Marketing Automation Tools

With the rise in competition for business in the digital era, growing a business can be a bit of a challenge. 

However, with marketing automation, you can increase your business efficiency and build your online brand.

Companies are using automation tools to run their business. According to Social Media Today survey, 75% of business use marketing automation.

 Infographic by Invesp shows that automation drives an increase of 14.4% in sales.

Why use marketing automation for your business?

Marketing automation has many benefits. Here are some

Generate leads for your business

For your business to grow, you need to acquire leads and convert them to clients. With the rise in competition and technology changes, finding leads can be a tedious and time-consuming process. 

Automation makes it easy to generate leads for your online business. As a way to generate leads, many companies automate emails to potential clients.

However, with automation, the process is less tedious. Automating most of the processes when marketing gives more time to the business to focus their efforts on promising leads.

Automating tasks help leads get the right content that helps build trust with the business and probably become clients.

Research by Gleanster shows that 50% of leads are qualified. However, they are not ready to buy.

So, what can you do about it?

You need to nurture them, earn their trust and convert them to clients. The process is long and tiring, but with automation it is easy. 

Target and sent your leads different content for their lead nurturing. The content can be infographics, blog posts, case studies, reviews from previous customers or videos.

All these help build a trust bond between you and the leads and let them know you care about them and your business can solve their pain points.

It is time-saving

Running a business requires time and effort. The workload at the company may be too much for employees. This can slow the operation of a business. 

When a business automates some of its work, it frees time to do other important things. 

Getresponse report says that 30% of business owners use automation to save time.

Let’s look at email marketing for instance. You need to send thousands of emails to clients and potential clients. 

Within your email campaign, you need to monitor the email open and click rates, conversions, and sales. 

Imagine if all that work is to be done manually. However, integrating your business with email automation tools can take care of all that work. 

Here are some email stats that show how important automation is to businesses.

With free time, businesses generate new ideas and strategies to increase their productivity. This helps deliver better services or products to their customers.

Business Campaign management

Businesses use different ways to generate leads and sales for their business. Different campaigns need different approaches to attract and acquire business leads. 

Businesses use social media, videos, email marketing, webinars, blog posts among other ways to acquire customers.

It is hard to manage campaigns from these different marketing channels. Using automation tools makes it easy to manage your campaigns from these multi-channels.

With automation, you can monitor how each performs and know where you can optimize to increase customer engagement and sales.

Improve business ROI

Automation helps you narrow down and target specific leads for your business. Targeting specific customer helps you know them better. 

You interact with your leads and customers, know their pain points and solve them effectively. 

Automation helps collect customer data that helps in your business decision making.

Customer data such as previous purchases, their social media engagement or online behavior help offer better services to customers.

With a specific target, you create content that appeals to them. This makes it easy to build trust, engage them and convert them to clients. 

Analyzing your customer behavior and needs makes it easy to convert them. Omnichannel marketing helps businesses increase customer engagement and sales. 

Automation helps marketers send content that is personalized to their target market. This builds more trust with leads and increases engagement and conversion rates.

Instapage statistics show an 8.96% increase in purchase rates multi-channel automation.

Workflow automation

Businesses have different tasks and workflow that needs coordination to help achieve business objectives. 

Activities like the creation of landing pages, CTAs, marketing campaigns all need coordination for business performance.

Since all these activities are run on a day-to-day basis, they become repetitive routines. 

Besides this, the processes are subject to human error which can affect business running and sales. Automation reduces these human errors and ensures a consistent workflow. 

Reduces business running expenses

The more manpower a business has the more running expenses. It makes it hard to run a business. 

The business growth rate is low as most of the profits and revenue go to many employees of the company.

Automation reduces these expenses as most of the work is carried out by automated machines. This increases business revenue and returns on investment for the business. 

Increases customer retention

No business wants to lose any leads that have already become clients. They need to retain them. 

Retaining a customer is much better than acquiring one as they are familiar with your business products or sales. 

However, the process of retaining a customer can be hard. If a customer feels as if a business doesn’t care about them, they leave the business. 

Retaining customers increase customer lifetime experience increases profits and sales. 

Automating marketing activities can help retain your customers. For example, you send them automated emails of updates about new products or services you have created.

You can also send them to thank you emails and appreciate them as your customers. 

So, what factors should you consider when looking for an automation platform?

There are different factors you need to consider when choosing marketing automation tools. Let’s look at these factors.

Integration opportunities

When choosing a marketing automation tool, ensure it can integrate with other software within your business. Your platform should have an application program interface( API) for software integration. Integration helps streamline business operations.

Great customer care support

Sometimes running software can be complicated even for tech-savvy customers. Customers need guidance and support every time they need it. 

As a tip to help decide on your platform, ensure it has 24/7 customer support. The platform should be quick to implement client feedback for better service delivery. 

Happy clients will leave reviews about a platform that offers awesome services. Here is a screenshot of the HubSpot marketing automation platform reviews.

Features you need

Different automation tools have different features and so do different businesses. Before you decide on a platform ensure you have your business goals ready set.

Then choose a platform that will help you achieve your short and long term business goals. 

A platform can be awesome but if it doesn’t have what you need, it is of no help to your business. Your tool of choice should be able to manage your workflow.

Compatability with social accounts

Social media is a great place to grow your brand awareness, market and grow your business ROI. 

It is important to ensure the platform is easy to use and compatible with social media.

Social media campaigns and engagement are vital for marketing your business. The platform should have data analysis tools to help know and increase client engagement on social sites.

Prices and plans of the platform

The cost of automation tools differs depending on their service plans. Different services have different price tags. Here is an example of the Marketo automation platform.

When choosing a platform, consider the cost of the service you want. Ensure you choose a tool that doesn’t constrain your budget.

The platforms use different ways to price their services. For example, some platforms charge according to the number of contacts while others charge by the number of emails you sent. 

Some can charge for onboarding and training while others give it for free. In whichever way ensure your platform of choice offers all the services you need and is within your budget.

Number of users

Your business is growing each day and increasing the number of users. It is important to choose a platform that will accommodate more users as your business grows. 

The tool should also be easy to personalize your emails and content to specific target leads.

Ease of use and set up

It is important to ensure your tool of choice is easy to set up and use once you purchase it. Even with great customer care services, it can still be difficult to run a platform if it is complicated.

Easy to use platform will make it easy for the marketing team to use a platform. They get the most value out of the platform and grow their business revenue margins.

If a platform is difficult to use your business will have to incur extra expenses of training the marketing team. 

Data security

Your business and client data is essential for running your business. When choosing a platform, ensure the platform can keep your data safe and secure. 

The software can have database encryption, browser security among other ways to protect your data.

Ready to grow your business with marketing automation?

Automating your business can greatly improve your business efficiency and growth. 

It reduces human involvement and gives more room to make your business more profitable.

Use the above tips to get insights on what automation tools you can use for your business model. 

It is essential to understand well your platform of choice as you use it to automate business tasks.