Digital marketing automation can help any business that is experiencing time drains and finds itself overwhelmed with inconsistencies, overspending, customer attentiveness, and customer retention. Automating your business can help in every area as it comes in very diverse forms and areas of specialty. In this article, we’ll discuss what digital marketing automation is, how automation can help your business in its success amidst diverse competition, and some of the top automation tools to consider using for your digital marketing needs.
Table of Contents
What Is Digital Marketing Automation?
Put simply, digital marketing automation is the future of competitive digital marketing. It’s the process whereby technology and software platforms designed for marketing organizations and departments automate digital marketing tasks. Automated tasks include the most common repetitive tasks of a business, automated to lighten the number of digital marketing tasks put on associates. As a result, associates can better focus on other areas of customer service and customization. Some top examples are the automation of websites, social media, and emails.
Some top areas of automation assistance include segmentation, lead generation, lead nurturing, relationship marketing, lead scoring, upselling, marketing ROI (return on investment) measurement, cross-selling, and retention. However, digital marketing automation can include aspects of every part of your business beyond day-to-day tasks. For example, this can include fraud detection, inventory checks, hours’ logging, and accounting. Any individual part of a business where a personal touch is not necessarily required, automation can be highly beneficial.
Benefits of Marketing Automation
Automation helps remove areas that are unproductive, cumbersome, or repetitive. These aspects slow down workflows and drain a business. Automation brings a business closer to its goals as a leaner, cleaner-run business with increased customer focus, efficiency, and quality. There are numerous benefits of marketing automation, but some of the top benefits include increased ROI, a reduction in staffing costs, a boost in overall business effectiveness, business processes that are more clearly defined, and an increase in the room for general creativity.
Increase in ROI
Automation tools can automate upsells, cross-sells, and follow-ups more specific to the customer funnel and resultant revenue. They also cut down on time spent on these important tasks, helping a business more quickly increase its ROI by decreasing average spending.
Staffing Cost Reduction
When you automate aspects of your day-to-day business processes, there is less need for associates to take on these duties themselves. Various aspects can combine into a single automated task that otherwise would require more staff to accomplish.
Business Effectiveness Boost
Automation allows a business to run more effectively day-to-day, grouping and caring for various determined marketing tasks that otherwise drain resources, time, and energy. It allows a business to more effectively market goods and services.
Clearer Defined Processes
Omni-channel, complex marketing strategies are more possible when managed by a digital marketing automation tool. Processes are better laid out and organized, which assists marketing and sales teams to maintain clearer direction and increased accountability.
More Room for Creativity
When monotonous tasks that don’t inherently require a personal touch to run effectively and efficiently aren’t draining a business, associates can refocus on other aspects that could benefit more from personal touches. Your business can be more unique and creative.
Time-Saving
Automating the things you most desire to run faster, or your business’s most regular actions, saves valuable time. One-click processes take worry and time away from regular actions. For example, you could exchange contrasting databases for an auto-updating reporting system or automated timesheet.
Enhanced Productivity
Automating low-value tasks allows more focus toward higher-value tasks. Focus more deeply on more difficult tasks and leave others to automation. By also helping to track your workflow, automation can reveal your productivity patterns and unproductive behaviors.
Increased Accuracy
Human errors occur less with automation, providing increased accuracy and precision. Collect information without as frequent overlooks or misreads. Documentation is also more accurate, with automation decreasing file loss or missteps through the various business processes.
Quicker Responses
Automation makes pulling reports and audits across the various processes quicker, equating to your business being better able to quickly and perceptively respond to questions, concerns, and requests of shareholders, customers, and associates. This leads to better branding, quality, and reputation by making your business look more capable.
Lower Costs
For all of the aforementioned reasons, automation serves to pay for itself by providing an increase in clarity, creativity, time, productivity, accuracy, and quality. By providing for these increases and freeing up personal company time toward the nuanced service aspects of the business, your business costs less to run, is more customizable, focused, and competitive.
