A case can be made these days for just about any business to implement marketing automation. In fact, marketing automation processes have become so popular that 51% of all companies already use them.
One marketing channel that has greatly benefited from the power of automation is email marketing. In fact, over 55% of e-commerce marketers for B2B organizations currently engage in email marketing automation. Email marketing’s high level of return on investment reigns supreme above all other marketing channels.
So, what is email marketing automation?
Email automation is the process of sending targeted marketing email content at predefined or designated moments. Automated email sending can also be triggered by the behavior or actions of a potential customer. Email automation helps businesses convert free trial users and leads into paid subscribers.
But email marketing automation just one of the various ways to automate your marketing campaigns. The following are ways that marketing automation tools can give your business an advantage.
Benefits of marketing automation
1. Nurture leads
Automating marketing tasks is a quick and easy way to increase conversions without increasing expenses. This is why 86% of businesses believe marketing automation tools are one of the most efficient ways to nurture leads and increase conversions.
Lead generation, however, is just one part of the revenue building process. You need to put measures in place that create relationships between your brand and your leads. These measures are referred to as methods of lead nurturing.
Lead nurturing is the process of educating leads about your services and products in hopes of increasing the likelihood they will eventually convert. The end result of the lead nurturing process is sales-ready customers who turn into loyal brand ambassadors.
So, how can you use email marketing automation tools to convert more leads to paying customers?
Capture more leads via lead generation forms. Over 68% of B2B marketers use lead capture forms on their websites. Unfortunately, 40% of them have poor conversion rates.
Optimizing your sign-up forms can have a significantly positive impact on your bottom line. As an example, Expedia had a $12 million increase in annual profits by simply eliminating one friction-causing field from their landing page.
Landing page testing tools like Unbounce and Instapage can help you create attractive and engaging landing pages that you can easily A/B test to optimize conversion rates. By using automation tools that create optimized landing pages you will not only capture more leads, but also high-quality sales leads that convert faster.
Automate personalized emails. Smart marketers understand the power of personalization and how to effectively use it in email marketing. When your optimized sign-up forms capture a new lead, send them a warm personalized welcome email.
Email outreach tools can send your greeting within a set period of time after the new lead is captured. I like to use Intercom for this.
There’s plenty of marketing data that supports personalizing your outreach emails:
A personalized subject line in an email increases open rates by 26%.
94% of marketing professionals rank email personalization as important to their marketing objective.
58% of business revenue comes from targeted and segmented emails.
2. Improves customer satisfaction
So, you’ve automated your lead generation processes and you’re capturing leads through your website’s sign-up forms. The next question is “how satisfied are your customers?”
Will they come back and make another purchase or did they leave feeling disappointed? Customer satisfaction is critical for every business and provides benefits such as:
Reduced churn
Differentiation in the competitive market
An indicator of loyalty and repurchase intent
Ensures the increase of the lifetime value of your customers
Reduces the cost of acquiring new customers
Cuts down on the adverse effects of negative feedback or word of mouth
According to a Walker B2B customer progress report, customers want effortless interactions with your brand. The report also suggests that B2B customers expect more personalization, simplicity, and speed.
To ensure high customer satisfaction rates, 68% of marketers use automation to enhance customer engagement. 58% of them use these tools to communicate with their leads and customers efficiently.
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3. Saves time
Over time, marketing has become more and more complex. To stay engaged with your brand, prospects want personalized and real-time reactions. Automation and AI can do the grunt work for you these days, to help keep up with these demands at an affordable price.
Consequently, IT specialists have built a wide range of machine learning and AI tools that speed up the decision-making process. Seventy-four percent of marketers say that the greatest advantage of automation tools is their ability to save time.
Email automation tools save time by handling menial tasks and giving your marketing team room to tackle high-level processes such as research and customer management.
Marketing automation should be used strategically and thoughtfully
While marketing automation tools offer many benefits for modern marketers, they should be used strategically and thoughtfully. Your marketing automation campaign should provide fresh and relevant content, and never come across as being spammy or pushy.
Remember, people want to do business with other people—not brands—so be sure to personalize your communication and keep in mind how you would want to be treated if you were your own brand’s customer.
RELATED: 4 Little Email Marketing No-Nos That Could Land You In Big Trouble
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