Marketing today is about connecting the right people with the right product at the right time. If you are doing this manually, it might take a long time, so you need automation to compete in today’s market. Marketing automation software holds the key to a successful marketing campaign today. In this guide, you will find why marketing automation tool is vital for your business.
Types of marketing automation software
Which marketing automation software should you pick? It depends on the following types:
CRM Integrated
Most CRM today come equipped with marketing automation tools. This makes the lead generation experience more seamless – from pitching to clients until making the sales. If marketing automation and CRM are not integrated, they are often found as modules that can be incorporated wherever the user wants to.
Marketing automation
This is the type that contains all the tools that a basic marketing automation software packs. Tools such as forms, landing pages, lead database, lead scoring, reporting, and analytics, or other pre-built email marketing and integrated CRM functions.
Email marketing
Email marketing is how marketing automation software had its beginnings. Most marketing tools cover the basic email marketing features, but with increasing demand, more and more features like a landing page, lead scoring, and analytics that offers profound insights into the campaigns have been added.
Social marketing
These are marketing automation tools focused on making the brand image on social media more engaging. Social media functionalities such as LinkedIn and Twitter prospecting, brand mentions on Facebook pages and groups based on the hashtag and keyword rules set by you in the marketing software are part of social marketing software.
Marketing analytics
These are standalone solutions that are used as modules to integrate into more significant marketing automation systems. They are used to provide more powerful analytics tools so that more accurate insights can be obtained.
Features of marketing automation software
What does a marketing automation tool help you accomplish? Here are the features which you should look for in your new marketing tool:
1. Lead scoring
Based on the criteria you select, the lead scoring feature allows you to grade leads. The criteria can be based on the demographics, prospective behavior, and interaction did in the past. You can assign individual values to all the criteria, and once you enter any lead, the system values and calculates the final score of the prospective lead. The leads are then collected and automatically funneled to their respective workflows.
2. Lead database
Qualified leads and activities done on the web like site clicks, emails opened, and downloads all these are captured in the lead database. Then the lead database forwards all the leads to the sales funnel, and once they are closed by the sales team, the client details are stored in CRM software. The lead database can also be used to segment different leads and make target groups for better results.
3. Email marketing
The email marketing feature allows us to run multiple email campaigns and send newsletters. It also features ready to use templates that you can customize as per your requirements. It enables you to send a mass number of emails to targeted lists and track the number of emails opened and the click-through rates. You can also set a response that will be automatically sent if the user performs a specific action.
4. CRM integration
The marketing automation tools must have seamless integration with the CRM tool because once the leads are qualified for top sales to funnel, they are then sent to the sales team, which uses CRM to handle all the leads. The integration can be using a module or as a preinstalled feature of the marketing automation tool. This feature is very common, and even most open source marketing automation tools have it.
5. Forms and landing pages
What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editor can help you create colorful forms, text-rich documents, and unique templates without the need of a graphics expert. A form made using the editor is then embedded on the landing page, which then sends the data into the leads database. You can make the landing page include dynamic content that is customized according to the lead based on profiling like demographics, geolocation, job title, industry, purchase history, etc.
6. Progressive profiling
Progressive profiling is where customized forms are presented to different leads based on key criteria. Whenever a visitor visits your website, he/she is given a unique set of questions. This data is then sent to the lead database to determine its quality.
7. Reporting and analytics
The individual costs for campaigns and ROI can be calculated by running the analytics on key metrics, which then can be sliced and diced in various ways such as downloads, emails opened, click-through rates, etc. You can then compare these values with the CRM sales metrics like total sales made, conversion rate, and win-loss rate.
8. Mobile-optimized
All internet users today mainly access any website using their smartphone; therefore, mobile-optimized landing pages help you target those users. This also means that you can now access your data on the go from anywhere in the world.
