Marketing automation in 2024: what is it & how does it work?

Marketing automation helps you generate better leads. This article will give you the tools to choose the right software tools and deploy marketing automation successfully.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation in Dutch literally means automating marketing processes. Bagshaw (2015) defines marketing automation as using software to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation, customer data integration and campaign management.

When applied properly, marketing automation helps you focus on your customers and speeds up customer processes through the sales funnel, with fewer staff and at a lower cost. Using marketing automation software can help you centralize your data, provide a more relevant (and complex) contact strategy (how you approach your customers), guide leads to potential customers and make it easier to measure the success of your marketing campaigns.

Marketing automation is often used by b2b companies because purchase processes there take longer and displaying knowledge has a greater influence on the purchase decision there.

Benefits of marketing automation

Marketing automation has several benefits. Wood (2015) gives the following benefits of marketing automation:

• It provides a high level of efficiency and time savings that simply cannot be matched by humans, no matter how responsive your marketing team is.
• A personalized experience for each customer driven by the customer themselves (which is also simply not possible for humans, especially on a volume basis).
• It expands your access to the customer journey, giving you the insight to align future customer experiences with actual customer behavior and demand.
• Complementing the previous point, you have the ability to respond quickly to customer demand, or even the threat of competition.

Furthermore, in a survey by Liana Technologies (2017) and others, most marketers indicate that marketing automation helps them show the right message to the right person, improve the customer experience and receive more quality leads.

Another important benefit of marketing automation is that you can automate recurring or repetitive tasks. This helps reduce your marketing costs, optimize your business processes and improve your conversion rates. In a survey by GetResponse and Smart Insights (2018), 30% of marketers say that marketing saves them time, allowing them to spend more hours on other tasks.

The aforementioned Liana Technologies study also shows that 32.9% of marketers have seen ROI improve thanks to marketing automation, while 30.1% of those surveyed have seen an increase in conversion rates.

Furthermore, a side effect of marketing automation is that marketing and sales work better together. In fact, marketing delivers better leads to sales, after which they are more likely to convert.

Functionalities of marketing automation

Let's zoom in on what you, as a business, can now do with marketing automation. As it is obvious, it has many benefits, stemming from the following functionalities:

Building a rich customer base through CRM: By using marketing automation along with CRM, the customer can have a fine journey from visitor to customer. The integration between CRM and marketing automation ensures that your sales department gets the full picture of the prospect's interactions with your company. The sales department has the complete customer journey in view and knows exactly which marketing interactions the prospect has already had.

Supplement to Customer Data Platform (CDP).: CDP collects all your customer data from all your data sources to create a comprehensive customer profile from this. Marketing automation plays an important role in this because it collects a lot of information about user behavior on your website and emails. You can then use this data to create personalized content.

Personalized email marketing: The ability to send exactly what your contacts want. For example, you can create an email with the instruction "Hi [First Name]," with the system filling in the correct first name for everyone. This can also be used to create content based on your contacts' interests, which is really where the value of personalized e-mail marketing lies.

Dynamic content: Marketing automation uses the collected data to create dynamic content for potential customers. This content is specifically targeted to the visitor at that moment, with the system expecting the content displayed to have the highest probability of interaction.

Machine learning: Marketing automation software uses machine learning. Based on the data collected, software gets better and better at making the best choices that lead to the highest efficiency and effectiveness. The more data available, the better the software will make choices.

Behavior-based automation: Automatically send messages based on channel interactions, events on your website, predictive analytics and other platforms data. As an example, let's take a customer who adds a product to her shopping cart, but then leaves the website. The system will send an email to the customer 1 hour after she leaves the website, notifying her that the customer still has an item in the cart.

Segmenting your customers: Because of the rich customer base you collect through marketing automation and CRM, you can segment your customers by a variety of information such as behavior, location, order date, customer lifetime value and more.

