Marketing automation

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is automated email marketing. Automation simply means that things are put on autopilot. That is, you set up a system that sends out the right emails at the right times in the user journey. It can be a simple email automation that just delivers a welcome email, or a much more complex system of triggers, segmentation and targeted messages.

Because email automation is such a powerful marketing tool, in recent years providers have developed it to perform very detailed and specific tasks. For example, you can send out a newsletter with a special section that is only shown to people who have clicked on a specific link. Everything can be set up so that it happens completely automatically.

Marketing automation goes a bit hand in hand with inbound marketingwhere sales come to you via a content-driven marketing system that is automated. A good marketing automation strategy can communicate with a large number of leads through personalized content to each potential customer's situation, needs and willingness to buy.

This is possible because the system is able to track and analyze what your potential customers find interesting as well as how far they are in the buying process through data about their visits to your website.

This way, you can warm up your potential customers with targeted and specific content automatically and your sales department no longer risks calling customers too early in the buying process. You can use this method whether you are B2B, B2C, have a website or work within e-commerce.

Benefits of marketing automation

Here are some of the areas where email automation often has an advantage over other marketing tools.

• Connection. Nothing in digital marketing is as personal as an email. Your inbox is your personal, online mailbox that only you have access to. This makes email one of the best places to make a personal connection with your contacts. Personal connection is often a cornerstone when it comes to warming up leads and turning them into buying customers. It also requires engagement from the recipient, especially if you're good at writing emails that involve the recipient personally - even if you're sending to a business, for example in B2B commerce.
• Attention to detail. With email, you get the "purest" attention from your contact. There are no commercials, ads or competing products. It's just you and your message.
• Conversions. Email automation generally converts very well, especially when compared to online advertising. This is mainly because your subscribers have signed up for your newsletter precisely because they are interested in hearing from you and buying your products.
• Flexibility. You can customize your email automation exactly the way you want. You can have 10 different welcome sequences, 100 different segments and send 1,000 emails per year. And the content is entirely up to you. It's really only your imagination that sets the limits.
• Cost of ownership. Email automation generally gives you cheaper sales than other marketing. This is because your subscribers are hot and often ready-to-buy leads, but also because it can all be set up in automation. Once the groundwork is done, you don't need to spend much time maintaining it. The price of a good email automation system is also rarely high. Of course, the price increases with the amount of emails you need to send and/or the number of subscribers you have. But so does the number of sales you land, so the math will almost always add up. And that's not something you can take for granted in other areas of online marketing.

Marketing automation examples

A simple example could be that your system simply sends a "thank you for downloading our e-book" or "thank you for signing up for our webinar”.

You can also build email automation where a sign up for your newsletter activates your platform to automatically send a relevant email flow with specific content to each potential customer. The purpose is always to warm up the potential customer for a sale.

Examples of this can be:

• A woman searches Google for an answer to a question she has about online marketing. She comes across your website as one of the top links in the search engine, since you have fortunately written a good SEO text that matches her answer. She clicks on your link and reads.
• In a pop-up in the bottom left corner, she can see that you are currently offering a free webinar on the same topic. All she needs to do is sign with her email address to reserve a seat. She'd love to attend, so she agrees to the terms and conditions.
• Because you have an automated system, you automatically send her an email with information about the webinar.
• Not too many days after the webinar, your system sends another automated email to the same woman offering her a free copy of your new book on marketing. She learned a lot from your webinar, so she won't turn it down.
• As she presses the "yes please" button, your system automatically sends an email along the lines of, "thank you for your download - here is the eBook".
• This lead can then be handed over to a sales department who can call the woman and sell the full edition of your new book, or your automation system can do the remaining work to warm up the woman to buy your entire new book online.
• When the woman signed up with her email address, the automated email flow started. The purpose here was to warm her up with targeted content so that she eventually ends up buying your entire new book. So, it's a sale to a woman who was just searching for an answer on Google about marketing, who has now ended up becoming your customer.

How do I get started with marketing automation?

Your first task is to build great workflows that contain quality content that your automation system can use to send specific and targeted content to your potential customers.

Then you need to choose a provider

There are several different automation platforms that you can make use of. Most combine all marketing efforts on one platform, which can be a great advantage. This way, you can easily get a 360-degree perspective of your potential customers who need to be warmed up to buy your product or service. It is also possible to hire either an agency or a specialist to do this work, but it is also possible to do it yourself. To make it as easy as possible, we have gathered the most commonly used marketing automation tools.

• HubSpot - Probably the most popular platform you can use for your marketing automation if you are a B2B company. This provider also has all the tools you need in one system such as CRM, CMS, blogging, email marketing, SEO, social media management and sales management.
• Active Campaign - Unlike HubSpot, Active Campaign is a customer-focused automation platform that helps create better relationships between a company and their customers. In addition, Active Campaign is a great platform to use to build your email marketing.
• Mailchimp - Also one of the most popular platforms to use for marketing automation. It has many of the same automation tools as both HubSpot and Active Campaign, however, Mailchimp is great to use as its interface makes it easy for anyone to use the program regardless of whether or not they are experienced in setting up automations.

Frequently asked questions about marketing automation