Ten reasons why marketing automation is right for you

The expectations and behaviour of customers, companies and society as a whole are changing faster and more rapidly than ever before. Marketers are under extreme pressure to rethink their organisational models and embrace new technologies to create differentiated customer interactions optimised for digital channels. In this context, the use of innovative marketing automation plays a decisive role for successful customer-oriented marketing.

In addition to choosing the appropriate software tool, various factors determine the success of digital marketing. To provide you with an overview of these, we will share the ten most decisive reasons.

1. Make your marketing more efficient

The expectations customers have in marketing communication today have changed considerably. They want to be treated as an individual and be served suitable customer experiences on various channels, adapted to their respective needs. The customer journey is no longer linear, but is instead driven by individual actions or reactions. For this purpose, different data must be linked, interpreted and suitable marketing actions derived from it – despite limited resources and marketing budgets.

Automating the complex customer journey through appropriate processes and software tools plays a key role in meeting future customer needs given these limitations.

This has an impact on the respective organisation. Efficient marketing is only possible if organisational silos are broken down and marketing competencies are bundled. Targeted cooperation and coordination of all marketing channels in combination with the appropriate software tools – for collaboration and orchestration of the channels – should be the objective in order to increase the efficiency of your own marketing in the future.

2. Marketing and sales must grow together

Marketing automation depends on the goals of marketing and sales to come together, of course while taking into account the tasks of the respective team. Marketing takes care of lead generation and then passes it on to sales. It must be clearly defined at what precise point this happens. The cooperation of marketing and sales should also work in reactivating existing customers or in saying goodbye to them. Collaboration is made much easier through automated processes, as this provides both teams with a constant overview of which stage a customer is currently at and which steps will be necessary next.

3. Save valuable time for important tasks

Marketing automation ensures that time-consuming routine tasks virtually take care of themselves. Manual uploading and downloading of Excel files between different systems is just one example here. The time saved can be put to better use in creative processes and for developing new ideas. Automation leaves more time for sales to cultivate customer relationships.

4. Put a smile on the face of your sales staff as you generate more and more high-quality leads

An important factor in marketing automation is better collaboration between marketing and sales. By doing so, you can bring a smile to the face of your marketing sales force. You are asking yourself how? Through marketing automation! Because this gives you the opportunity to generate more high-quality leads for your sales team. Targeted nurturing measures help you to get to know potential customers better, to identify suitable leads and to qualify them for sales.

Leads and customers receive appropriate and targeted messages instead of always presenting the same content to a large target group. Based on the behaviour of the visitor to the website, the right content is displayed at the right time from the very start. This will satisfy your customers and serves your goal of targeted communication. At the end of the day, this is how a potential customer becomes a high-quality lead. Automated lead management keeps you in constant touch with your leads.

This means that the sales department will no longer receive unknown contacts that it has to painstakingly qualify itself, but leads that have already been pre-qualified. This generates a greater sales potential and puts another smile on every sales representative’s face. Because the latter will no longer have to waste time with unqualified leads.

The decreasing costs per highly qualified lead will go a long way towards making that smile perfect. The leads are already pre-qualified thanks to your marketing activities, so the sales staff know what each customer’s interests are right when they obtain the lead from marketing. This not only saves the sales department time, but it also puts you in a position to immediately offer your customers what they want with very little effort.

5. Only satisfied customers are good customers: Boost customer satisfaction

Marketing automation basically generates a win-win situation: It offers your customers an individualised customer experience on your website. The trust you build will give you valuable information about your customers. In this way, you will gradually learn more about each customer. This information flows into the individual customer profile and can be used specifically to target suitable offers, which in turn lead to a more personal approach. This has a positive effect on satisfaction and increases the willingness to make a purchase.

Marketing automation should not end there, however, but should also be used in a service context – for example, when answering questions and dealing with customer complaints. Provide your customers with personal chat bots that help them select and clarify possible questions about the respective products or services. You should also offer them the option to address and resolve complaints. Use appropriate measures to learn how satisfied they are. Use the processes of marketing automation to lend your customers an open ear at the same time.

6. Communicate with your contacts – in real time

Today’s customers want to be understood and receive appropriate, highly individualised messages on the right channel at the right time. Real-time communication plays a crucial role in making this happen. This requires a real-time capable communication channel, such as an app. Real-time communication is triggered by a reaction or action on the part of a consumer.

In addition to the real-time channel, you must know your (potential) customers and deduce their needs in order to be able to derive suitable offers based on this.

On the one hand, this requires as much information as possible (via tracking & networking of sources) and, if necessary, also AI (artificial intelligence / predictive marketing) to interpret and forecast certain interests. On the other hand, automated processes (data exchange, triggers, campaigns) are naturally also key requirements of real-time marketing.

7. Use a single tool, not 100 different ones

As mentioned before, marketing automation ensures that time-consuming routine tasks virtually take care of themselves. Manual uploading and downloading of Excel files between different systems is just one example here. You can then use the time saved to focus on creative processes and generating new ideas.

Quite often a whole slew of different solutions is used to plan, execute and control campaigns. The market for solutions is diverse and characterised by many new ideas as well as niche and specialised solutions. And the number of solutions is growing constantly. Each of these solutions means additional integration and process effort to incorporate them into the comprehensive campaign management landscape.

Marketing automation platforms deliver centralised solutions that are particularly suitable as an entry-level system for digital marketing as they provide customers with a starting point into this complex topic.

8. Make your campaign success measurable

In the context of marketing automation, the definition and use of success metrics represents a key mechanism for learning from the implemented campaign measures and drawing appropriate conclusions for future campaigns. The key figures should always be used for optimisation. Even a failed campaign holds highly valuable information for the next campaign.

Especially at the onset of data-driven marketing, there is still little information about each individual customer due to the lack of data. Therefore, it is not yet possible to assess how they will react to different campaign approaches. It is therefore important to collect the necessary data and understand how customers will respond. The key performance indicators provide the appropriate clues for this.

9. Always address them personally

Marketing automation allows you to better understand the tastes and preferences of your customers or potential leads through targeted marketing and to tailor communications accordingly. You can do so by offering personal incentives, i.e., suitable content, offers or products. This is because only through added value can you obtain information about the needs and wishes of your potential leads.

Individualised interaction builds trust and gives each customer the feeling of being noticed, of mattering. And that’s exactly what you achieve by taking an individual approach at selected points in the customer journey. If you take the right measures, you can collect subtle yet highly valuable information about your customers.

10. Be one step ahead of the competition!

Who doesn’t want to be one step ahead of their competitors? Marketing automation makes this possible. Today’s potential customers have high expectations, and the market is often characterised by a high degree of competitiveness. Meet their expectations with the help of marketing automation. Only very few companies are using data-driven automation of their marketing processes at this point. So create an exceptional customer experience that is personalised to their needs, and stay ahead of the competition.

Marketing automation also provides the foundation for your digital transformation. For many, this is an opportunity to adapt to market dynamics and changing customer behaviour in time and thus prevent losing them to the competition.

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