What is marketing automation, where do I start, what do I need for it and what does it do for my company? We will answer these questions and help you understand this new thing and even use it with you.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation is defined by the use of software to automate processes in marketing, streamline them and – how could it be otherwise – optimize them. And in the marketing processes that this software automates, we are talking about interactions with contacts: Leads, customers and other stakeholders.
A simple example of marketing automation is a newsletter. But there’s much more: filtering target audiences for search platforms (Google) and social media, identifying website visitors, delivering dynamic content on the website or in emails – and taking the next step automatically.
In terms of the process, there are Campaignbehind it that run automatically. And this happens whenever a contact performs an action, e.g. starts a download. These are triggers that then trigger an automatic response via a Campaign – the next step, in other words. This can be a message, an email, a pop-up, a specific call-to-action on the blog, etc.
The important terms related to Marketing Automation are:
- Marketing funnels, the strategy behind marketing automation
- Trigger campaigns, the tactics to implement the strategy
Done right, the entire marketing or sales funnel is digitally accompanied, measured and optimized – end to end. And this is only possible with software. It all started with CRM tools, where customer data and sales touchpoints were stored. Thanks to digitization, manual, repetitive tasks are constantly decreasing and machines take care of providing information at the right time – marketing automation is therefore also highly scalable.
What can you do with marketing automation?
With marketing automation, the entire marketing funnel is mapped digitally. From the first contact to the purchase and beyond. Marketing Automation identifies the contacts, segments them, evaluates them for fit with the company or offer, and provides the appropriate content accordingly.
Lead generation in particular, the automatic collection and qualification of leads, is a big topic here. Companies present themselves online via a website in order to attract the attention of potential customers. If these people end up on the site… then what? This is exactly when marketing automation unleashes its full power: depending on what information the website visitor:s are looking at, they receive targeted suggestions for the next step. They can enter their contact details and will be recorded as a lead. The interactions are tracked and the information is used to make suitable offers. Marketing automation and AI (artificial intelligence) are increasingly being combined to further automate and optimize work steps.
Important terms can be found in our FAQ.
- Lead generation, the collection of leads
- Lead qualification with lead scoring, the evaluation of leads
- Segmentation, the grouping of leads
…and all this in order to direct the contacts to the right Campaign in each case and to address them in a way that suits them and their interests. You can read about what this looks like in our customer case.
Another example of marketing automation for services would be this: Franziska is looking for financial advice because she wants to optimize her investments and taxes. She Googles and finds tips on a financial advice blog. The blog takes her to a quick check, where she gets a first impression for her tax-saving potential. It makes various statements about its plants, these are stored and evaluated. She gets a first evaluation with the offer to deepen the whole thing. Franziska thinks about it for a moment, looks at more information on the website of the financial consultancy before she decides. The software recognizes Franziska’s interest and sends her suitable offers: another investment check with a focus on sustainability, a few tips on saving taxes. And finally, a package that is made just the way it fits Franziska. Franziska feels understood and buys a consulting package. She is guided through the onboarding process and finally recorded as a customer.
How do you benefit from marketing automation?
Especially on digital channels, where we usually receive a flood of information, marketing automation is indispensable. This is the only way to stand out at all through relevance and timing. To do this, you need a system with which you can align the processes in a customer-oriented way. Automation tools give you the ability to target content based on your audience. This saves time and is also more effective.
Become more effective with marketing automation
Generate more leads
The classic and definitely one of the most frequently mentioned reasons: Generate more leads. Because with marketing automation, we can set up sales funnels that allow us to get a steady stream of qualified leads.
Stay Top of Mind
Some decisions take longer than others. So there are sales cycles of different lengths. And the longer these last, the more difficult it is to be present at the decisive moment during contact.
Identify relevant leads
Not all contacts in a funnel are equally interested in our products. Certain ones may want to “look first.” Others, however, are nearing completion and would only have a few more questions that they would like to clarify in person right now. Marketing automation helps to identify and filter them out, and thus to use the resources correctly.
More sales with cross-selling and upselling
Often, companies already have large amounts of contact data. Using them properly is the challenge. With the right tool, we segment the contacts and then address them with the messages that are relevant to them. Here is an example of a customer who has achieved 20% more sales thanks to marketing automation.
“With Aivie’s Marketing Automation solution, I’ve seen a 20% increase in sales.”
Corinne Brecher, Investique
Increase efficiency with marketing automation
Marketing automation is particularly efficient when it comes to delivering content. From newsletters to personalized Campaignand dynamic content.
And likewise, marketing automation brings a massive gain in efficiency when it comes to mapping recurring interaction processes. This means interactions such as: Reminders, follow-ups or even registration confirmations and the like. These automated Campaignrelieve the marketing team enormously. Here are two examples:
Customer:inside onboarding
It doesn’t always have to be about leads. Marketing automation can also be wonderfully used to explain a complicated product in the initial phase or generally to encourage contacts to use a product or service. This way you can also automate onboarding.
Anticipate customer requests
Another exciting area is in Customer Success. Marketing Automation helps to identify in which area a customer has a problem and allows us to proactively send information to anticipate a support request.
Use marketing automation in the company
As a business of any size, even a sole proprietor, you can generate a lot of value with marketing automation. These are the biggest gamechangers for your business.
