If you still need to be convinced to use a marketing automation platform (MAP) for your business think of it this way – the longer you wait to use a MAP, the more money you’re wasting on potential leads and conversions. Along with saving time and money, there are several other reasons why you business can benefit from this useful software.
Staffing Resources
Marketing automation levels the playing field between you and bigger corporations. You can hire one employee or agency to do the work that would otherwise require a whole team of email marketers, coders, and creatives. You’ll also improve the accountability between your marketing and sales teams. Both need to work together to successfully drive leads down your sales funnel, and a MAP helps make such goals more evident and achievable.
In addition, your staff members no longer have to manually schedule posts every day. Emails, blogs, and social media content can be planned far in advance and published when the time is right.
Gain a Higher ROI
“Marketing automation technology is expected to grow at a 14% compounded annual growth rate over the next five years,” says email consultant Jordie van Rijn. Growth to this extent means businesses who don’t use these tools are going to fall behind fast. Nonetheless, earning a high ROI doesn’t happen overnight. In one study, marketers said it took 3-12 months before they saw significant results from marketing automation. But once your team acclimates, the results are astounding:
– Companies using a MAP have a 53% higher conversion rate and a 20% increase in sales opportunities.
– 80% of companies saw their lead numbers increase
– 63% of companies currently using marketing automation plan to increase their MAP budget
– 70% of users find targeted messaging to be the most useful benefit
Better Quality Leads
Manage your leads better and more efficiently. If you’re dealing with hundreds or thousands of leads, a MAP will let you know where every single user is in the customer journey, and where to send them next, without you having to scope out each user individually.
MAP tools will take care of lead nurturing for you, too. Depending on your customer’s journey, it will be very evident whether or not they would be responsive to a customer call or email. If not, you save yourself time from talking to someone uninterested. And if they are, you can focus on leads who are invested in your product or service.
Tailor-Made Emails
You can send as many customized emails as you want to as many audiences with a MAP. And depending on where leads go in the customer journey, you can create different content for each experience. Emails can be more personalized thanks to features like progressive profiling. By creating a subscriber box that asks for their name, you now have the ability to personalize each message with a more intimate greeting.
More Targeted Reach
Using intelligent lead frameworks, your team can focus on cold, warm, and hot leads with different approaches to each grouping. Here are some ways to use MAP tools to your advantage:
– Trigger emails perform three times better than other emails – giving you the opportunity to remarket your business to people who have viewed your website or put goods in a shopping cart without finalizing their purchase.
– A/B Testing allows you to determine the best way to entice your audience by showing you side-by-side comparison between different campaigns simultaneously.
Metrics and Reporting
One of the biggest benefits of marketing automation is all the data and analytical tools you get to use! The more transactions your customers initiate, the more sophisticated and personalized your data will become. In return, this gives you a better understanding of what campaigns and content to create.
MAP analytic features:
– APIs (Application Programing Interface): The ability to view all your email, social, and web analytics simultaneously
– Progressive Profiling: Pulls data about your customer based off web activity, location, and more
– Lead Cycling: Tracks the type of content your customer consumes
– Dynamic Segmentation: Updates customer lists based off any lead changes
– Social Integration: The ability to combine all your email, web, and social content seamlessly in order to complete a well-rounded sales funnel
Better Logistics
MAPS handle Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) data efficiently and automatically. This means when a subscriber signs up for emails their name and information will be synced in your system, and can be retrieved at any point for email customization. MAPs will also notify developers immediately if there are any issues occurring. Streamlining all your information on a MAP will ultimately make management easier and ensure less human error.
With so many benefits, why wouldn’t you start using a marketing automation platform? All your marketing activities and analytics will be in one space for easy comparisons and usability. Plus, your marketing and sales team will have an easier time organizing their campaigns, reviewing data, and applying new ideas based off proven results.
