Why you need marketing automation
Marketing automation solutions are designed to support marketing professionals as they create, run and evaluate campaigns. It's important to remember that automation programs are designed to support a company's marketing staff, not replace it. With automation marketing professionals free up time to focus on more productive tasks. Instead of wading through confusing website search data and trying to calculate conversion statistics from social media sites, marketing team members can instead focus on nurturing quality leads. Putting the focus back on actual interaction with potential clients can have major advantages where sales and revenue are concerned. Here are my top 5 reasons why you should consider marketing automation. Anything I may have missed?
1. Automation establishes core standards between sales and marketing.
Breakdowns between sales and marketing departments can lead to serious revenue losses, especially if a lack of communication is preventing qualified leads from moving through the sales funnel quickly. By establishing common standards and vocabulary, a marketing automation system helps these departments combine their strengths.
2. Automation helps direct clients through the sales funnel.
A marketing automation program is designed to move leads through the sales funnel by sending appropriate email communications to promising leads. The system uses the data it gleans about potential clients in order to provide a totally customized experience. Automation allows for proactive client management without a huge labor investment.
3. Automation offers total management of revenue performance.
Marketing automation programs are designed to look at the whole picture. They don't have the innate human tendency to focus more on some phases of a project than another. These programs are designed to help marketing pros think ahead and anticipate the lifecycle of a campaign. They're also designed to make understanding the relationship between marketing and revenue streams easier.
4. Automation allows for quick and accurate profiling of consumers and their behavior.
Evaluating the quality of leads can take over any marketing professional's life. Perhaps you don't even have time to really evaluate leads anymore. Marketing automation programs compile client data, look at online behavior and help identify the most promising leads. This is one way in which automation redirects labor hours towards a more essential function. In this case, marketers free up time to focus on upcoming campaigns while sales staff wastes less time with low-quality leads.
5. Automation provides measurable results at any point in a marketing campaign.
The success of a traditional marketing campaign can only be measured once the campaign is over. After all, it's hard to track leads, predict behavior and compile complex statistics while running a campaign. Automation programs provide for a minute-by-minute account of how potential clients are interacting with a campaign, which allows for timely campaign adjustments and increased campaign efficacy.