MARKETING AUTOMATION

The possibilities of marketing automation

With marketing automation, you can achieve a lot and you will discover that most tools have a lot of functionality. Most marketing automation tools offer at least the components listed below.

• E-mail marketing: this is often the basis of the package and one of the first steps you take. This will replace sending emails with email marketing packages such as Mailchimp, Spotler or Copernica. And you will be working from one central platform. The editors work very intuitively and on a drag-and-drop basis. In addition, visitors who click on the emails you send will immediately become visible as ‘known visitors’ on the website. Even if they come back later.
• Landing pages editor: in B2B marketing you often work with landing pages for certain campaigns. It is then very handy to be able to create landing pages in a very simple way. You do not need any IT knowledge for this and you can quickly put together an effective page by means of drag-and-drop. Of course, it is important that there is an A/B test option (just like with the e-mail marketing module).
• Lead management: an important functionality within marketing automation software is the lead generation. In order to organise this process as optimally as possible for your organisation, you use lead nurturing, lead scoring and lead forms – links to progressive profiling.
• One central marketing database: with the software, you build a customer view around all the online touch points you have with a prospect or customer. It is therefore essential that you record this in one place in a database. The packages have this at their disposal, so there’s no more separate databases from your mail program, Excel lists and random data!
• Building profiles: via the software, you can see which companies have been on your site based on IP address. But much more importantly, you build profiles of visitors (up to their names and email addresses) to your website so you will recognise familiar visitors on the site.
• Personalisation of content: you display relevant content depending on the behaviour and characteristics of a visitor to your site. In this way, you can also ensure that e-mails are more relevant by tailoring the subjects and content to the recipient. Open and click rates will improve as a result!
• Seamless CRM integration: your CRM is often leading in customer contact, even if you work with marketing automation. It is therefore important that the software ‘talks’ to your CRM (such as Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce.com or SugarCRM). If the link is not standard in the package, it is generally quite easy to make or sometimes its available via Zapier.com. With a CRM integration, you ensure that the leads are passed on to sales at the right time.
• Analysis and reporting tools: measuring is knowledge, especially with marketing automation. So take a good look at the tools that are available for this within the software. These include an outline of ROI, CTRs, known vs. unknown visitors, conversions and leads.