You may have heard of it, you may not but what actually is it?

Here at Pledge Marketing we are big fans of marketing automation. Anything which allows us to streamline the marketing efforts of our clients and help them to achieve their business goals is a bonus in our minds.

Marketo has a great definition for marketing automation is – “Marketing automation is a category of software that streamlines, automates, and measures marketing tasks and workflows so that companies like yours can increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster.”

When you put it that way it sounds quite simple! But marketing automation actually goes much further than that. Marketing automation allows companies to nurture prospects into leads and convert leads into delighted customers.

Marketing automation – how to?

Ultimately the goal of any marketing efforts that you or your marketing team undertake is to generate more revenue for your company. Doing this is a 3-step process,

1. Drive more traffic to your website
2. Convert that traffic into leads
3. Nurture those leads into customers

Marketing automation is particularly good at step 2, converting traffic into leads. It does this by delivering high quality and targeted personalised messages. Which lead a potential customer through the buyer’s journey.

Say you wanted to have a promote a new product or service to a section of your current customers.

1. You would start off by sending a personalised email invitation out to download your latest eBook to a list of customers who you think will be interested.
2. Once people have downloaded the eBook they receive a thank you email
3. A couple of days later you send out another email to the people who downloaded the eBook and offer them a case study on a topic of the eBook.
4. Then your sales team get in contact with anyone who downloads that case study. This makes the sales process far easier for your sales team as the lead has read a lot of the information, making them far more qualified and further on the customer journey.

This process above is far more effective than just sending out regular emails to your whole contact list. By targeting and segmenting your contact list you can deliver more high quality and personal marketing campaigns. This makes their buyer decision easier and as a result increase conversion rates.

If you want to know more about marketing automation then get in touch with us and let us show what we can do.

We have an eBook -“Demystifying Social Media” which you can download by filling in the form on the side. [It works via marketing automation!]