how many times have we thought that we would like things to be done by themselves, automatically? Probably many. But perhaps we have never stopped to think that with marketing we can also do things in an automated way and thus streamline the process in our inbound strategy.
that's why we'll tell you about it in this post.
Definition of automated marketing
Marketing automation was born a few years ago with the aim of helping companies to streamline their marketing actions in a simpler and more efficient way. In other words, automated marketing is a series of strategies that use software to automate all the processes derived from a digital marketing strategy.
As in any inbound marketing process, the main purpose of marketing strategies is to guide customers in their process from the moment they are users until they finally become potential customers. Automated marketing is intended to help in these marketing strategies so that they can be done in an automated way and it will be faster and easier for the company as it will save them time and dedication by the marketing department staff. On the contrary, if they have the automation of these strategies it will be easier and this process can be streamlined effectively.
For this reason, and for the marketing automation process to work, it is necessary that you have a clearly defined and established process for generating qualified leads, which allows you to have a database that you can know and explore to generate quality content to capture these leads and convert them into customers.
Therefore, it is important that you identify the profile of your buyer persona, at what stage of the buyer's journey they are at and, based on this, generate valuable content that meets their needs.
In short, automated marketing are tools that can facilitate the process of capturing leads so that they become customers with strategies that are carried out automatically.
Tips for implementing automated marketing
- Review your objectives: Before starting to automate your entire marketing strategy, as we would like, it is important to review the objectives that we have established in our marketing plan. We must first define which of these objectives we are carrying out manually and which of them are worth automating because they are really helping us in our sales process.
- Integrate marketing automation to your inbound strategy: As we have said before, the process of automating marketing must be related to inbound marketing. This means that although we do many of the automatic tasks, we must not leave aside the prominence that we must give to our buyer personas.
- Discard general messages: With marketing automation there is no need to send a broad and generic message to your entire list of contacts that, in the end, will end up being deleted or marked as spam because they are not interested. Send them more personal emails, with their name included in the subject line, for example.
- Don't forget your existing customers: It's great that you keep in mind the idea of generating new content to get new customers, but your company's regular customers are still there too, so it's important that you target your automation strategies to them as well as to new ones, as your current ones are already part of a loyalty process.
- Create interaction campaigns with your customers: You must take care and maintain relationships with your customers so that in the end they always turn to your company because of your quality and experience in the sector. That is why a good idea for automation would be the creation of campaigns in which they can interact with your brand.
Now that you have the tips and definitions of marketing automation, you are probably thinking about how you can apply it, so we are going to mention some software that can serve as a tool to automate the marketing process.
Marketing automation software and tools
- Marketing automation software from Hubspot:
HubSpot's marketing automation software has a great advantage: it can be integrated into a suite that includes sales, marketing and customer service software, which automatically links to HubSpot's free CRM.
It can be a little expensive at first to get familiar with the program but Hubspot Academy has courses that help you understand how the software works: once you've learned how to manage it, automation goes far beyond just sending emails. With this software you can create a simple list to respond automatically or build a complex network that includes rules designed to respond to specific users with the exact email they need, create a personalised chat experience (chatbot), and so on.
The important thing is that repetitive tasks are fulfilled with the conditions you set in the tool, so you have more time to take care of the work that requires more creativity and resources.
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Marketo is a software that a while ago was acquired by Adobe and therefore has been incorporated into their cloud of enterprise services for marketing, it now has Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target for you to experiment and customise your strategy.
It is really useful if you have to target large customers or a very large number of users you want to engage as it can cover large developments of automated marketing strategies.
- SendInBlue
This platform started as a digital agency that gradually developed its own resources for marketing automation, which is why it is one of the best platforms, as its creators know all the characteristics of the relationship between companies and their customers.
Among its main strategies: they allow personalised contact and better communication with your current and potential customers, without the need for prior installation, set up a series of personalised e-mails and SMS based on the behaviour of your leads, etc. - ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing solution integrated with marketing automation.
It takes some time to learn how it works and to acquire the necessary skills to become familiar with the platform, but once you have learned how to use it, it can be very useful for your company.
- Mautic
Mautic is a marketing automation tool to manage the tracking of digital marketing campaigns and leads inan integrated way, including the option to continuously track the activity of the potential customer, integrating with many CRMs and social networks. It has a paid version, a limited free version and a free version withoutopen source limitations.
In short, marketing automation is already a key link in your strategy and its primary function is to facilitate the way in which you carry out your marketing actions as well as offering you the possibility of saving time and money in resources and strategies to carry out your inbound marketing plan. What are you waiting for?
