Staying ahead of the competition is imperative in today’s fast-paced business world, and every marketing campaign needs to deliver a return on investment (ROI). Our guide below provides everything you need to know about marketing automation, including what it is, how to use it, its benefits, and some of the best tools to help streamline your initiatives.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation uses advanced software to automate tedious, repetitive marketing tasks and activities, such as email marketing and social media posting. It also improves the ability to nurture leads and influence the buyer’s journey by providing timely, customized content as prospects progress through the marketing funnel. And thanks to built-in data analytics, marketing automation enables marketers to measure the success of campaigns in progress and identify trouble spots, so modifications can be made to improve results.
Examples of marketing automation include:
Email marketing
Email remains a valuable marketing tool. A late 2022 study confirms that consumers prefer email and texts when communicating with brands. Marketing automation tools for email marketing campaigns include automatic scheduling and sending timely, personalized, relevant email campaigns to individual contacts based on their account profile.
Social media posts
Maintain a professional social media presence using automation to streamline posting, monitoring, and reporting. For instance, manual posting is a tedious process, especially if you’re posting across multiple social media channels or have a significant post volume. With automation, posts can be scheduled at ideal times across numerous platforms, saving time, improving consistency, reducing human error, and building stronger customer relationships.
Ad campaigns
Use automation to run targeted digital campaigns seamlessly across platforms, including display, paid search PPC (pay-per-click), and social media ads. Or automate retargeting ads to create top-of-mind recall and re-engage with potential customers.
Messaging templates
Mobile advertising and customer engagement continue to grow as marketers look beyond the desktop to mobile devices. Marketing automation helps marketing managers develop and schedule SMS (text message) marketing and MMS (picture messaging) programs with templates to create awareness, capture new leads, and improve overall customer engagement.
Data and analytics
Marketing automation software can collect and aggregate data from multiple platforms, examine digital advertising data and campaign content, report on prospect and customer behaviors and actions, and provide insights for data-driven decisions. The data may also be used to create predictive models that forecast future customer behavior.
Why is marketing automation important, and why should marketers care?
Used by businesses large and small, the marketing automation industry’s growth confirms more companies are using these software tools to effectively and efficiently compete. It’s estimated the marketing automation industry will reach $8.42 billion globally by 2027, expanding at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 9.8% from 2020 to 2027, with the small and medium enterprise segment to grow the fastest over this period.
Benefits of marketing automation
Whether using marketing automation for a single campaign with one channel or a long-term, sophisticated multi-channel marketing program, the benefits are far-reaching. In addition to what we’ve already mentioned, advantages include:
Allows companies to work 24/7 without people
Customers in the digital age are looking for products and services during and outside of business hours. Software and hardware can work around the clock, providing timely responses and customized content.
Leverage automated scheduled posts
Automation is only as good as the instructions you input using the tools that are available to you. Upfront planning and organization are required, which means defining parameters, developing instructions for creative components, and ultimately, knowing when to schedule posts and customer engagement.
More accurate target customers
Automated data collection and analysis help marketers determine how to target customers and potential buyers more accurately and effectively. Some marketing automation software even includes tools for predictive marketing.
It’s dynamic
With nearly 10,000 marketing automation solutions to choose from, marketers have the ultimate flexibility in selecting the tools that will best meet their needs. On the other hand, such a vast selection can make it challenging to determine which is best to use, especially if you’re just getting started. Fortunately, temporarily augmenting your staff with top talent from Upwork gives you the ability to add to your existing team’s knowledge and skills so you can make the right decision.
Enhanced ability to generate more qualified leads
Referrals and word of mouth are great, but usually, businesses struggle to make sales and grow without lead generation. With marketing automation, you have a better chance of identifying quality leads and converting them into engaged prospects.
Better alignment of sales and marketing goals
In addition to creating an atmosphere of collaboration between sales and marketing, sophisticated automation tools allow these departments to work together to set a wide range of criteria to evaluate and score leads.
Improved conversions and stronger ROI
Tools that enable marketers to target better-qualified leads and influence prospects through the marketing funnel at every touchpoint should result in more sales and a superior return on investment.
Increased efficiency
Marketing automation has a tool for practically everything you need to save time and improve the conversion rate. The tools are so streamlined and easy to use, that companies benefit from improved workflows almost immediately.
Shift focus from tactics to strategy
Without marketing automation, it’s easy for marketing resources to get mired down with time-consuming, mundane tasks. Eliminating or minimizing these activities frees up marketing resources to focus on higher-level strategies that drive strategic decision-making.
Continually innovating and experimenting
Given the ever-changing nature of digital media, companies are always innovating and developing new technologies and ways of doing things. Marketing automation gives marketers more time to learn about, compare, and test new strategies.
What does marketing automation mean for the customer journey?
Today’s buyers want a personalized customer experience. There’s tremendous power in personalization, and marketing automation is a valuable component. It enables marketers to reach customers more efficiently and effectively, meaning fewer lost opportunities. And offering personalized content at every touchpoint in the buyer’s journey via automation begins building the foundation for a close customer relationship.
Marketing automation best practices
Creating campaigns with drag-and-drop tools or one simple click and controlling all aspects of a digital marketing strategy in one place sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? But like most good things, it takes time, and there’s a learning curve. Take care not to get caught up in an overly zealous adoption rate and rollout. It’s wise to start small, learn, then grow.
Here are some best practices to keep in mind when designing your marketing automation strategy:
- Define your goals. Review requirements, then determine what marketing tasks take up lots of time and which can be automated to save the most time and improve efficiency. Consider what marketing strategies will best increase ROI and how marketing automation can improve them throughout the marketing funnel stages.
