Email marketing was yesterday. Is marketing automation the future?

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Is Marketing Automation the Future of Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a tried and tested method of informing existing contacts about new offers and regularly drawing attention to oneself, but it is no longer enough. A comprehensive marketing strategy also includes maintaining social media channels, lead management, content marketing, SEO, analytics or the Conversion optimization. With the right tools, you can do the related tasks efficiently and well.

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What Marketing Automation Can Do

Marketing Automation is a platform in which the existing communication channels - such as e-mails and social media - are combined with controlling and Customer Relationship ManagementCRM for short, can be linked with each other. Even multi-stage campaigns can be planned, controlled and finally evaluated via individually planned workflows. Marketing automation makes classic email marketing much simpler, more efficient and more cost-effective.

The benefits of marketing automation for email marketing

  • Campaigns can be structured in a targeted manner and planned flexibly.
  • Campaigns that have already been successful can be easily modified and adapted to the new circumstances.
  • If campaigns are planned automatically, time and valuable resources are saved.
  • All marketing activities can be meaningfully coordinated and harmonized.
  • The success of the campaign is easy to see at a glance.

There are more and more channels

While there used to be fairly manageable marketing channels in the form of e-mail marketing, print, TV and radio advertising, today's options are extraordinarily diverse. Social networks are playing an increasingly important role, as are the Search Engine Optimization (SEO), content marketing, B2B portals that vary depending on the industry, and App Store Optimization (ASO). This presents small and medium-sized companies in particular with the challenge of coordinating all these areas well with one another.

Marketing automation therefore increases the efficiency of the entire marketing process:

They are automated, scaled and their effectiveness can be measured precisely. They can be used to make not only the processes in classic email marketing more efficient, but also all areas that need to be taken into account by marketing in the digital age.

These include, for example, forms on the web, landing pages, content marketing, the management of entire campaigns, the generation of new leads, the integration of the CRM, social marketing and the analysis of the measures.

Marketing Automation Journey
Workflow in SALESmanago

Choose the right system

While the large companies use their capacities and develop their own systems, these are lacking especially in smaller and medium-sized companies. For these, the platforms on the web are made for them, where they decide which modules they need and adapt them to their own personal requirements.

When it comes to selecting the right marketing automation system for a particular company, the following questions should be answered in advance:

  • How much budget is available for marketing?
  • Which channels should be used for communication?
  • Is the company located at a single site? Or do teams at different locations need to work together, communicate and coordinate accordingly?

Only when it is known exactly what the marketing automation system in question is supposed to do can the right provider be found out. The systems are suitable for companies that operate in the B2C area always want to attract new customers, but also for companies that are in the B2B area are on the way.

In order for sales and marketing to efficiently pursue the same goals, they should not only work together excellently, but also be involved in the respective campaigns accordingly. For a smooth process and good coordination, the data in the company should be consistent even if several branches are maintained.

The most famous classic Email marketing systems are:

Compared to full-fledged marketing automation solutions, they have only a more limited range of functions.

How can marketing automation systems be used?

With marketing automation, of course, the Email marketing automated and optimized. But that's by no means all: Of course, the appropriate landing pages can be set up or the website is adjusted to the campaign currently running. Scoring and targeting are complex, but offer a good overview of the Conversion rate, the leads and sales achieved.

While online sales and marketing are often coordinated much more effectively in the B2C sector, in the B2B area for the effectiveness of marketing automation, the collaboration of marketing and sales is essential.

How the Email marketing module from SALESmanago works we show you in the following video:

To ensure success in the future

For better or worse, every company depends on its products or services being noticed and ultimately purchased by customers. The success of the company therefore depends on how many leads can be generated and how much revenue can be generated with them.

For the generation of leads is qualified content essential - Marketing Automation shows exactly which item in the Blog, which E-Book and which Whitepaper leads to traffic and thus to more leads. If the websites recorded by the company are Social media channels If the website is integrated into the Internet, the reach, clicks and activities achieved can also be tracked and measured precisely.

If sales and marketing work hand in hand and employees are professionally trained in the use of the marketing automation system, measurable success will not be long in coming.

By the way, modern marketing automation systems can also work with the existing CRM system can be linked: This allows customers to be addressed individually. Duplicate registrations are detected by a simple data comparison.

Marketing tailored to the customer achieves more attention

While a classic newsletter is regularly sent to recipients with the same content in each case, marketing automation enables e-mails to be sent that are tailored to the customer in each case.

For example, if the user has purchased a certain product, he or she will be made aware of possible accessories or other products. Is the Date of birth of the customer is known, he is pleased, for example, on his birthday about a congratulation or a Coupon.

If emails are sent based on such events, they are significantly more accepted and more likely to be read than any normal newsletter. Automation allows such emails to be scheduled efficiently. Once they are created, they are sent automatically as soon as the corresponding event has occurred.

Dynamic email
Individualized email by interests (C) CampaignMonitor

The workflow is automated

Marketing automation makes it possible to automate marketing business processes. This makes them more efficient, requiring less time and, above all, less money for the individual measures. While in the B2C area the focus is on addressing and retaining customers, as well as cross-selling and up-selling, in the B2B area companies concentrate on lead scoring and nurturing and lifecycle management.

But regardless of whether the individual company is involved in the B2C or B2B sector: What is essential is the ROI, the return on investment. The less capital that has to be invested in acquiring new customers and maintaining existing ones, the higher the profit for the company.

 

Leads should become customers

Even if the concrete figures for every industry and every sector look somewhat different: If a potential customer comes into contact with a company, on average only one-fifth of these leads actually become a buying and paying customer. The majority of leads, on the other hand, are not yet ready to buy when they first make contact.

This is where the Lead Nurturing a longer and, above all, disciplined process through which leads become customers. Marketing automation helps to increase sales in a targeted manner and at the same time reduce the cost of each lead. But the transformation from lead to customer is far from the end of marketing's work. In most industries, maintaining and deepening customer relationships counts even more than acquiring a new customer.

With the sale of accessories (Up-selling), the customer can be bound to the company and the profit can be increased, but also with the sale of other products of the company (Cross-selling).

However, successful customer care involves much more than sending out a newsletter at certain intervals. What matters here is how good the knowledge is about each individual customer. Only then can their position in the buying cycle be precisely determined and marketing adapted to customer behavior.

Customers want to be wooed: They gather information at their own personal speed. If they are approached at the moment when they want more information or want to buy the product, they do not abort the purchase process.

Marketing automation helps to develop the right marketing strategy for different customers.

Conclusion

Companies that want to survive in the daily battle for customers' attention use marketing. In doing so, the acquisition of new customers in particular often requires more effort than the care of existing customers. All together, of course, it takes a lot of work. This is also true when a Marketing Automation System is set up and all data is linked together.

For this is subsequently not only the Email marketing automated, but customers can be addressed in a very targeted manner. Exactly at the time when they are interested and grateful for further information.

If a marketing automation system is successfully implemented in the company, the following effort is reduced, as this is automated by the system. Customer behavior can be digitally recorded and evaluated, and the approach can be individualized accordingly.

With marketing automation, email marketing in particular leads to a much higher ROI, as these emails can answer the customer's questions much better. Try it out for yourself and take advantage of the many possibilities for your company. Try # 1 All in One Marketing Automation from SALESmanago for free now!

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