Marketing Automation: Building and making your business known online

For a company it is essential to build a relationship of trust with all potential customers, identifying the target audience, offering them interesting information, and personalized offers that can intrigue them and lead them to visit their web page again.

In order to achieve these objectives, it is essential to identify a well-defined communication and marketing strategy and carry out repetitive activities aimed at acquiring and retaining the customer. The Marketing Automation is nothing but a technology that, through the use of specific software to organize, automate and streamline the workflows of all these marketing activities.

According to the international survey “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation”, carried out by Liana Technologies, Marketing Automation was able to make important progress in commercial activity such as improving message targeting, developing customer experience, the increase in quality and number of leads and the immense growth of conversions.

Marketing Automation therefore has the objective of building and developing lasting relationships between companies and their potential reference customers through planned and mechanized communications aimed at customer loyalty.

How does marketing automation work?

Marketing Automation has two fundamental components that distinguish each technical functionality

Automation

It allows the creation of communication campaigns, disseminated through multiple channels such as e-mails, text messages, web pages, social networks or e-commerce, with personalized themes for well-defined users. The contents can be managed automatically and digitally without the need for continuous intervention by marketing operators.

Measurement

It allows, through digital tools, to monitor the entire performance of each campaign by constantly measuring all the data necessary for business development.

Marketing automation: Workflow as a tool for business growth

The corporate marketing strategies have as their basic purpose customer retention: once the “lead” is generated, that is the potential customer concerned, it is essential to manage the relationship with the customer in an optimal manner to get to the conversion and then to the purchase phase.

In order to keep the relationship with the customer active and to optimize communication, Marketing Automation is essential, in particular Workflow, which is the automated workflow that starts from the moment the first contact, is generated and follows the customer guiding him to the purchase and in subsequent purchases. Transforming it from any user to a loyal customer.

The Workflow acts periodically and in an automated way following the first contact with the customer by sending welcome messages, special offers, newsletters that invite him to take a specific action, such as the recovery of the shopping cart abandoned in ecommerce . This tool is not only essential for communicating with loyal or potential customers, but it is also useful as an internal communication tool for the company to correlate the activities of the different marketing and sales departments.

The 8 most important features of marketing automation

Marketing Automation software has several features, the most important being:

1. The management of email marketing activities;
2. Automatic replies to emails;
3. Newsletter creation and planning;
4. The scheduling of personalized mailings based on user searches;
5. Optimization of Landing Page and registration forms;
6. Performing a complete reporting activity;
7. The insertion of contacts in the corporate CRM;
8. The observation and analysis of user behavior on social networks, a useful tool for audience segmentation and personalization of offers.

With Marketing Automation software it is therefore possible to coordinate all these activities to allow marketers to have an overall picture of the communication strategies implemented by each company department and therefore to optimize production efficiency and profit growth.

In very simple words, Marketing Automation allows you to reach the correct target audience, with a personalized message planned, at the best time for the customer’s needs.

Why can marketing automation help a company?

The automation of marketing activities typical of Marketing Automation can be used significantly for four important business macro processes:

1) Lead Generation, or the process of creating lists of potential customers through actions aimed at a specific target identified on the basis of previous analyzes. In this case, the automation is very useful for monitoring the development related to the collection of contacts and above all to identify the perfect moment to perform an action on the market.

2) Lead Nurturing, a moment of care and retention of potential customers. In this specific process, the Marketing Automation software becomes indispensable for sending highly personalized information and offers to different customers and then guiding them towards the final purchase.

3) Lead Scoring, selection phase of potential customers contacts and attribution of a score to each of them in order to identify the best circumstance for a commercial proposal. The automation of this process will allow the software itself to establish the moment of the purchase proposal on the basis of the analyzes carried out with regard to customer behavior.

5 strengths of marketing automation

1. Marketing Automation allows you to have all the customer data available and therefore to plan and create more specific and attractive offers;
2. The technological and digital management of marketing campaigns involves the greater effectiveness of each communication strategy chosen by the company;
3. The automated software allows to speed up and greatly simplify the sales process;
4. Observing the behavior of users on social networks favors the acquisition of new followers;
5. Marketing Automation simplifies and coordinates, through automation, all business processes and activities aimed at potential customers.

Marketing Automation: 10 rules before starting

When you intend to proceed with the purchase of a Marketing Automation software, it is essential to keep in mind 10 rules to ensure that you do not invest your resources unnecessarily …

1. Preemptively implement brand positioning strategies to establish a valid online presence: by creating a website optimized for search engines and producing qualified content, customers can find the company page more easily;
2. Try to capture the attention of potential customers with appropriate Content Marketing strategies and with the implementation of Search Engine Optimization techniques;
3. To intrigue potential customers not only by designing a simple and visually intuitive site, but also a blog to encourage customer-company communication;
4. Create Landing Pages with effective Call To Action and well-structured forms to collect potential customer contacts;
5. Optimally manage your presence on social networks to make yourself known to as many potential customers as possible;
6. Monitor your online presence through tools such as Analytics to have continuous feedback on the strategies applied;
7. Avoid sending emails continuously, risking to annoy customers: email marketing if used incorrectly can lead to the loss of a large number of contacts;
8. Correctly segment the mailing list on the basis of previous customer searches and purchases, avoiding to offer the same offers without distinction;
9. Treat messages directed at potential or loyal customers so that they are personalized and engaging;
10. Choose the right time to communicate with the customer without hastening the path of loyalty or purchase.