When it comes to running a business, the more tools we can find to make our lives easier, the better. Marketing automation is most certainly one of those tools. Not only can it free up precious time and resources but it can also provide a rich, detailed overview of the behaviour of your customers.
Studies show that 80% of marketing automation users experience more leads, with 77% reporting a significant increase in engagement. It also revealed that 91% of people who use a marketing automation service claim that it’s “very important” to the overall success of their online marketing activities.
In a recent interview with Amy Birch, we learn all about the benefits of marketing automation. Amy is the Operations Manager at one of the UK’s leading email marketing automation services, Wired Plus. Holiday over five years of experience in the business, she shares a few nuggets of knowledge on how marketing automation can significantly improve your business.
Contents
Firstly, What Is Marketing Automation?
In a nutshell, marketing automation enables companies to streamline, automate, and measure marketing activities quickly and efficiently. It allows businesses to generate more leads, save time on carrying out repetitive tasks and personalise marketing campaigns to individual customers.
Here’s what Amy had to share with us.
Q: What companies would benefit from marketing automation?
A: “A huge range of companies could benefit from some level of automation. It’s really tricky to pinpoint any specific types as it really is so wide. We encourage clients to think of their whole sales and marketing funnel and somewhere along the way there is a task someone begrudges. Data is siloed, tracking is lost, customer experience could be improved – it’s these parts of the funnel where we suggest automation is added.”
Q: Any predicted future trends?
A: “It’s only going to get more prevalent and more advanced as time goes on! We’ve all come to know and love the ‘Amazon’ level of automation and more companies will be striving to follow suit.”
Q: How has Covid affected marketing automation?
A: From an email perspective, the main impact I’ve found so far, is the behaviour of our contacts and the people we email on a regular basis. Historically we knew industry-related times and days when contacts would most likely engage with emails and what that engagement looked like. Now with people WFH, consumer shopping habits changing so frequently and different markets reacting so differently, as marketers, we’re relearning some of that psychology behind the emails.”
What Are The Benefits of Marketing Automation?
With everything in mind which Amy has revealed, we wanted to end on some key takeaways where marketing automation can help improve your business:
- Saves you time. Most marketing automation platforms allow you to design email campaigns, landing pages, and social campaigns in minutes freeing up busy schedules so that you can focus on more strategic work while the software does the rest!
- Personalise your content. Tailoring your content to individuals builds stronger relationships with your customers because it makes them feel valued. You can personalise your content based on your customers’ shopping habits and browsing history which generates higher conversion rates.
- Generate more leads. Automated marketing tools allow you to pinpoint the people who engage with your brand the most, helping you to automatically target leads with email campaigns that can encourage customers to make a purchase.
