Do you face challenges around those time-consuming, trivial marketing tasks within your organisation? Are you struggling to nurture leads effectively and ready to hand them over to sales? Are you lacking customer data, which can help you segment your audience? If you recognise these challenges within your business, it could be time to invest in marketing automation software. By 2023, investment into marketing automation technology is expected to double from where it is now. This clearly demonstrates the growing rate of this technology and if chosen well, automation tools can streamline processes and deliver successful results for your business.
Within this article, we will cover some key statistics, and understand the signs to look out for to determine whether you require automation software and the overall benefits. We’ll then look at Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights – Journeys; an advanced tool that makes marketing automation easy.
The definition of marketing automation
“Marketing automation enables businesses to automate tasks and workflows for the marketing and sales process, including customer profiling on landing pages, lead–scoring, sending automated personalised emails and web recommendations to support lead nurturing and customer engagement” – SmartInsights.com
To put it simply, marketing automation software streamlines automates and schedules tasks within an organisation, from lead-nurturing to campaign planning. As a result, businesses save time, have more sales-ready leads and increase revenue.
Common problems that marketing automation can solve
Marketing teams spend their days juggling multiple tasks and these automation tools have become a problem-solver when it comes to taking the time out of those time-consuming, trivial tasks.
However, all the information out there can feel a bit overwhelming, and you may be wondering how you can tell if the software is right for your business. Below are examples of common problems that automation can solve…
- You’re lacking customer data, making it hard to segment your audience
- You’re struggling to reach your target audience
- Sales and marketing teams are working in siloes
- Unable to manage all channels from one, single application
- You’re not currently nurturing your leads
- Your marketing efforts aren’t working as well as you’d like
- Many leads are falling through the cracks
Benefits of marketing automation software
There are many benefits of marketing automation. Below, we have outlined five of the main ones:
Enhanced customer insights
Marketing automation software provides businesses with extra information alongside the standard name and email address, such as location data, behavioural insights and job titles; making segmentation much easier and allowing your marketing teams to communicate with your audience more effectively. If you’re lacking these customer insights, you may be missing out on customer data, which could be used to make your marketing efforts more successful.
Personalise the customer journey
77% of buyers want unique and targeted content at each stage of their research according to a study by Pardot. Marketing automation software simplifies the process of getting the right content and message to the right person, at the right time. Not only this, but the tools also capture the information following the distribution of the content; email clicks, conversion rates of social media posts, to website visits. This data can then be used to drive your overall marketing strategy and make it as effective as possible.
Generate better leads
For any business, generating better quality leads is going to be beneficial. Marketing automation tools allow you to get a detailed view of potential customer and their behaviour, allowing you to understand your audience more than ever. Tracking methods such as following a user’s journey through your website, allow your marketing team to understand the intent of your visitors and what stage of the funnel they are at. As a result, further communications can then be customised and the leads your business generates will be of a higher standard.
Sales and marketing alignment
Within many organisations, it’s not uncommon for sales and marketing teams to work in silos and on separate wavelengths, however, this means your business isn’t as effective as it could be. Automation software bridges the gap between teams and enables marketing to hand over better-qualified and nurtured leads, to sales. Lead-scoring functionality within the software assists this process by evaluating the lead’s level of interest based on signals and ensuring they are qualified before you follow–up with them. As a result of this, teams are more productive and your organisation will see both an increase in efficiency and conversion rates.
Gain a 360-degree view of your business
Most companies use multiple sources to generate leads; email, website, social media, surveys, and more. It is critical the data from these is stored in one single application for immediate and easy access for all teams, however, this is a challenge with disparate systems. Marketing automation software manages these channels and provides you with a 360-degree view of your marketing efforts, meaning you’re able to be more productive and leverage the data much faster.
Dynamics 365 Marketing (Now Customer Insights – Journeys)
As of the 1st September 2023, Dynamics 365 Marketing is now redesigned as Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys, a comprehensive marketing solution that focuses on real-time, personalised experiences.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides your business with all the features you need to execute successful marketing campaigns across multiple channels, create personalised customer journeys, gain a 360-degree view of your business, align your sales and marketing teams, generate better leads, improve marketing ROI, and more.
Get in Touch
It is clear there is a lot to consider when looking at marketing automation software, however, it is well worth conducting the research in order to determine the right tools for your organisation. Hopefully, this blog post has provided you with an insight to determine whether you need to automate your marketing and the benefits of this, alongside the tools available.
If you would like more information about Marketing Automation or how Pragmatiq can support your business, please get in touch via the contact form, or email us at info@pragmatiq.co.uk / call us on 01908 038110.
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