Getting Started With Digital Marketing Automation
Before considering which tools are best for your business’s automation, you should establish your workflow and allow your associates the time to prepare for the new implementation. Preparation will increase the likelihood of automation success. The top steps to take before automation implementation includes identifying the right tasks to automate, selecting the appropriate tools and software, team tools and software training, and continuous tools and software effectiveness evaluations.
Identify the Right Tasks
First, you want to identify the most time-consuming, repetitive tasks that are draining your funds and resources. Where can you benefit most from automation?
Select the Right Tools
Select the right tools for you, which focus on automation of the previously identified most time-consuming, repetitive, and draining tasks. Which tools would you benefit the most from?
Team Tools Training
Ensure that your team members have the necessary understanding of the automation tools, their maintenance, applicable operation, and evaluation. How do the tools fit into how they work? Where do they refocus their attention?
Tools Evaluation/Adaptation
Now, you should evaluate how the tools you use help achieve your unique goals and adapt. Is the tool of choice adequately achieving your goals? If not, consider a different approach or tool and continue evaluation and adaptation based upon results.
Top Digital Marketing Automation Tools
There are many functional, useful automation tools you can use for your business’s success. A few of the top choices are Marketo, Oracle Eloqua, Pardot, Customer.io, Exponea, LeadSquared, SalesFusion, and Ontraport. A few of the best automation tools specific to a small business are Constant Contact, Drip, OptinMonster, SendinBlue, and HubSpot. Each is a good choice, but the best for you is one that satisfies your unique top needs and automates the areas you would most benefit from automation in.
Marketo
Marketo is a highly popular choice that covers every potential engagement and channel. It includes a wide range of tools which include website personalization, social marketing, budget management, email marketing, lead nurturing, and more.
Oracle Eloqua
Oracle Eloqua provides client monitoring through all stages of the buying process, leans toward B2B and B2C marketers, and provides the ability to plan out automated campaigns during personalization. There are numerous third-party services integrations for streamlining.
Pardot
Pardot provides B2B automation from Salesforce, account-based solutions, and supports B2B analytics. Other functions include email marketing, lead scoring, CRM integration, and lead nurturing. You can also easily track website interactions and build lead scores that predict future trends.
Customer.io
Customer.io boasts high flexibility and strengthens a business’s relationship with customers by attuning messaging and contact to times of highest engagement. It allows you to automate emails based upon certain customer behaviors and enjoy a tool suited to businesses new to automation.
Exponea
Exponea enables users to unify and centralize customer data from multiple sources, both online and offline. You can also adapt content for third-party understanding and utilization toward custom analytics, marketing campaigns, and others.
LeadSquared
LeadSquared’s design focuses on moving leads faster through the customer funnel and is also a cloud-based CRM. Users can obtain leads via online campaigns, website inbound email, and chat as well as set conditions, triggers, and actions to their drip marketing automation.
SalesFusion
SalesFusion offers an all-in-one solution of comprehensive and flexible features to automate campaign creation, lead collection, and more. There is also a standalone Marketing Automation module offered, with tools for lead nurturing, media planning, and marketing analytics.
Ontraport
Another viable all-in-one solution, Ontraport’s design is for small businesses and entrepreneurs alike with tools for lead generation, nurturing, scoring, task management, and email marketing. It offers a range of e-commerce solutions for upselling, cross-selling, credit card payments and credit card abandonment.
Your Best Automated Marketing Solution
Through digital marketing automation, your business can experience a lot of saved time and money. You will have the ability to refocus physical employee labor on higher creativity, service, quality, and attendance to individual customers’ needs. For the best automated marketing solution and automation implementation, consider these top choices and suggestions from SEO Design Chicago and experience the difference made by putting your business on autopilot.
FAQ:
- What is digital marketing automation?
- How does automation help increase ROI?
- What is the first step of using marketing automation?
- How can marketing automation help lower costs?
- What are the best automation tools?
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