Download Marketing Automation_McCoyCooper

McCoy 1
Cooper McCoy
Professor April Ward
MKTG 400
4 February 2016
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is the technology that streamlines and automates marketing
duties so companies and firms can increase efficiency and generate revenue faster. One of
the main goals of marketing automation is to develop deeper customer relationships over
time. Email marketing, landing pages, lead management, campaign management,
customer relationship integration, social marketing, and marketing analytics are all
applications used in marketing automation. These applications are used so you can
measure and prove that the marketing campaign has an impact on the company’s revenue.
When sending a mass email to potential customers you are sending the same
email to different segments of customers. This can be potentially dangerous because
older high-income citizens will not react the same way that younger low-income citizens
will. Marketing automation through email is superior for various reasons. In marketing
automation you can send an event invitation, wait a few days, if the potential customer
has not registered you can send a reminder, wait until after the scheduled webinar, and
send a follow-up email to the attendees and the non-attendees. You can customize the
two different emails before hand based on what you want you want to say to each group.
All of this is set up beforehand and customized based on what is the best strategy for each
segment. This marketing automation process is how you can develop deeper customer
relationships through time. Marketing automation can also place an impact on pipeline
McCoy 2
and revenue, has real-time triggers, and is just a more precise way of targeting and
segmenting. When a customer receives an email that was clearly sent to pleather of
people they do not feel important to the company. Marketing automation can change this
drastically. Marketing needs the automation nowadays because companies are trying to
market to different segments and huge groups of people.
There are several misconceptions about marketing automation. Some people
would say that it only benefits the marketing, but a high-quality and customized
marketing automation is increasing revenue for the company. The second misconception
about marketing automation is that it is just a fancy way to send more spam email. This is
actually a way to learn everything you can about a customer through customized emails
and an easy way to generate leads and turn those leads into sales. The last misconception
is that it delivers value without effort. The strategy put in place for marketing automation
requires people, content, data, processes, and learning about consumer behavior.
Most companies today are sending weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly emails to
customers about their newsletter or offerings. Customers are not naïve; they know that
these emails are sent by the thousands. It is essential to set up an automation of emails to
send to certain customers at certain times when they are available. A company can put
customers into different segments by need, demographics, psychographics, and lastly
time zone so they know when to send the email. Without doing this you are decreasing
the likelihood that the message is sent on time and relevant to the customer. Doing all of
these little things can separate a companies marketing efforts from the rest. Developing a
customer relationship is one of the most important things a company can to if they want
to keep selling and retain past customers.
McCoy 3
Customer relationship marketing is a big component of marketing automation and
can truly show the capabilities of the automation part. The application can set up a
marketing database with everything you want to know about a customer from their
purchase history to their demographics. For larger customers there can be millions of
pieces of data pertaining to them in the database. The database keeps track of everything
that goes on between you and the customer from sales, transactions, and actions that have
taken place. It is essentially the nucleus of the relationship between the customer and the
company. When a big company has hundreds or even thousands of customers it is
impossible to keep track and remember all of them. A marketing manager can look
through the database and get talking points from the data. This is essential because it
engages the customer and they do not feel like just a number in the big scheme of things.
The revenue generated and the strategy put in place to generate that revenue is
one of the most important aspects of marketing. Measuring the results of marketing
investments gives marketers the ability to make data-driven decision-making. When a
chief marketing officer wants to spend more money in one area and spend less in another,
they have data and hard numbers to support their decision. Without this information it is
the CMO’s word versus whoever disagrees. The multi-touch revenue attribution gives
marketers the ability to analyze every campaign that has led to a deal. Without this
technology the company would have no way of knowing how the sale was generated. A
company has several different marketing campaigns going on at once and the multi-touch
revenue attribution enables them to see just how the sale was met. Innovative companies
are starting to move beyond traditional marketing tactics and start using marketing
automation applications like multi-touch revenue attribution.
McCoy 4
If marketing automation keeps innovating at the scale that it currently is, it will
soon take care of most if not all of the marketing needs. It can take over other functions,
tools, become adaptable, and be a one-stop application for all of the marketing needs.
Business-to-business data applications are a strong indicator of predictive analytics.
These applications were originally put in place to see which customers were ready to talk
with the sales team and which customers were not yet ready for this stage. Now, the
salesman does not have to determine which leads are ready for a sales pitch because the
marketing automation process can decide this alone. This automation process can use
social media, web data, and internal communications to acquire all the knowledge it
needs to determine of leads sales cycle. These leads can help you segment and deliver the
optimal sales pitch for the client or clients. The marketing automation process has only
scratched the surface of what is to come. Marketing automation will become easier to use
and in turn will become essential to every companies marketing programs. Marketing
automations needs to become more diverse so they can work properly for a diverse set of
industries. The entertainment industry will not use marketing automation in the same way
that the waste management industry will.
The three core benefits of marketing automation are streamlining the marketer’s
world, measuring and proving marketing return on investment, and automating
relationships across the customer lifecycle. Streamlining the marketer’s world is a big
factor and can save the marketing team not only time, but also money. This process
simplifies and automates the repeatable processes of keeping track of customers. Most
companies that do not use marketing automation end up hiring a lot of people to do this
work by hand and they end up paying several more salaries. This can lead to lost revenue,
McCoy 5
because the marketing automation process can do this. This also makes the whole
marketing department simplified. Why separate the marketing analytics, database, social
system, and email system if it is not needed. It takes time to get all of those systems
working and generate spreadsheets for all of these systems. It can often be cheaper
because you are not spending money on agencies; you are automating this whole process
yourself. Measuring and proving marketing return on investment is also important. This
keeps a system of record for your companies marketing efforts. You can run a test of one
landing page versus another landing page. When you keep track of these efforts your
company can learn which tactics are working over time and which are not. You can
compare the results of trade shows versus marketing events. This increases efficiency and
enables the marketing team to use money where it works best. Marketing automation also
lets your company see what your revenue funnel looks like, conversation rates of leads to
sales, and gives you an in-depth look at what the sales cycle is looking like. Your
company will even be able to see how many leads you need to generate next month in
order to get an estimate of how many sales that will turn into. Companies can justify their
budget depending on which actions they want to pursue. Company’s love that marketing
efforts can now be measured and not just be left to speculation. At the end of the year,
when someone asks you what you have done for the company, you can pull up the
marketing automation software and tell them. It is a great measurement of how well the
efforts that have been put in place are working. All in all, marketing automation is the
next generation form of marketing. If it is not already, it will become essential to every
business in the near future. Soon, not only big companies will use it, but the smaller
companies will start to utilize it as well.
McCoy 6
Work Cited
Marketing Automation Webinar Part 1. Perf. Jon Miller. Marketo, 2016.