-then strategies are a term used to describe the different types of automated messages sent by marketing automation systems. For example, if someone visits your website from an advertisement you placed on Facebook, then send them their first coupon immediately after signing up for email updates. By customising these if-then scenarios with your own ideas and suggestions, this will allow your system to handle various situations in ways that work best for you.

4. Trial and Error

As you journey through the trial-and-error process of figuring out how the customer lifecycle works, A/B testing will be one of your most valuable tools for measuring marketing success.

You can try out new techniques in a controlled environment with real data to see how they work compared to your current efforts. Everything from the photos you use through to the frequency in which you interact with your audience can be tested.

By studying campaigns that have been successful and applying those methods to your own test campaign, you'll give yourself the best chance of succeeding.

Making an effort to maintain your current customers is more effective than trying to find new ones. It's cheaper and easier. Here are four strategies that will help you increase your customer conversion rates:

When someone subscribes to your email list, always send them a welcome message. Introduce yourself, your products, your services, and thank them for allowing you access to their contact information. Include links or resources that are helpful like an informational document or a promo code (if applicable). Let the person know they will not be getting any spam emails from you.

Craft a custom message mentioning your customer by name, incorporating what you know about them. Include a personalised message from the CEO or have other products recommended that are relevant to their needs.

It's no secret that customers love feeling appreciated, so it’s a good idea to offer them some sort of loyalty program. It can be very easy for you to automate your business with an automated email reward system by sending one each time after their purchase. The more value you make them feel within the transaction, the higher the chance they will return to use your services again!

Remembering the special days in your customers’ lives is an excellent way to make them feel good while simultaneously reminding them of your existence. You can use this as an opportunity for promotions or offers, but remember not to sell too hard. One great option is setting up automatic emails on their birthday, anniversary day, or even a holiday, complete with promo codes they will love using at checkout.

Marketing automation is the future of digital marketing, and it’s never been easier to get started. Automation will help you create more personalised customer communication, resulting in a better overall customer experience. It can also make data collection less time consuming for your team so that everyone has more time to focus on other tasks like improving customer retention efforts or creating new strategies for acquiring new leads.