Marketing automation 101
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Marketing automation 101

by Harri Alatalo

What is marketing automation?

Marketing Automation is about automating marketing actions through software.

Repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, and other website actions have already been automated by many marketing departments. The technology of marketing automation is a great way to make these tasks more simple.

Since the advent of social media, it has been virtually impossible for marketers to be constantly productive to providing services for over 200 networks and billions of users worldwide. Things have simply spiraled out of control.

It’s a full-time job that takes time and energy trying to maintain one social network.

How do you keep up with your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media networks, all at once?

The answer to curbing and solving this global issue is “Marketing Automation”!

In this post we’ll show you what marketing automation is. You will also get to know how to get it started and grow your followership, traffic and leads on autopilot.

The first step to take right now is to look at what marketing automation really means.

Definition of marketing automation

Some say marketing automation is same as tactics, others speak of marketing automation software, while some more call it a subset of customer relationship management.

We keep it simple. Looking at the term “Marketing Automation”, you must have guessed what it means: you automate your marketing.

Automation requires technology and that is a key part of the process.

Therefore, in all simplicity, here’s how we can define marketing automation:

Marketing automation is the process of using software and technology to optimize, automate and measure repetitive online marketing tasks.

A very simple definition if you ask us. A task that occurs and reoccurs should alert you that there is a way to automate it.

This will allow optimization of tasks done and also create a way to measure the performance of the task continuously.

Marketing automation has a single and unique goal: make you a better marketer, by allowing you spend more time on important tasks.

Marketing automation overview

Three big areas of online marketing can be automated to a certain extent.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is the first. Events can be triggered when you use software to automatically have certain emails sent through opting for a sign-up form. One way to automate your mails is through delivery, distribution is another.

Your email list can also be segmented automatically depending on who opted in and from where. Finally, another great way to automate sales with email is through autoresponders.

Useful links:

Social Media

Secondly, there’s social media. Currently, there are hundreds of third-party software tools that allow you to automate distributing across other social media platforms. Your social media growth can also be automated by automatically engaging with followers and leads.

Check these posts for more information about social media automation:

Landing pages

Landing pages is the third big sector of automation. Once, it took really long time to code them manually through HTML and CSS. It is different now as you can use templates and copy the same designs over and over again.

The Copy of your landing pages to some extent can be automated with the help of A/B testing.

If you want to learn more about automating landing pages, check these useful resources:

The Dos and Don’ts of Marketing Automation

We have completed and have also given a detailed explanation of what marketing automation is. We want to give you a few tips to help guide you as you think about implementing a new platform into your process. We will outline what you should and should not be doing with your marketing automation.

DON’T just automate your current process without revisiting your goals

Since marketing automation makes lives easier for marketers, the first step to take when you integrate this into your strategy is to automate everything you already do. Even though it looks easy and is the right thing to do, revisit your goals before you get started.

The above is stated so as to prevent us allowing marketing automation lead us into executing strategies that doesn’t make sense to our customers or prospects. We don’t want to return to the ways of not listening to our customers’ needs or what they are asking of us.

DO integrate marketing automation with your inbound marketing strategy

Providing valuable content that aligns with your customer’s needs and interests is known as inbound. You shouldn’t change this when you start using marketing automation. Instead, this should enhance communication that will lead to providing contents needed and at the exact time it is needed.

DON’T just broadcast or blast general messages

General and broad messages tend to get marked as spam or deleted when it is not relevant. Avoid this when using marketing automation.

DO send highly-targeted and specific content to a narrowed audience

Always provide content that people are looking for. This can be achieved when you put yourself in the customer’s shoes. It doesn’t “taste nice in the mouth” when after downloading and reading a content related to what you asked for and loving it, you suddenly get another email that is totally unrelated and of a different topic from what you just read. You end up buy from another company that sets a chain of the topic you are interested in. With marketing automation, you can do exactly this.

DON’T forget your customers

It is sheer hard work to sell new business and close contracts. This has pushed companies into focusing on generating new revenue thereby forgetting their old customers. This group of people already have an affinity to what the company is selling and most likely want to buy more.

DO keep your current customers happy and returning for more by setting up customer engagement campaigns

It isn’t about the money but this remains the truth: it’s much easier to sell to someone that has purchased from you before. Keeping your customers engaged with content marketing is an essential piece of growing your company. Make sure you keep Building and nurturing these relationships by sending segmented contents specific for your customers that will educate and encourage them to keep coming back to your company for tough leadership and expertise.

Conclusion

Once your traffic passes a certain point, it is almost impossible to talk to all your customers personally. Accept this as the truth.

Marketing automation used in an ethical and good way enables you to build great relationships that you can continue in person later, and provide value to more people.

Don’t abuse this by sending spam emails. Your customer will see through this scam, right away.

Let your customers follow a constant stream of value by using this marketing automation guide on what you don’t have time for.

The single, pressing question is this: what’s the first thing you will automate?

Let us know in the comments below.

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“Marketing automation 101” is an article in our “Advanced techniques” series.