Marketing Automation Software

Marketing Automation software is a suite of tools for creating, running, and automating marketing efforts across various channels like email, social media, and ads. Marketing automation software reduces the amount of manual work required to run effective marketing campaigns. These systems also provide marketing analytics to help customize campaigns and make every marketing campaign more strategic. 

Some examples of marketing automation include:

• Welcome emails or series to introduce new or prospective customers to your brand
• Birthday emails with special discounts or rewards
• VIP email series to inform customers about new products, special sales, or promotions for loyal, repeat customers
• Reengagement campaigns to bring past customers back or convert potential customers who’ve yet to buy
• Customer feedback requests or surveys
• Emails sharing reviews and inviting customers to leave a product review for something they’ve purchased
• Reminder emails 

Digital marketing automation is a set of tools and processes that help improve marketing campaigns run online or digitally by email, online ads, social media, and website traffic. Digital marketing automation software helps streamline marketing campaigns across various digital channels and provides tools to automate many of these activities and eliminate manual marketing efforts. 

Marketing automation is a system for organizing, automating, and measuring marketing campaigns across various channels. Marketing automation software works by automating marketing campaigns and sending emails or ads to specific customers based on their behavior and interaction with your business. 

Using customer behavior data, marketing automation software can gauge lead interest levels and identify which types of marketing campaigns are generating the most activity. This data is then used to tweak campaigns to be more personalized to customer behavior or expand campaigns that are working well. 

Integrating marketing automation software with your CRM software can help track lead and customer engagement with marketing efforts and funnel people into new campaigns, nurturing efforts, or provide personalized methods for ongoing customer relationship building. 

The difference between sales automation and marketing automation is that marketing automation software is used to help grow a customer base and nurture potential and existing customers, while sales automation is about tracking and scoring leads and closing deals or sales with leads who’ve been funneled through marketing channels.

Sales automation and marketing automation software work well when integrated, and modern marketing automation software can typically be integrated with CRM systems and sales automation tools. 

The most common features of Marketing Automation software include:

• Email Marketing & Campaigns
• Social Media Marketing & Campaigns
• Landing Pages
• Forms
• Lead Nurturing Campaigns
• Lead Lifecycle Management
• CRM Integration
• Reporting & Analytics

The benefits of Marketing Automation software are:

• Automation of manual marketing efforts
• Multi-channel marketing campaigns and customer insights
• Time and cost-savings
• Improved insight into the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and how prospects are engaging with campaigns or nurture sequences
• Better, more qualified leads
• Closer alignment of goals between marketing and sales teams
• Increased ROI

Marketing teams use marketing automation software the most, but other teams or individuals within a company typically also rely on marketing automation functions or reports, including:

• Sales Teams
• Executives
• B2B Business Owners

The challenges with marketing automation include:

• Poor lead conversions
• Inefficiency in marketing strategies or campaigns
• No insight into why a marketing campaign is a success or a failure
• Low customer engagement
• Poor customer retention
• Misaligned goals between sales and marketing teams
• Failure to meet revenue goals 

Marketing teams and executives should use marketing automation software. However, sales teams, executives, and business owners can also use the insights from marketing automation to align goals between sales and marketing, improve conversions, and drive customer loyalty. 

What Should I Look for in Marketing Automation Software?

You should look for the following features and functionality in a marketing automation software:

• User-friendly interface
• Multi-channel marketing automation features
• Key integrations for CRM or sales automation
• Training and customer support
• Pricing plans and features
• Reviews and testimonials 
• Implementation requirements and timeline

The top trends in Marketing Automation software are:

• Marketing Campaign Customization
• Personalization & Customer Experience
• AI Technology (Chatbots, Automated Campaigns, Intelligent Marketing Automation)
• Reporting & Analytics Improvements