5 ways Marketing Automation can lift your business profitability

Marketing Automation 101

As the name suggests, marketing automation is the use of software to automate marketing tasks that would usually require you, or one of your team, to execute. Common tasks ripe for automation include email marketing, lead nurturing, and customer relationship management. With technology and software programs constantly improving, the tasks you can automate is becoming more and more advanced.

Marketing automation lets you better leverage your time and marketing budget and also allows you to offer your current and prospective customers a much more customised experience. This will help you to build a stronger long-term relationship with them.

Here’s a good example of marketing automation in action.

Let’s say a prospective customer finds your company while doing a Google search, then visits your website. While on your website browsing your products, they sign up for your email newsletter.

Within minutes of receiving their email address, you can automatically send out a ‘welcome’ email to them that:

• Thanks them for visiting your website
• Offers links to additional helpful content
• Offers a welcome discount voucher
• Lets them know they can contact you with any questions.

Personalised emails that respond with tailored messaging are a powerful way to welcome new customers and can help you boost conversions.

How marketing automation can lift your profitability

Every business, regardless of size or industry, can realise great benefits by implementing marketing automation. Here are some of the main ways marketing automation helps businesses boost productivity.

1. Convert more leads into sales

If you want to turn more leads into paying customers, you need to be more responsive to them. Marketing automation is a great way to improve your client communication. For example, as soon as a prospective customer reaches out to you for more information about your products and services, you can send an automated (but personalised) response to them with more information.

Receiving a quick reply from you can help your customers feel more valued. Businesses that respond quickly to customer enquiries are shown to turn more leads into sales.

According to a study by drift, only 7% of the surveyed companies achieve an average lead response time of five minutes or less. This is important, because – according to another study, by Lead Connect – 78% of customers buy from the company that responds to their inquiry first.

2. Increase revenue long-term

Marketing automation not only turns leads into customers and boosts your revenue in the short term, it also gives you the opportunity to upsell customers in the future. This is because you can stay in regular contact with them and get insights into their specific needs.

Over time, this lets you suggest new products and services they might be interested in and upsell them higher-priced products and packages. Because this is all automated, it helps to lift your business profitability with very little effort.

3. Lift staff productivity

Implementing marketing automation tactics, such as automated emails, can help reduce the volume of administrative tasks your sales and marketing team must do. This means they can focus instead on higher-value tasks that can affect your bottom line.

4. Measure and improve your marketing strategy

Marketing automation helps you measure every aspect of your marketing strategy, which you can then use to fine-tune it and make it even more effective. This is because almost every action that your customer makes can be tracked, whether this is through emails they receive from you, or by tracking what they do when they visit your website. When you know what’s working, you can improve your marketing strategy to boosts customer response.

5. Boost customer loyalty

Marketing automation helps you add layers of detail to your customer relationship management (CRM) system, which you can then use to keep your customers engaged with your brand. For example, if one of your customers calls you up with a problem, your customer service team can access their details on CRM and see what interactions they’ve had with your business – including what emails they’ve received. Having this information helps your team provided a richer and more personalised experience.

Customers love to feel valued by the companies they buy from. This helps build loyalty, lift revenue, and boost productivity; the great news is you don’t have to invest in additional staffing to achieve this.

How Marketa can help with your marketing automation

Marketing automation can help boost sales, increase revenue and improve customer loyalty. The key is simple: implement marketing automation into your existing systems and strategies.

If you’d like to find out more about how marketing automation can help boost your productivity, talk to Marketa today.