Aishwarya Pajankar
Marketo defines marketing automation as, “a category of technology that allows companies to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows, so they can increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster.”
Marketing automation encapsulates everything from email marketing, social media, analytics, lead generation to lead nurturing with the sole aim of increasing revenue while developing efficient workflows.
Marketing automation is used to mechanize monotonous and laborious marketing activities, while allowing marketers to focus on the tasks that help them scale their business.
By 2017, 67 percent of marketing leaders were already using some sort of marketing automation platform, according to Salesforce. That’s good news for those who believe that cold calls and handwritten notes have gone the way of the dinosaur. Many, however, are still on the other side of that extreme, believing technology is useless compared to a personalized touch.
Both sides of the battle are right and wrong. Building relationships should always be the main goal, but if you aren’t using the litany of sales automation tools available to reach that goal, then you’re cutting yourself off at the knees.
Automation vs. Personalization
According to Salesforce, the number of sales teams that adopt AI will likely grow by 139 percent by the year 2020. It’s undeniable that marketing automation is here to stay. Yet top-performing teams focus that investment on improving the customer experience more than anything else.
The problem is that we want AI to be the solution to everything and it simply isn’t. For integrated AI systems to work that well, they need even more data than the massive troves marketers already draw from. They would need security measures to block malicious access, which is extremely complicated for technology that’s designed to evolve.
Despite these shortcomings, companies still oversteer with their application of automated marketing techniques. Our inboxes have all been inundated with LinkedIn and other corporate messages — obvious displays of quantity over quality. However, we’ve also seen automation used simply for task efficiency, which is when the technology’s value truly shines.
Enterprise marketing involves the management and coordination of end-to-end internal processes in an enterprise. Enterprise marketing automation software helps integrate and streamline business activities across sales, marketing, operations, partners, and IT.There are multiple automation software out there that offer a rich set of features to enhance your marketing strategy. We zero in on some of the top features to consider when investing in an enterprise marketing automation system.
An automation software that can pull data from your existing tools such as the Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Customer Data Platform (CDP), Content Management System (CMS), analytics suite, etc. will help streamline your effort and improve the organization’s ability to collaborate.
Integration capabilities should be simple and require minimal staff training. API access to integrate with existing tools, third-party applications, or features that you may need in the future is a bonus.
Lead management is a fundamental feature of any marketing automation platform.
The past few years have brought rapid changes for marketers. Technology advancements are allowing for deeper customer insights and more targeted marketing campaigns. In fact,
the marketing technology landscape grew 27 percent in the last year alone. Companies are realizing how valuable marketing is to their bottom line and investing in technology and people to make this department a success.
In 2019, marketing will continue to play an important role in all aspects of the company, from recruitment to drive bottom-line growth. To be successful, marketers need to stay focused on what matters most to their organizations and ensure their KPIs are aligned with the overall company goals.
And, while the marketing landscape will continue to evolve, there are some trends that will be important to watch in 2019.
B2B Marketers Won’t Have to Fight to Prove Their Worth
In the past, B2B marketing was often viewed as a supportive department, but not necessarily revenue generating. The marketing team provided support for the organization’s overall goals but wasn’t credited with having a direct impact on the company’s bottom line. Thankfully, this is no longer the case. The marketing function dictates and shapes corporate strategy and brand perception. Companies have realized the need to align around their brand, and marketing is seen as the driver of this success story. Brands are already investing more money in their marketing teams and marketing technology to fuel this strategy.
Your email list is telling you exactly who to talk to in a given organization – and frankly, you aren’t listening. You’re leaving the right people in your target accounts on the table and turning your back on them. Instead, mine this data using bots and automation to bring more value to your email marketing strategy.
So you’re in Demand Gen. You wake up every day thinking “How can I get more qualified leads over to my sales team.”
You’re working on your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) game – bringing more traffic to the website. And your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) – converting the traffic you do have at the highest rate possible.
After you acquire those names and email addresses, you work your nurture game to qualify that audience and push them further down the funnel. This is where email comes into play – usually as the primary lever to influence broader awareness of how your product can solve pain points better than any other solution on the market.