Channel optimization: With channel optimization, it allows software to send messages to customers through the channels where they are most likely to show interaction. Since this is different for each person, it's nice if this is automated by your software.

Send-time optimization: In addition to the optimal channel, marketing automation also allows you to drive your marketing so that your campaigns are delivered at the times when your customers are most likely to interact. Timing is key.

What do you use marketing automation for?

There are some common processes you can apply marketing automation to:

• Website visitor m apping - Get insight into who is visiting your website
• Email marketing - Automatically send emails targeted to a particular audience
• Website and content optimization - Consider A/B testing of landing pages to find out which version converts best
• CRM - Building a rich customer base
• Social media - scheduling posts for social media
• Contact - A chatbot that answers the most frequently asked questions

Customer journey (or customer journey)

With the help of marketing automation, you get even more insight into the customer journey, or customer journey and customer experience. You get a complete picture from orientation to the actual purchase and how customers experience products or services afterwards.

Lead Generation

One of the most important components within any business is lead generation. The first step where marketing automation can help is to encourage prospects to interact with you so that they eventually become a lead. You want people to visit your website and then take an action there such as:

• Subscribe to your newsletter
• Download your ebook (in exchange for contact information)
• Contact

All these contact moments can be recorded and linked to automatic actions that can then be taken.

Lead nurturing

The next step is lead nurturing, in which you build rapport with your prospects. You do this by sharing valuable information through a newsletter, blog articles and ebooks, among other things.

In addition, point leads to customer experiences in the form of case studies, references and reviews.

Lead scoring

Using lead scoring, you map out what stage of the buying process a lead is in. In doing so, you assign values per lead for each action taken. Think about:

• Which pages on your website are visited
• Subscribe to the newsletter
• Downloading an ebook
• Completing a contact form

In addition to these behaviors, you can also assign points based on personal and demographic data. Is a lead active in and industry that doesn't fit your business? Then you don't need to take any further actions. Based on all the points, you then determine whether a lead is already "warm" enough to potentially convert or can be approached by the sales department, or whether this lead needs further nurturing. All this contributes to creating your ideal customer profile.

Marketing automation examples

The examples below will give you a better idea of how to apply marketing automation in practice.

#1. Email series

One of the most commonly used marketing automation solutions is setting up an e-mail marketing campaign, for example, for new members of your newsletter.

These types of e-mail campaigns are successful in part because people are used to receiving them. They serve as a confirmation that someone has signed up for the newsletter and often provide information the person is looking for.

Instead of manually sending a welcome email with every new signup, set up a system where every new member receives an email at set times. For example, consider the following workflow in your email marketing campaign once someone signs up for your newsletter:

• Immediately after enrollment - Thank you email for successful enrollment
• Day/Week 1 - Email with exclusive information
• Day/Week 2 - Email with more information on a particular topic
• Day/Week 3 - Offer for a service or product

#2. Recalls

According to the Baymard Institute, an average of 69.6% of consumers do not complete the products in their shopping cart on an online store. If you manage to encourage just a fraction of these people to checkout after all, this will increase your sales substantially.

For example, Web shops can track visitors on their Web sites and then target people automatically. Suppose someone has created an account on your website, then adds products to their shopping cart but does not pay for them. Through an e-mail, SMS or remarketing ad campaigns, you can subtly point out to this person that he/she has not yet paid. To reinforce this, you can offer a special discount code that expires within a certain amount of time. This way, you can immediately see how many people end up placing an order anyway and whether it makes sense to apply such discount offers more often.

By extension, you can also try to win back people who have dropped out after a trial period. For example, Disney regularly sends emails to people who have tried the online streaming service Disney+ asking them to come back.

#3. Customer Loyalty

After leads are converted into customers, you want to retain them, improve the customer relationship and ultimately prompt them to make new purchases. One way you can do this is by subtly reminding them of this. People need this because they like to be taken care of.

