Marketing Automation: Build and make known your online business.
For a company it is essential to build a relationship of trust with all potential customers, identifying the target audience and offering them interesting information and personalized offers that can intrigue them and take them to visit their web page again.
In order to achieve these objectives it is essential to identify a very specific communication and marketing strategy and to carry out repetitive activities aimed at acquiring and retaining the customer. The Marketing Automation is nothing but a technology that, through the use of specific software to organize, automate and streamline the workflows of all these marketing activities.
According to the international survey “The Benefits and Challenges of Marketing Automation”, carried out by Liana Technologies, Marketing Automation has been able to make important progress in business such as improving message targeting, developing customer experience, the increase in quality and the number of leads and the huge growth in conversions.
Therefore, Marketing Automation aims to build and develop lasting relationships between companies and their potential reference customers through planned and mechanized communications aimed at customer loyalty.
How does Marketing Automation work?
Marketing Automation has two fundamental components that distinguish every technical function
1) Automation
It allows the creation of communication campaigns, disseminated through multiple channels such as e-mails, text messages, web pages, social networks or e-Commerce, with customized themes for well-defined users. The proposed contents, thanks to Marketing Automation, can be managed automatically and digitized without the need for continuous intervention by marketing operators.
2) Measurement
It allows, through digital tools, to control the entire course of each campaign by constantly measuring all the data necessary for the development of the business.
Marketing Automation: The workflow as a tool for business growth
The corporate marketing strategies have as their fundamental goal the customer loyalty: once the “lead” is generated, that is the potential customer interested, it is essential to manage the relationship with the latter in an optimal way to get to the conversion and then to the purchase phase.
In order to keep the relationship with the client active and optimize communication, Marketing Automation is essential, in particular the Workflow, that is the automated workflow that starts from the moment in which the first contact is generated and follows the customer guiding it until the purchase and in subsequent purchases. Turning it from any user to a loyal customer.
The Workflow periodically and automatically acts after the first contact with the customer sending him welcome messages, special offers, newsletters that invite him to perform a specific action, such as the recovery of the cart abandoned in ecommerce. This tool is not only essential for communicating with loyal or potential customers, but is also useful as an internal communication tool for the company to correlate the activities of the various marketing and sales departments.
The 8 most important features of Marketing Automation
The Marketing Automation software have different functionalities, the most important are:
- The management of email marketing activities;
- Automatic responses to emails;
- The creation and planning of newsletters;
- Scheduling personalized mailings based on user searches;
- Optimization of Landing Page and registration forms;
- Performing a complete reporting activity;
- The insertion of contacts in the company CRM;
- Observation and analysis of user behavior on Social Networks, useful tool for the segmentation of the audience and the personalization of offers.
With the Marketing Automation software it is therefore possible to coordinate all these activities to allow marketers to have an overall picture of the communication strategies implemented by each company department and therefore to optimize production efficiency and profit growth.
In very simple words, Marketing Automation allows to reach the correct target audience, with a personalized message planned, at the best time for the customer’s needs.
Why can Marketing Automation help a company?
The automation of marketing activities typical of Marketing Automation can be used significantly for four important macro business processes:
1) Lead Generation, or the process of creating lists of potential customers through actions aimed at a specific target identified on the basis of previous analyzes. In this case, automation is very useful to monitor the development related to the collection of contacts and especially to identify the perfect moment to take action on the market.
2) Lead Nurturing, moment of care and loyalty of possible clients. In this specific process, the Marketing Automation software becomes indispensable to send highly customized information and offers to different customers and then guide them towards the final purchase.
3) Lead Scoring, phase of selection of contacts of potential customers and assignment of a score to each of them in order to identify the best circumstance for a commercial proposal. The automation of this process will allow the software itself to establish the moment of the purchase proposal on the basis of the analyzes carried out regarding the behavior of the customer.
Marketing Automation: 5 strengths
- The Marketing Automation allows to have available all the customer data and therefore to plan and create more specific and attractive offers;
- The technological and digital management of marketing campaigns involves the greater effectiveness of every communication strategy chosen by the company;
- Automated software can greatly speed up and simplify the sales process;
- The observation of user behavior on Social Networks favors the acquisition of new followers;
- Marketing Automation simplifies and coordinates, through automation, all the processes and business activities aimed at potential customers.
Marketing Automation: 10 rules before starting
When you intend to proceed with the purchase of a Marketing Automation software it is essential to keep in mind 10 rules to make sure you do not invest your resources unnecessarily:
- Implement brand positioning strategies in advance to establish a valid online presence: through the creation of a website optimized for search engines and the production of qualified content, customers will be able to find the company page more easily;
- Try to capture the attention of potential customers with appropriate Content Marketing strategies and with the implementation of Search Engine Optimization techniques;
- Intriguing potential customers not only through the creation of a simple and visually intuitive website, but also a blog to promote customer-company communication;
- Create Landing Page with effective Call To Action and well-structured forms to gather potential customer contacts;
- Optimally manage their presence on Social Networks to make themselves known by as many potential customers as possible;
- Monitor your online presence through tools such as Analytic for continuous feedback with respect to the applied strategies;
- Avoid sending emails constantly risking annoying customers: email marketing, if used incorrectly, can lead to the loss of a large number of contacts;
- Segment the mailing list correctly on the basis of previous customer searches and purchases, avoiding to offer the same offers without distinction;
- Take care of direct messages to potential or loyal customers so that they are personalized and engaging;
- Choose the right time to communicate with the customer without rushing the loyalty or purchase path.
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