Marketing automation: what is it and what tasks does it solve?

Marketing automation: what is it and what tasks does it solve?

Marketing automation is the process of using software to automate marketing campaigns and activities throughout the entire customer journey: from initial customer interaction to post-purchase support.

Marketing automation helps to establish effective processes for each stage of the sales funnel based on data about a potential customer and their interaction with the company. Thus, marketers use marketing automation tools to solve the following tasks:

  • Building long-term relationships with customers. By helping your audience learn more about your products and company mission through regular, thoughtful messages, you can encourage and increase conversion rates;
  • Helps you follow up on potential sales. Emails sent to customers who browse your website, add products to their cart, or request a consultation can help you close a potential transaction;
  • Tracking the customer journey. With marketing automation, you can track the customer journey and see how long it takes on average for a customer to make a purchase, what information is required, and which marketing activities lead to the highest conversion rates;
  • Social media automation. With tools like Hootsuite and Buffer, you can set up posts to be published at specific times on social media. Automated posting saves time, helps your brand maintain consistency, and promotes a more analytical and deliberate approach to developing your brand’s social media presence;
  • Reporting automation. Report automation will save countless hours that a marketer spends preparing data visualizations and basic analysis. With tools like Google Analytics, Tableau, and Power BI, you can easily generate the reports you need in just a few minutes.

Useful statistics: according to research, marketers cite the following main reasons for implementing marketing automation: optimizing marketing and sales efforts (35%), improving customer experience (34%), minimizing manual tasks (30%), optimizing workflows (25%), and improving the quality of customer service (34%).

How does marketing automation work?

Marketing automation allows you to implement a digital marketing strategy without the need for routine processes. For example, you don’t have to manually send emails, push notifications, or set up specific campaigns from scratch every day. In addition, automation tools help you define your target audience, create relevant content, and predict customer behavior based on analytics data.

An automated marketing strategy will save time and resources, increase revenue and ROI, while you can focus on more important business tasks. Let’s look at the process of automated marketing using a specific example:

  • A user visits your website and downloads a brochure about a particular product or service;
  • The user’s contact information is automatically sent to your CRM. Here, you can find out more information about this customer (e.g., previous purchase history or previous experience with your company);
  • The user receives an email thanking them for downloading the brochure. The message in the email can be personalized based on the information you have reviewed in the CRM system;
  • Follow-up emails can be sent automatically based on the user’s previous actions, while adapting calls to action.

In this way, marketing automation provides the customer with personalized service and you with time savings and increased chances of conversion.