What is marketing automation?

In recent decades, the art and science of marketing has changed dramatically — and in some ways unrecognizably. However, despite these major advancements, the key to successful marketing remains the same: personalization.

Indeed, whether the goal is to sell industrial equipment to large enterprises, smartphones to individuals, advice to organizations — or anything else on the business landscape — marketing fulfils its fundamental purpose when it sparks, establishes, and elevates a meaningful one-on-one relationship with customers. And the engine that drives this multi-faceted process — one that can take several months or even years in B2B/B2C engagements — is personalization. Consider the following:

• 90% of customers see personalization as “appealing,” and feel that it improves their opinion of a brand.
• 84% of customers say that being treated as a unique person is critical to winning their loyalty.
• 80% of customers are more likely to purchase from a brand that delivers personalized experiences.
• 77% of customers will pay a premium to brands that deliver personalized experiences.
• 72% of customers only respond to personalized messaging, and ignore anything that they perceive is generic.

Ideally, marketers would have an abundance of resources and time to customize and personalize every campaign and piece of collateral — from webinars and ebooks to infographics and articles, and the list goes on. Of course, this objective falls between impractical (for every company) to impossible (for everyone else). Fortunately, that is where marketing automation enters the picture and makes a transformative difference.

Marketing automation solves this dilemma by enabling marketers to streamline, automate, track, and optimize a range of repetitive marketing tasks, in order to increase operational efficiency — and ultimately, to personally connect with customers and encourage them to make a purchase. These processes include (but are not limited to):

• Lead generation
• Lead nurturing
• Lead scoring
• Segmentation
• Relationship marketing
• Account-based marketing
• Measuring campaign ROI
• Cross-selling
• Up-selling

In a moment, we will highlight some practical applications of marketing automation. However, before moving on, it is worth repeating and remembering that while marketing automation dramatically — and in some ways profoundly — accelerates and improves operations, the aim is not just about doing things faster, or at a higher capacity. As mentioned, marketing automation is rooted in personalization. It frankly does not matter how much faster, and how much more, marketers can get done through marketing automation if it does not result in greater personalization by delivering relevant content through effective channels and touchpoints.

Admittedly, this may seem obvious, and hardly worth pointing out. However, it is vital to keep this in mind, because it is very easy for marketers to dive deep into the (rather amazing) technology, and lose sight of the ultimate goal of both marketing automation and marketing itself: personalization, personalization, and yet more personalization. The technology is the means. Driving customer experience, generating sales, and inspiring long-term loyalty through personalization are the ends.

Another important yet lesser-discussed benefit of marketing automation, is that it can significantly improve engagement, enthusiasm, and energy levels among marketers by alleviating the sometimes crushing administrative and clerical burden they face on a daily basis. A survey in late 2019 found that marketing and communications professionals had the highest burnout rate of all professionals, with 83% reporting that they felt overwhelmed and exhausted.

Unfortunately, the pandemic has added to marketers’ stress by unleashing widespread digital fatigue, which diminishes creative and planning efforts, and makes it tougher to concentrate — especially when dealing with repetitive, mundane tasks. Marketing automation helps liberate marketers to focus on higher-value activities that not only boost productivity, but also improve morale and engagement. In other words: marketers spend less time doing what they dislike (and in some cases loathe), and more time doing what they find meaningful and enjoyable — and ultimately, they achieve better results. It is all gain, and no pain.

Another significant benefit of marketing automation is that it can help bridge the gap — or perhaps better stated, the pitfall — between marketing and sales. Why pitfall? Because in some organizations, there is a longstanding disconnect and disharmony between marketing and sales. This does not mean that they are adversaries (although in some organizations tension between the two camps can run pretty high). Rather, it means that they have different agendas and mandates. Marketing is concerned with generating brand equity and delivering sales qualified leads, while sales is concerned with nurturing SQLs on the buyer’s journey and into a transaction. Ultimately, they both want to do what matters most to the organization as a whole: drive revenues, profits, growth, and competitive advantage. But they take different paths.

Marketing automation plays a key role in establishing standardized, consistent workflows that enable alignment between marketing and sales. For example, marketers can configure a lead scoring system that identifies precisely when a customer graduates from being a marketing qualified lead into a sales qualified lead. The moment this happens, the right sales rep is notified, and the customer is engaged accordingly.

Without marketing automation, the following could happen:

• There could be a delay in identifying when a marketing qualified lead becomes a sales qualified lead.
• There could be a delay informing a sales rep of a sales qualified lead.
• The wrong sales rep could be informed. For example, a sales qualified lead has a technical background and very detailed product-related questions, but the sales rep tapped to engage them is a recent hire who is still familiarizing themselves with the product suite.

