Marketing automation has been a hot topic, on the minds of most marketers around the world, for some time now. Many of them still think of it as a tool reserved for big companies, huge marketing budgets, and advanced marketers. What if we told you there’s a tool flexible enough that it can be adjusted to the needs of both those who are just starting out and marketers who are already experienced marketing automation users?
But first, some facts
The internet is full of stats on marketing automation adoption, its effectiveness, and marketers’ expectations. Let’s just take a few examples:
- According to Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights, and a poll he did last year, marketing automation is one of the biggest trends for businesses this year, following content marketing and big data.
- And according to Salesforce, 67% of marketing automation-users listed this technology as “very effective/effective”.
The list goes on and on, and those that have had the chance to use marketing automation probably don’t need to be convinced of its benefits. What they need is a tool that would meet their expectations and help them achieve their goals.
What do you as a marketer expect of a marketing automation tool?
The latest Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends Survey” (2016) lists the most important strategic goals of a marketing automation strategy, including increasing lead generation (61%), lead nurturing (57%), and sales revenue (47%), followed by improving customer engagement (36%), marketing productivity (29%), improving measurability (28%), and campaign targeting (22%).
This shows how wide a variety of marketing goals can be achieved through a marketing automation tool. A great marketing automation tool will help you connect all the dots, collect detailed data for your customers, and build it into a complex picture where all elements are interrelated, working smoothly as a perfect machine to increase conversion, whatever yours may be.
Sounds convincing enough? We thought so.
So what should the perfect marketing automation tool be like?
Let’s focus on a few key things:
Useful
Well, first, a great marketing automation tool will allow you to build much more detailed subscriber profiles so you can really get to know them better. It’ll help you change the way you see your email list, and focus on individual subscribers, sending them relevant communication based on their history, actions, and preferences.
Future-proof
Perhaps you’ve been thinking of using marketing automation but you’re worried that it’s too complicated. How about a tool that’s flexible enough to let you adapt it to your needs – and grow with you as they expand? A tool that lets you start with a very simple workflow – as simple as assigning a tag to a subscriber. And then, taking small steps, growing into a complex graph that will map the whole of your customer’s journey.
Or you can just start with something much more advanced from the very beginning – this is completely up to you.
Flexible
Marketers are different when it comes to the level of knowledge and experience, but they also have different business needs and work styles. A great marketing automation tool will give you countless possibilities, allowing you to carry out one scenario in many ways, just the way you yourself imagine it.
Visual
A great marketing automation tool will be clear enough so that you can easily see where all the paths lead and who’s in a given workflow. It’ll allow you to easily move people from one workflow to another to create one comprehensive and coherent communication plan. Easy to design and following an “if-then” logic, it’ll allow you to build a tree of conditions that can keep on growing. And it’ll combine all the conditions, actions, and filters in one place so that you can clearly see what works in your communication and make necessary adjustments.
Versatile
There are no limitations as to what you can do with marketing automation. A great tool will allow you to use the workflows virtually for any business need you can come up with. You can use it to create and send:
- welcome series for new customers
- win back campaigns
- purchase follow-up cycles
- webinar reminders and follow ups
- or actually, any kind of reminders
- long-term loyalty campaigns
- individual online training plans
- reward programs
- sales team cadence campaigns
- your own early-warning systems to help you see when your customers’ activity has gone down
- anything you can think of
Each industry can adapt marketing automation to its needs and goals, be it increasing conversions, reducing churn, or maximizing customer engagement. It’s up to you what you’ll use it for!
But how do you find the perfect marketing automation tool?
At GetResponse, we’re aware of marketers’ needs and in the past months we’ve been working very hard to build a tool that would meet your expectations. If you wait just a little more, we’ll be able to show it to you, very soon.
And in the meantime, you tell us, what do you use marketing automation for? And what do you expect to find in the perfect marketing automation tool? Let us know in the comments or tweet using #GRAutomationHub.
The post Marketing Automation: Prepare For The Perfect Tool appeared first on GetResponse Blog - Email Marketing Tips.
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