Marketing automation

What is marketing automation? Automated marketing

We can explain it as a methodology that is based on the use of software to automate processes derived from a digital marketing strategy.

Among the processes that can be configured with marketing automation, we could list: Segmentation, workflows, campaign management, lead nurturing, lead scoring, etc.

Marketing Automation is vital to plan processes much more efficiently, improving their control, compared to the time that would be necessary if these processes had been manually done (not automated) and even facilitates the realization of multiple cascade processes, something that would not be viable manually.

1. Advantages of Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation is very useful for recovering the attention and interest of our audience and try to influence them based on the objectives we have defined, but it provides many more advantages, among which are:

• It helps to reduce costs and optimize the time invested in marketing strategies.
• It brings new creative possibilities for capturing Leads.
• It is relevant for lead scoring.
• Create simple tasks that can be monitored in real time and offer immediate results.
• You can create more effective email marketing campaigns.
• Detects sales opportunities with more precision.
• Develop complete marketing processes naturally.
• Eliminate unnecessary repetitive processes.
• Facilitate the creation of events and webinars.
• Boost lead nurturing.
• Optimize different alternatives for planning and publication of content on social media platforms.
• It is possible to create different reports and follow up on several campaigns at the same time in real time.

2. ¿How to work with marketing automation?

The needs of a company in marketing automation don’t have to coincide with those of other companies. But what we can consider as common, are the following premises that you should keep in mind to implement Marketing Automation successfully:

• Set clear goals, what you want to achieve, before automating your current processes.
• Integrate marketing automation on your inbound marketing strategy.
• Don’t use generic messages, it will be better to customize them.
• You should only offer specific content to a correctly segmented audience.
• You also have to try to attract new leads without forgetting your current customers.
• Create a moldable strategy based on market variations.

3. What is the best Marketing Automation application?

This question doesn’t have a unique answer, since the use of an application or another depends on various factors, such as the objectives, size of the company or the budget. There are many application for Marketing Automation, here are a brief description of the most popular ones and where, surely, you will find one that fits your needs:

• Hubspot. It is one of the most relevant applications, for the features it offers and its popularity.
• Infusion Soft. Like Hubspot, it is a very complete application and is oriented to medium and small businesses.
• Salesforce. An Automation Marketing application centered on B2B companies, focused on the generation of Leads and with options for increasing ROI.
• Adobe Marketing Cloud. Platform that combines content management solutions, campaign creation and marketing B2B. It is complete and powerful.
• Marketo. A “classic” application used for marketing automation, it is oriented to medium -sized companies.
• Oracle Eloqua. Powerful, but one of the most expensive tools, this option is more recommended for companies that need complex solutions to create marketing campaigns.