Suppose someone has made a purchase from your online store of a product that needs replacement after four weeks. Then create a message that is automatically sent via email or SMS three weeks after the purchase, or send a notification to someone on your team that this person will be contacted. Good examples are ink cartridges or razor blades.

If it turns out that the purchasing pattern is different than expected after all, for example because someone uses more ink or shaves less frequently, you can easily incorporate this information into your processes and adapt it to this person.

How does marketing automation work?

To get a better idea of how marketing automation works, it's helpful to answer the following questions for yourself:

1. At what stages of the buying process (customer journey) can automation help?
2. What marketing objectives do you want to achieve and how will you measure them?
3. What does the marketing and/or sales team need? How can they work more efficiently?
4. What marketing automation solutions are available that meet our criteria?
5. How do competitors deploy marketing automation and what can be learned from it?

Next, setting up your strategy is crucial. In a survey by Ascend2 (2018), 64% of marketers say this is the top priority in marketing automation. By following the following steps, you will know how marketing automation works and have established the foundation of your marketing automation strategy:

#1. Customer journey

The first step is to map out your customer journey, or customer journey. This lets you know what potential customers need throughout the buying process and how you can meet the expectations of existing customers. In doing so, you map out what you can potentially automate.

#2. Setting goals

Once you have an understanding of what you want and can automate, the next step is to determine what objectives you want to achieve with it. Some objectives are:

• Generate more qualified leads - In the next three months, 10 more leads
• Increase sales or revenue - Achieve 10% increase in sales
• Improve customer retention - Increase customer retention by 15% this year

#3. Setting up marketing automation

Most marketing automation tools help you set up so-called workflows. Using an example, you can get started right away to set up your campaign, or you can start from scratch to set it up completely to your liking.

#4. To measure is to know

One of the most important components in your strategy is to measure the results of your efforts.

For example, examine the extent to which leads interact with the messages you send. Do they respond at all, click on a call-to-action?

Suppose you want to grow an email list by 100 new signups over the next few months. Then it is not only important to find out how high the enrollment rate is, but also why people have unsubscribed.

#5. Testing and optimization

With all the data in hand, you can get to work optimizing processes. Adjust a call-to-action or adjust the timeframe in which your e-mail is automatically sent. Also test to what extent prospects react to a certain action or discount and check whether the relationship with existing customers has improved.

Marketing automation software

More and more marketing automation software tools are entering the market. Based on your own needs and desires, compile a list of software solutions that can help you in this regard.

Total Solution

One of the most comprehensive marketing automation tools is HubSpot. In addition to a free CRM system, HubSpot offers solutions for lead generation and automation of recurring tasks. Other solutions include Marketo and Pardot.

Email Marketing

Want to get started automating email marketing campaigns on your own first? Then check out MailChimp, ActiveCampaign or GetRepsonse. Each software has its own pros and cons.

Landing pages

Setting up specific landing pages to generate more leads, for example, can be done with Optimizely, VWO Testing and Leadpages, among others.

Website Visitors

If you especially want to gain insight into which companies visit your website, Leadinfo, among others, is a great solution. You get an extensive company profile per visitor and can then link certain actions to it. Other Dutch tools that also do this include SalesFeed and Online Succes.

Resources

Ascend2. (2018). Optimizing Marketing Automation. https://research.ascend2.com/2018-optimizing-marketing-automation/ 

Bagshaw, A. (2015). What is marketing automation? Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 17, 84-85.

Baymard Institute. (2023). 48 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2023. https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate 

GetResponse & SmartInsights. (2018). Email Marketing & Marketing Automation Excellence 2018. https://www.getresponse.com/resources/reports/email-marketing-and-marketing-automation-excellence-2018 

LianaTech (2017). Survey: What are the Benefits of Marketing Automation? https://www.lianatech.com/resources/blog/survey-what-are-the-benefits-of-marketing-automation.html 

Wood, C. (2015). Marketing automation: Lessons learned so far.... Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 16, 251-254.