There’s no mystery to why Fortune 500 marketing executives have placed direct mail personalization among their highest investment priorities over the next two years. Consumers demand it. Looking at personalization payoffs like boosting direct mail engagement 20% while reducing costs and time to market, these execs know that their direct marketing teams must be digitally empowered to compete and win.
For too long, those direct marketing teams have become increasingly frustrated watching digital teams reap the benefits of technology investments made to increase the personalization, deployment and reporting for digital channels, while the direct teams fight through the trenches of a low-tech/no-tech environment. They are ready for a change – or they will be ready to move on.
Direct mail marketers already know the importance of personalization: A targeted and relevant mailer can have an enormous impact on response rates. But gone are the days when customers and prospects were impressed by simple name personalization in direct marketing communications.
Everybody knows that web security is a top priority, especially for online-oriented businesses. However, as marketers we can be guilty of creating an atmosphere where security becomes a thing that admins and developers worry about, and we take for granted. That is a mistake we often pay dearly for. As the internet becomes more complicated and hackers become craftier and more devious, the way we care about our security is impacting our entire online marketing strategy. How we keep our users safe is becoming a strong factor in all sorts of things - ranging from the position of our website on search engines to the way spam filters treat our mail servers, to the very ownership of our online channels.
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Are you ready to have an algorithm do your job? Ready or not, it’s happened.
Late in 2017, Google moved all-new app install campaigns over to Google UAC (Universal App Campaigns). About a month later, they turned off any Search, Display and YouTube app promo campaigns that were running. If you wanted to do mobile app install campaigns on Google, you were going to do them via Google UAC, which lets Google’s algorithm manage most of the functions in your campaigns.
Facebook didn’t take long to follow suit. In early 2018, Facebook rolled out an update, including their new best practices. Facebook’s changes weren’t as forced as Google’s, but they were just as consequential. On February 19, 2018, we had a seismic shift in how we managed mobile app installs and lead generation on Facebook.
The shift was, basically, that we’ve handed over most of the control of a large part of our advertising to the algorithms. This means that we’re freed up to focus on things like creative and audience expansion, but we’ve also given up a lot of control.
With over seven billion people on the planet, knowing your audience down to the individual can seem like a near impossible goal. Preference is highly individual, and while as marketers we can segment populations based on demographics and shared experiences (e.g. the millennial generation), there is also personal behavior and experience to be considered. Consumer companies are acutely focused on this—specifically, how they can connect shared experience and individual behavior with preference, in order to completely tailor marketing to the individual. And now businesses are waking up to the need to do this as well.This is a daunting feat. Consumers—who also make technology and other purchase decisions for their companies—are inundated with information. We’re in a digital onslaught, where people can’t open their email, navigate the internet, scroll through social, watch videos or TV, or simply commute without being bombarded by consumer and business brands alike who are all fighting for attention. So marketers are not only challenged to get their products noticed, but to also create engagement that causes conversion into serious consideration. How can marketers increase their odds of success? There’s one thing that’s proven to work, and that’s personalization.
When you’re a marketer for a small company, you face double the challenges as your compatriots working for larger organizations. And let’s face it—those challenges mostly revolve around money. Here are a few ideas on ways in which to create your own tools and processes that will make your organization look more like the big guys.In the past 10 or so years, some amazing tools have been developed to make marketers’ lives easier and allow them to deliver what they need to their companies. HubSpot, Marketo, AdRoll and Google—just to name a few—have rolled out incredibly robust programs that provide marketers with tools to handle and streamline virtually any inbound or outbound company need. But what about smaller companies that don’t have the budget to implement the scope of these solutions? And what about international companies, for which some marketing tools don’t meet their needs? There’s a dearth of marketing tools available to smaller companies.
When it comes to embracing marketing automation, email marketing is the first and foremost task that comes to mind. Emails are a tried-and-tested method to reach out to customers and prospects alike.
Are email automation campaigns worth investing in? What if you are operating on a shoe-string budget?
It’s possible to run a successful email marketing campaign on a limited budget. Read on for some handy email marketing automation tips.
Why do You Need Email Marketing Automation?
Email automation allows you to maximize customer outreach, set-up triggered emails to a targeted set of customers, and saves you time and money in the long run.
An email marketing manager is responsible for end-to-end email campaigns. Learn about the role, key skills, and a sample job description.
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