More efficient and effective sales team
Generating new leads is expensive and achieving a deal from them is time-consuming. If you’re one of those businesses that churn leads more often than you’d like to admit, you’ll benefit from marketing automation.
With a smart strategy, you can not only generate new leads with lead magnets and keep existing leads warm, you can also give your sales team valuable information about what a potential lead is interested in. Thanks to lead scoring, you automatically assess how much value a lead has for your company and can use this knowledge to approach the lead and thus automate the sales process.
Efficiency and effectiveness between the sales and marketing teams also improves thanks to process optimization, because sales and marketing work better together.
Send individualized newsletters automatically
If you are already sending newsletters, then send the same newsletter to the whole existing list. Unfortunately, you then have to address every contact with the same newsletter, with the risk that contacts not addressed will lose interest. With marketing automation, you can send automatically tailored and personalized newsletters based on the interaction with your company, which will also be interesting for each individual. Bonus with this: Fewer unsubscribers.
Send and evaluate surveys automatically
Surveys provide you with important information from your customers, partners, suppliers or even employees and are part of a healthy marketing mix. However, with conventional survey tools, you don’t have the control or automation and have to manually check if person X has already completed the survey or not, which is really a lot of work if you have a large contact list. If you create the survey with Marketing Automation, you can automate the entire process all around. It automatically looks to see who has already submitted the survey or not and responds accordingly with automatic contact. Kick off once and then worry about other things.
Faster go-to-market and easy to scale
With marketing automation, you can not only quickly enter new markets or launch new products, but thanks to automation, scaling them is no longer a problem.
How to start with Marketing Automation
In any case, a good start is to look into this article. We will give you the most important so that you know exactly what you still need.
Then it depends on what previous experience you have with online marketing. If you are a real expert, you first need to evaluate your marketing automation tool, familiarize yourself with it and get started. But if you’re not so sure or don’t really have anything to do with marketing, then read on to find out how to get started with marketing automation, or simply read on here.
What does it all take for marketing automation?
To really get started with marketing automation, the first thing you need to know is who your customers are and what your offering is. Then you need a marketing funnel, a marketing automation tool, a CRM and an optimized website.
Know who your customers are and optimize your offer
In order to make personalized communication, you need to understand the needs of your customers.
To do this, some basic requirements for customer-centric companies must be met:
- You know how your customers move along the customer journey
- All areas of the company must be clearly focused on customers
- The products and services must be positioned along the customer journey
A smart sales tunnel
Marketing in general does not work without a sales funnel, and marketing automation does not work without one either. We recommend that you take a suitable whiteboard to record the process of your potential customers. This will help you tremendously in creating a Campaignlater.
A tool for marketing automation
Without the right tools, even an artist cannot create a work of art. The marketing automation tool is your tool and must be chosen well. Not every tool is right for every company and the choice is huge. We know the process of evaluation all too well and have put together a decision matrix for you within this framework. With this benefit analysis, you will be able to quickly evaluate your ideal marketing automation tool. Once you have the right tool, you can start building your Campaign.
A CRM that is compatible with your marketing automation tool
If you’re generating leads, you need a strong CRM to keep your customer data clean and up-to-date. After all, your acquisition is only as strong as your lead list. If you’re getting started with marketing automation, you probably already have a CRM that’s right for you. Now you need to connect this CRM to your marketing automation tool and you can track the behavior of your website visitors right in the CRM as well.
If you’re just wondering why you’d even want that: When your tool syncs with your CRM, you’ll have more complete data on your customers. Thanks to the connection you know, for example, which customer is interested in which of your products or services and which he already has at a glance. This will help you or your team sell directly or indirectly through automated emails. Clean data in online marketing is essential.
A website optimized for sales
I’m sure you’ll already have a website. But ask yourself if it is also optimized for selling your products and services. If you’re thinking about doing marketing automation, now is the time to consider whether your website is ready for it. Could your online presence be a glorified business card or does it have all the elements to automatically generate a lead? A good website has at least the following elements:
- A good user experience (UX) with meaningful CTAs (call to actions)
- Landing pages for your marketing campaigns (advertising on the Internet, for example)
- Forms so that you can contact easily and quickly
- Questionnaires and surveys to help your visitors engage with your business
If your website doesn’t have all of that yet, don’t worry, with the right marketing automation tool you’ll be able to create landing pages, forms and questionnaires without any problems and CTAs are generally easy to add.
Do marketing automation yourself or use an agency?
In general, if you have a lot of time, it’s best to do it yourself. If you don’t have time, then the agency will be the right choice.
But if we are honest, it is a typical question that must be answered with “it depends”. Marketing Automation is a very big field and you will benefit the most from it if you know all the connections. We’re talking social media, SEO, lead magnets, CRO, analytics, UTM tags, Campaign, newsletters, customer behavior and the list goes on and on. If you’re focused on your business, you can’t even do all of it yourself because it’s just too much. Therefore, make a healthy mix between doing it yourself and using an agency. It is important that the mix is healthy for your company.
We focus a lot on the right mix and therefore have a very flexible offer for you. You can get started on your own with Aivie (our own marketing automation tool) and if you need selective help, we’re here for you. With our Marketing Automation Services, we offer you workshops, starter packages and much more.
All beginnings are easy.
Register now for our free Aivie webinar.
Whether you are a marketing manager, founder, or simply curious: Our 30 min webinar is exactly for those of you, wanting to learn more about marketing automation with Aivie.
