All of us are more comfortable when we want to buy from a familiar store. Because we know that he knows us and knows what we want. Sometimes we don’t need to say the order at all. Because he himself knows. In the old days, when businesses were small and the number of customers was few, the tradesmen were the same. They knew each and every one of their customers and were familiar with their tastes and moods. In fact, they spoke and communicated with each customer in their own language.
For any business of any size, it is important to keep in touch with each and every customer. Not only regular customers, it is also important and informative to know those who bought from a business even once and did not buy again. The marketing and digital marketing strategies of businesses are formed based on the recognition of personas and data obtained from the interaction and behavior of customers with the business.
The problem is, how can online businesses and big businesses know all their customers, monitor their behavior and talk to them in their own language? For many businesses today, there is no longer a shop where a customer can come and chat with the shop owner. Customers and potential customers should be recognized by their behavior on the site and social networks.
It is natural that one or even a few Instagram admins cannot be expected to respond to all comments and direct messages and to know all the thousands of followers. The digital marketing team cannot be expected to write the text of several hundred emails to current and potential customers and analyze their reactions and responses.
So what is the solution? Marketing Automation. The subject of this content is to introduce this remedy and solution in the world of digital marketing and to answer these questions: What is automatic marketing or marketing automation? What does it do and why does it matter to businesses? Is marketing and sales automation necessary for every business?
Table of Contents
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation in simple and short language means using software (tools) to do part of the time-consuming and repetitive tasks in marketing and to provide the data that is needed collect and make available to digital marketers in the form of a report.
Marketing automation is technology that manages marketing processes and multifunctional campaigns, across multiple channels, automatically. With marketing automation, businesses can target customers with automated messages across email, web, social, and text.
In marketing automation, Workflows define what the software should do and the messages it should send. Workflows are a set of instructions that the digital marketer defines for the software. There are ready-made instructions (templates) in these software’s and maybe there is no need to add anything to it.
Automating part of repetitive and tedious tasks reduces human error and increases productivity. This is the main reason for using marketing and sales automation in businesses, especially large businesses.
What is the importance of marketing automation for businesses?
Perhaps the definition of marketing automation is understood as, well, we take a software and tell it to send 100 emails with a certain text on this date to loyal customers or respond to Instagram directs like this. But this perception of what can be done with automated marketing is incorrect. Let’s say what exactly is required of this technology that makes its use important and useful for businesses:
1. Marketing automation helps you get to know your customers
How can the digital marketing team of a business be expected to meet all their duties and monitor and recognize the behavior of all customers (in large numbers) or those who interacted with the business in some way and design personalized advertisements and messages for them?
Today’s businesses and digital marketers know that profitability lies in creating a personalized experience for each customer and potential customer. A 2018 study concluded that 80% of customers are more willing to buy from brands with whom they interact personally.
2. With marketing automation, complex strategies can be implemented
Implementing digital marketing strategies is not always an easy task. For example, imagine that the digital marketing team wants to do retargeting or drip marketing. Retargeting or any other marketing strategy will be successful if the right message is delivered at the right time, based on the interactions and behaviors of the individual/customer.
The best way is to have the digital marketing team come in and use the CRM data to select people. Then, using marketing automation tools, emails tailored to each person (customer or potential customer) should be sent in a certain time frame. Automated marketing tools can categorize people based on the type of reaction they showed to the emails and make the report available to the team.
3. Marketing and sales automation allows you to spend time on more important tasks
It goes without saying that technologies entered human life to make his work easier and help him save time. Marketing and sales automation does the same. For example, if a business is going to send a personalized greeting email or SMS to its customers on their birthday; Automated marketing tools can easily be set up for this. As a result, when the digital marketing and sales team is not supposed to do simple and repetitive tasks, they have more opportunity to generate ideas and analyze data and study and review strategies.
How does marketing automation work?
Automation depends on information. Each time someone subscribes to your list, buys something from your store, or clicks on your ads, they’re providing you with valuable data.
Marketing and sales automation technology has been made possible through different software (tools) that different companies offer to the market. These softwares may be specialized and do only a few specific tasks. However, they have common features and the working steps with them are also similar. (At the end of this article, we introduce two examples of these software.)
Whatever software you use, the first step is to tell it what to do. You have to give the system basic information (customer data) and tell it when to do what and how:
- What messages to send?
- To which segment, part of the market to send.
- Based on what criteria to categorize customers and put them in the audience list.
- When to enable process automation and automatically execute commands.
For example, a good automatic marketing tool (software) provides the information of all customers (active and potential) and all those you want to advertise to the system; Collects in one place (Contact or Audience List). Then it can give you a visual map or chart or diagram of their location, the number of interactions and the type of interaction they had with your business.
How can businesses get the most out of Marketing Automation?
There is an important point about automated marketing. Marketing automation is not a strategy or requires a specific strategy to use. In fact, it is a tool for the digital marketer and helps him to implement his strategies. Like any other tool, when you want to give it information and instructions, you must observe some things in order to make the best use of this technology:
- Have a goal: You need to answer the question, what should be the goal of marketing automation and the automated campaigns it is going to do for you? Why do you want to use marketing and sales automation in your business at all? Micro and macro goals should be clear.
- Specify criteria for categorizing audiences/customers as:
Marketing automation benefits you the most when it’s as targeted as possible.
This is where you should first use the STP marketing model to find the best and most ready customers to buy from your business, and then move on to automation.
- In the system, determine the flowchart (workflow): all the instructions in the automated marketing are organized on the basis of if-then. That is, the digital marketer instructs the system that no matter what happens and what reaction the audience shows, it should be targeted and included in the work flow and promoted so that he buys from the business.
- Everything should be tested: (And one of the important functions of automated marketing is that it makes it very easy to do these tests.) All campaigns and advertising content and strategies implemented with marketing automation should be reviewed to see which ones worked best and worked better. . (You can easily do A/B testing.)
Introducing two of the best marketing automation tools (software).
Earlier we gave examples of marketing automation tools. We introduce two tools (software or platform) for example and for more familiarity. Note that many of these software are not free and your business must purchase them. Of course, the companies supplying these software may have different offers based on the type of your business and the system you want for automation.
1. MobileMonkey
This tool is great for Instagram automation and is approved by Instagram itself. This tool allows you to automate almost everything on Instagram: replying to comments, directs, and story mentions. This tool can be used to send a direct message to anyone who has not been heard from after receiving a reply; after a certain period of time, send follow-up messages again and see why he didn’t buy or interact with your business account. This tool has another important advantage: automating messages on Facebook, web chat and sms. Unfortunately, it is not free and must be purchased. But MobileMonkey allows you to customize the system for your business and your needs and sets the price based on the system it offers you.
2. Hubspot
Hubspot is a very useful tool for content marketing. This tool comes in three recommended packages: Free, Professional and Enterprise. This tool is great for identifying the most ready users and those who somehow showed interest in your business and following them up to convert them into customers of your business. Its free package does not have many features, but it can provide simple automation to small businesses. In the professional version of this tool, it is possible to perform A/B testing for emails. Its corporate type has many possibilities, including setting up profitability reports and predicting potential customers.