What exactly is online marketing automation software?
With this software, you can digitize your sales and marketing processes.
This means you can use it to automate your sales processes. Specifically, this type of software includes features such as a database, web analytics, communication tools, workflows, and CRM synchronization. Online marketing automation software helps you establish segmented, personalized, and timely customer interactions—such as sending an email.
With most software solutions, you can also automate processes across areas such as email, lead management, and phone calls. You can also streamline company-wide information sharing and build a strong relationship between management, marketing, and sales.
Web tracking can be used to analyze users’ interest profiles, thereby increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
It also helps you segment your audience, build trust through improved customer service, and successfully engage in cross-selling and upselling.
Are these concepts still a bit abstract to you? No problem!
We’ll walk you through a simple marketing automation process using one of our examples.
We’ve already set up a landing page on the topic of marketing automation. On this landing page, interested visitors can download a white paper to better understand the topic. But how exactly does the process work? We use a small Google Ads campaign to drive interested visitors to this landing page. There, they’ll find a button to request the white paper. In exchange, however, they must provide their email address.
Now, everyone who has submitted their email address automatically receives a follow-up email. The first one is a thank-you email that includes a link to download the white paper. An automated email like this might look something like this:
After that, you could include a section titled “You Might Also Be Interested In,” for example, where we provide links to related blogs on the topic of marketing automation.
You can conclude with a call to share, and of course, don’t forget to include the footer with your company information:
In summary: Marketing automation software is like your personal assistant that changes everything. It helps you organize your workflows, manage and evaluate leads, and increase revenue.
Learn how to keep campaign costs low and generate more leads.
Automate your marketing activities and sales processes to improve efficiency in lead qualification and lead management.
Are you still unsure whether software like this is worth it for you? – We’ve summarized the most important facts:
What are the benefits of online marketing automation software?
1. It helps you close deals
2. It automates the maintenance of your subscriber lists
The days when you had to manually maintain subscriber lists are over. Software like this automatically records sign-ups and unsubscriptions, reliably adds new data, and removes outdated data from the mailing list. This prevents “database ghosts” that make email delivery prone to errors and slow it down.
3. Online marketing automation software helps you in these four online areas
To reach potential customers, it supports you with content creation, SEO, social media, and SEA. Are you wondering exactly how marketing automation can help with your SEA campaigns? Through keyword insertion, IF functions, or automated or feed-based Search Network campaigns. When Google Ads is combined with marketing automation, there are many possibilities. For example, you can tailor your ad copy to individual users and thus reach the pinnacle of success.
4. It helps you automatically group leads on your website
With marketing automation, you can automatically collect leads on your website. How does it work? You can display relevant content to your website visitors based on their behavior at the right time and, for example, collect their email addresses in the process. This works, for instance, when you provide your potential customers with valuable white papers that require them to enter their email address.
5. It plays the content that works best for you
Marketing automation offers you many opportunities for optimization. For example, you can test content such as newsletters using A/B testing, and your users will then only see the content that performs best.
6. Marketing automation provides you with reports at the click of a button
All processes improve in quality when marketing automation managers identify and eliminate weaknesses in their campaigns. To do this, they rely on KPIs. Thanks to an integrated reporting tool within the software, these are available at the click of a button. In the backend, you define the parameters you want to use to analyze the data. One click, and the reports are ready.
7. You can increase transparency regarding activities and marketing initiatives
Marketing automation also allows you to increase transparency across all activities and marketing initiatives. Why is that? Because you map all workflows in a central location, so your metrics are based on accurate, comprehensive figures.
8. You can automatically personalize your content
You’re probably familiar with newsletters that address you by name. With marketing automation, you can do so much more than just personalize the name in an email. From the person’s location and job title to their language and even individualized, personalized content—and so on. However, it’s important not to overdo it here. Too much personalization—or personalization in the wrong places—can quickly come across as creepy.
9. Marketing automation saves you time
Whether it’s lead generation, sending recurring emails, or administrative tasks, software like this frees up much more of your time for what really matters. Thanks to this software, your sales colleagues can finally focus again on what they do best: selling.
Now that we’ve clarified what this type of software does, how can you implement marketing automation? — We’ll shed some light on the matter.
How can you implement marketing automation in your company?
You need someone to handle the design and optimization of the processes to be automated. Ideally, this would be a marketing automation manager. This person works closely with the marketing and sales teams. When implementing a marketing automation system, you should therefore also hire a marketing automation manager.
A marketing automation manager is a project manager who is not only an expert in marketing but also technically skilled.
After all, it’s no longer just about campaigns. His focus is on how these are coordinated using CRM, Marketing Cloud, and presumably a few interfaces.
Similarly, a marketing automation manager should be familiar with various marketing tools, such as email marketing and lead generation.
A marketing automation manager must…
- also have sales experience if he works in the B2B sector
- serve as a bridge between marketing and sales
- fulfill its primary task of organizing the various activities into a coherent whole
Online marketing automation software offers many advantages, but you’ll also need a marketing automation manager to make the most of it. Are you still unsure how many companies are already using this technology? No problem! We’ve put together a summary for you…
How many companies use online marketing automation software?
More than 50% are already using this type of software. And 58% of B2B companies plan to adopt this technology.
Research and Markets even projects that the global market for marketing automation will reach 8.26 billion euros by 2027.
Even though global marketing spending is declining, Forrester Research predicts that CMOs’ investments in marketing automation will increase.
From 2019 through the end of 2020, 20% more companies were using online marketing automation software. Less successful companies were only half as likely to have implemented this type of software as those with above-average success.
What are the top three reasons for implementing this type of software? Mapping the marketing cycle (> 65%), improving lead management capabilities, and leveraging technology. Reducing silo mentality across different departments is also among the reasons cited by nearly one in five companies.
And it works. The 2021 Marketing Automation Study shows that 75% of companies have improved collaboration between marketing and sales. More than 4/5 of the study participants are either completely satisfied or satisfied with the software they chose.
Would you also like to use software like this to support your business? We’ve put together an overview to help you find the right one for you.
A Comparison of Online Marketing Automation Software
We’ve all been there—that feeling of uncertainty before making a purchase. Sometimes we just can’t decide on a product.
Why not, actually? The challenge is that our decision is based on many factors. Feature set, purchase price, and appearance are three of these possible factors.
In the following paragraphs, we’d like to offer you some guidance to help you make your choice. We’ve compiled a table listing the 5 best online marketing automation software solutions for you:
Conclusion
If you’re still not quite sure which software is best for you, we recommend HubSpot.
HubSpot is easy and intuitive to use. Plus, you don’t need any programming knowledge.
HubSpot also offers excellent support, has a great community, and features its own Learning Center.
With HubSpot, you get a free, integrated CRM along with powerful reporting capabilities. HubSpot is considered the ultimate platform when it comes to integrating other digital marketing and sales tools. It offers 1,000 different options. If the Enterprise plan is too expensive for you, you can try the Starter plan, though its features are limited. So if, for example, you’re a startup and can’t afford HubSpot yet, we’d recommend ActiveCampaign, as it’s an easy-to-use entry-level software.
However, if you simply need assistance or support with implementation and getting started, we would still recommend HubSpot. As a certified HubSpot partner, we’d be happy to advise you.