Any one of the scenarios above is enough to compel customers to exit the buyer’s journey and head to a competitor. Or at the very least, it can make the buyer’s journey much longer and more arduous for sales reps than it would be otherwise. For example, a sale that would have taken a matter of weeks with marketing automation, could take months without marketing automation — and end up costing much more in labor costs and other expenses.

So far, we have explored the basic concept of marketing automation, and highlighted how in addition to driving and delivering all-important personalization, it can boost marketer engagement and bridge the traditional gap between marketing and sales. Now, let us shift focus and look at marketing automation in action.

What can marketing automation do? Here are a few common use cases:

• Nurture leads by delivering relevant thought leadership content such as educational articles, guides, white papers, etc.
• Send out a series of welcome emails
• Identify and incentivize loyal customers to make additional purchases, or function as brand ambassadors and influencers
• Send birthday, anniversary, or other special occasion messages.
• Follow-up after purchases to deepen the relationship, while gleaning valuable market research
• Reach out to customers who abandoned their cart
• Reach out to customers who visited certain pages
• Reach out to lapsed customers
• Reach out to customers who cancel an order or (in the case of SaaS) terminate their subscription, in an effort to get them back on the roster — or at least, discover why they disengaged

There is no generic, one-size-fits-all approach to marketing automation. What works in some organizations will not necessarily work in another. However, while respecting these differences and distinctions, there are some basic best practices that all marketers should adopt:

Start with a robust plan

Before launching a marketing automation campaign, marketers should build a robust plan that embraces the following key elements:

• Objective (e.g. account development, conversion, retention, win back, etc.)
• Content strategy (planning, creation, and channel distribution)
• Customer journey map
• CX and UX design factors

Together, these key elements help bring to the surface how customers interact with the brand, and how their experience can be nurtured with the right content, delivered at the right time, and through the right channel.

Be open to experimentation

Marketing automation is dynamic, rather than static. Marketers should embrace the opportunity to experiment, in order to glean what works, what does not work, and why. These insights can be used to enhance current and future campaigns and collateral. For example, analytics may show that a specific infographic is driving a significant amount of progress at an early stage of the buyer’s journey. Marketers can use this actionable intelligence to:

• Make the infographic available through more channels and touchpoints (main website, landing pages connected to pay-per-click ads, social media, etc.)
• Create additional infographics for other relevant topics that align with the same UX and CX factors (graphics, layout, fonts, links, length, loading speed, etc.).
• Inform the sales team that customers find the infographic’s topic and content relevant and engaging, which can help spark and shape conversations

Do not be afraid of (a little) friction

Owing to a philosophy that was crystalized in a 2005 bestselling book on UX design called “Don’t Make me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability” by Steve Krug, many marketers are afraid — and a few are outright terrified — of using marketing automation if it adds friction to the buyer’s journey through elements like pop-ups, forms, “click here to learn more” prompts, and so on.

However, in recent years it has come to light that rather than finding these elements irritating, many customers find them helpful. Indeed, 90% of customers say that they are happy to share data if it enhances their purchasing experience, and 40% of customers say that they are more likely to view items that are recommended based on information they have shared with a brand.

The takeaway is not that marketers should overload and overwhelm customers by populating the buyer’s journey with a dizzying array of asks and options. Rather, they should be confident that leveraging marketing automation to inject a small amount of friction empowers customers to interact as they wish, and on their terms.

The right marketing automation software will unleash success — and the wrong one will prevent it

When it comes to making marketing automation work, the right knowledge, strategies, tactics, and content are obviously vital. But there is an even more important piece of the puzzle that will either unleash success or prevent it: marketing automation software.

Indeed, the choice of marketing automation software should be viewed as a mission-critical decision — because the influence on both process and results is enormous. Here are key aspects that marketers should focus on when evaluating and ultimately recommending marketing automation software solutions:

• The capacity to deliver personalized relevance with precise audience segmentation, AI-powered recommendations and one-to-one messages
• The capacity to save time, effort, and resources with email marketing automation for any customer journey
• The capacity to convert more traffic with customizable form and landing page templates for every scenario
• The capacity to easily integrate with any e-commerce platform, website, or CRM without developer support
• The capacity to power marketing with live data and advanced analytics, and therefore optimize every campaign — from smaller and shorter projects, to larger and ongoing programs

In its purest and best form, marketing is about: adapting communications so that customers can engage with the brand through multiple channels, tailoring the buyer’s journey and overall experience based on customer responses and activities, and personalizing each step of the dialogue to build a richer profile and deliver more value. Marketing automation helps make these crucial objectives enjoyable, manageable, and achievable — ultimately elevating customers, marketers, and organizations as a whole.

For additional insights, dive into the Sitecore Knowledge Center, which features thought leadership content on marketing automation, including optimizing the customer journey, building and distributing personalized content across channels and touchpoints, and much more — click here.