How does marketing automation work?

Marketing automation uses software to automate monotonous marketing work. Marketing departments can automate repetitive tasks such as email marketing, social media posting, and even ad campaigns – not just for the sake of efficiency, but also to provide a more personalized experience for their customers. The technology behind marketing automation makes these tasks faster and easier to do.

What can market automation do for your business?

When we look at the shared challenges faced by businesses, we know that generating leads and keeping customers engaged throughout their journey remain top of mind. Along with these goals, businesses face an explosion of data being collected, but struggle to put it to use.

Marketing automation software can help overcome these challenges by putting data to work by streamlining our workflows.

 

Most businesses consider marketing automation a middle-of-the-funnel tool, ideal for nurturing leads through automated email sequences. And while email marketing is a great use for marketing automation, this approach can lead to a disjointed experience for prospects and customers as they move from marketing to sales, to customer service.

Prospects are forced through an imaginary sales funnel with arbitrary touchpoints and irrelevant content. Instead of reacting to individual customer needs, businesses serve up the same playbook on repeat.

However, automated marketing strategies should be deployed across the customer lifecycle. When marketing automation is thoughtfully integrated, it creates a fertile ground for healthy, long-term relationships with your customers. When done well, marketing automation delivers three main benefits to your business: personalized workflows, streamlined processes, integrated data and analytics (HubSpot, 2022).

Ecommerce businesses of all sizes can benefit from the kind of software and platforms available today, which are made precisely with the needs of ecommerce businesses in mind. Here are some of the top benefits of marketing automation for ecommerce.

1. Save time for your team

Say goodbye to time-consuming, repetitive tasks and say hello to automated workflows that can save you time eventually. 43% of marketers implement marketing automation strategies with the primary goal of optimizing productivity

By automating certain marketing tasks, much less manual work is required to reach segmented audiences at the right time across multiple channels. In addition, marketing automation software collects and analyzes all your data and generates reports that allow you to identify areas to focus on and refine your strategy accordingly

2. Eliminates human error

Another benefit is that it reduces the risk of human error. Manual work can be tedious, which means more mistakes can happen. Even the most dedicated and conscientious marketer can sometimes make costly mistakes (such as sending an email to the wrong customer list). With automated tools configured properly, you can put ongoing email sends on autopilot and send them at the right time without adding extra work

3. Improves customer retention

Marketing automation tools help improve customer engagement by sending the right message at the right time based on customer behavior.

More than 80% of consumers believe personalization makes them more likely to make a purchase on a brand’s website. 48% spend more money with companies that offer a personalized experience. Those are serious numbers!

4. Marketing automation buys you time for optimization

The time you save with marketing automation gives you more time to focus on current and future campaigns. What does this mean for you? Now that your daily tasks are done and running on autopilot, you can afford to look at the “big picture” and focus on your overall strategy instead of getting bogged down in details

You can also take advantage of the advanced testing tools that marketing automation platforms offer. With these tools, you can test variations in real time, such as email subject lines, images, preview texts, and more, and optimize your campaigns by selecting only the best-performing variations (Karolina Petraskiene, 2020).

References

HubSpot. (2022). What is Marketing Automation? https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-automation-information

Petraskiene, K. (2020). A Guide to Ecommerce Marketing Automation for Online Merchants. https://www.shipbob.com/blog/ecommerce-marketing-automation/

Wishpond. (2016). What is Marketing Automation? https://youtu.be/G6c4-28FsAs