Friday, August 5, 2016

What Marketers Say: Trends in Marketing Automation

A while ago, we asked marketers on Twitter about their marketing automation insights. One of the things we wanted to know was what trends they see in MA this year. Here’s what they told us:

 

For previous posts in this series, click the links below:

Marketing Automation No-nos

Marketing Automation Tips

Thought on Marketing Automation

 

According to Dave Chaffey’s survey, marketing automation is one of the key trends for 2016, preceded only by content marketing, and big data (and it may be in fact used for both). More and more marketers start seeing the great value of marketing automation, while automation tools start becoming more accessible and user-friendly.

We wanted to know what marketers who actually use marketing automation in their companies think about where it will go and what new trends we can expect to develop in the nearest future.

 

More personalization

This is a trend that’s being talked about a lot. We’re seeing more and more marketers understand that marketing automation actually goes hand in hand with personalization, and is a great tool for tailoring offers to individual subscribers’ needs. This, of course, requires collecting the right data and making the right use of it, so smart technology needs to be paired with a smart marketer. But if you match the two, the results might astound you.

The technology is of course already there: artificial intelligence is no longer a sci-fi movie thing, but allows you to even automate creativity. Custom audiences and re-targeting options are now a must in advertising. We can base our ads not only on who our audiences are, but – more importantly – how they behave, and interestingly, not only online, but now also in real life. It’s kind of exciting to think where this might take us.

 

 

Content is still king

Content marketing – as shown by the survey mentioned at the beginning of this post – has proven to be a popular and effective marketing technique and is definitely here to stay. What’s more, content marketing can be automated, as can be social media marketing. Of course, only up to a point, and again – with careful supervision from an experienced marketer.

Content marketing automation seems to be one of the trends that will be developing rapidly in the coming months. Are you already automating your content in any way? I’d be very curious to know.

 

 

Marketing automation for smaller businesses

This is something that’s mentioned in the previous tweets, too: we’re starting to see more smaller companies invest in marketing automation. Even though marketing automation will always require some effort and technical knowledge, there are tools emerging that try really hard to make the process as easy as possible. They’re also becoming more affordable for companies with smaller marketing budgets. Is your company preparing to invest in marketing automation software (or are you already using it)?

 

 

Don’t forget mobile!

Here’s one of the more detailed responses we got in our Twitter survey from Kevin Payne, Digital Marketing Coordinator at PropertyRoom:

Mobile devices are continuing to become a bigger part of how people browse websites and shop online. In order to capitalize on this trend, expect software to track users browsing activity across multiple devices begin to rise and offer more in-depth ways to do mobile marketing. In the past we have only been able to track people based on cookies in their web browsers.

Social media companies already understand this methodology and track users across multiple devices. There able to do this because we log in to their platform with our user profile which makes us able to be identified regardless of how we are online. I personally try to offer exclusive content to have website visitors to register. This allows me to do marketing automation in more in-depth ways because I can identify who they are.

At PropertyRoom.com we use behavioral automation techniques to increase on page conversions. In the near future we expect to see the ability to identify users across multiple devices, which can help with the ROI on mobile marketing advertising.

 

What do you think?

What would you add to these trends? Anything you’ve noticed yourself, or have been using? Let us know in the comments.

The post What Marketers Say: Trends in Marketing Automation appeared first on GetResponse Blog - Online Marketing Tips.

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