- Collaborate cross-departmentally. Don’t get caught up in the usual silos. Instead, involve sales and other departments, such as IT, in the process. This also gives them some ownership of the results.
- Prepare your content strategy. It’s necessary to define the content required for various stages of the buyer’s journey before you can determine what tools and methods to utilize during a campaign.
- Plan for a slow rollout. Incremental rollouts are key. Don’t rush. Plan so you have time to test, optimize, and test some more before expanding too quickly. A/B testing, for example, is valuable for comparing a control version (group A) of a digital marketing asset such as an ad, landing page, or an email to a variant (group B) with one element that is changed.
- Redistribute work. As marketing is freed up due to marketing automation, focus these newly available resources on new endeavors, and focus on higher-level thinking.
15 best marketing automation tools
Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this section. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader and company should take the time needed to adequately analyze and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.
Not every marketing automation tool will work best for every company. Look for easy-to-use software that will help you achieve your marketing campaign goals and free up marketing resources. Below is a list of some of the best tools for marketing automation by channel. Be sure to check with each option directly to obtain a full features list and obtain up-to-date prices and features because they’re subject to change.
SEO tools
SEO (search engine optimization) involves implementing various on-page and off-page SEO tactics that help sites perform better on search engines. Performing this manually is time-consuming, making it an ideal candidate for automation.
- SEMRush: Use SEMRush, a leader in its field, to research keywords, provide competitive data on SEO, and PPC (pay-per-click), track keyword strategies used by competitors, run an SEO audit, look for backlinking opportunities, and more. Monthly user plans range from $199.95 to $449.95 per month. Subscriptions are also available. Contact them for enterprise pricing.
- Ahrefs: This all-in-one SEO toolset helps optimize your website for SEO, analyzes the competition, tracks your ranking progress, and discovers and analyzes top-performing content in your market niche. Pricing for Ahrefs ranges from $99 to $999 per month, with the option to pay for additional seats.
- Botify: An all-in-one SEO platform for enterprises, Botify focuses on bolstering organic search with a full-funnel methodology and integrated platform. For general pricing, contact Botify. Their promise to customers: If search traffic goes down, they’ll lower their contract price.
Email marketing
From reading this guide, you understand why email marketing is essential and relevant. Below are a few of the marketing automation providers offering quality solutions.
- Mailchimp: This platform helps large and small businesses reach the right people, create better content with easy-to-use design tools and flexible templates, and make data-driven decisions based on advanced reporting and analytics. Offering more than email marketing automation, Mailchimp pricing lets you get started for free, with up to 2,000 contacts and one audience. Pricing for its premium plan starts at $299 a month, with other plans available for less.
- Constant Contact: A well-known brand in sales and online marketing, Constant Contact supports a wide range of tools, including automated email with an intuitive interface and advanced contact management. Pricing starts at $20 for email and $40 for email plus.
- Sendinblue: Sendinblue offers a host of features, including email marketing automation. The software supports customized emails, including drag and drop templates, or creating one from scratch. Start for free with up to 2,000 contacts, then enjoy staggered pricing based on contact volume.
Social media
Say goodbye to manually keep up with social media ads, postings, and replies. Manage social media in one place with sophisticated marketing automation tools.
- Hootsuite: Hootsuite features include scheduling posts and content, addressing incoming messages, and the ability to measure results across all social networks. Plans range from $29 per month for a single user to $599 a month for 10 users, 35 social profiles, and unlimited post scheduling.
- Crowdfire: Discover and schedule content and manage all social media accounts on one platform. Automatically discover articles and images targeted to your audience, publish content from your company blogs and sites, pre-schedule all content, automatically customize posts, and more. Crowdfire prices range from free to $74.98 per month.
- Sprout Social: Sprout Social supports engagement with a unified social inbox, the ability to efficiently plan, create, manage, and deliver social content and campaigns, and offers rich social data and analytics. Fees start at $99 per user per month to $249 per user per month.
Data analytics
Data analytics is the science of analyzing raw data to make conclusions about that information and help you optimize performance.
- Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a free tool to help analyze data and check the performance of marketing content and more.
- Blueshift: From unified data to predictive segmentation, Blueshift provides tools to deliver an omnichannel experience for your customers. Visit the website to request a demo and pricing for the cross-channel marketing suite, a predictive enterprise with AI-powered cross-channel marketing, and more.
- Looker: Looker’s powerful, advanced BI (business intelligence) platform offers real-time dashboards for in-depth analysis and more precise reporting, customizable data applications, data-driven workflows, the ability to create custom applications, and much more. Visit the website to request a quote.
Lead generation
Every current customer was initially a lead. Fill your marketing funnel with quality leads using marketing automation tools such as these.
- Salesforce: Salesforce educates its customers on lead generation with free self-paced knowledge guides. Its Sales Cloud Einstein application uses AI (artificial intelligence) to help you target the best leads, and the Pardot Lead Generation tools turn website visitors into sales leads.
- Freshworks: Reach out to customers on their favorite messaging apps with Freshchat, one of the several marketing software products Freshworks offers. The live chat solution enables marketers to engage with potential customers on their mobile devices and social messengers to generate awareness and create leads.
- Hubspot: Hubspot provides many unique and beneficial tools, including features that attract and nurture leads and ensure information flow. From SEO and content management to lead flows, workflows, and much more, Hubspot supports inbound marketing endeavors that generate quality leads.
Next steps
The value of marketing automation in our digital world is undeniable. However, success requires a well-thought-out upfront strategy and the time and talent to select the right marketing automation tools or platforms to use for your business. If you don’t have the available staff or staff with the appropriate expertise to accomplish this, consider staff augmentation to meet your needs.
