Wednesday 20 May 2015

What Does Marketing Automation Systems Entails

By Tammie Caldwell


When thinking of automating marketing processes, you are referring to technologies and some software platforms that would help your marketing workforce or the whole organization ( if it is a marketing firm) become more effective in pushing your products in various online marketing channels. Such channels may include the use of email marketing, landing pages on websites and various social media sites. They remove the need of having a human do repetitive tasks that require attention online. However, commands must be specified to trigger them to action. All these shows the essence of the Marketing Automation systems.

Your marketing team will define what outcome they need from the platforms. They then specify the route the task that will lead to the desired outcome. The software takes in the commands, interprets them and implements what is required. The software is very efficient unlike human effort. Recent developments have made the platforms even better in analyzing visitors behavior and how to influence them to reach marketing goals. These software are normally hosted on cloud and used as a service.

Marketing automation comes in three distinct categories, The first is all about collecting relevant information from interactions with the prospects. Marketers refer this as marketing intelligence. The software is used to track visitor behavior online by use of codes. It tracks people interested on company products in the website, social media, and those emailed by the sales team. It also measures the intent to buy.

Examples of tracking includes recording the link that was clicked in an email, search terms that visitors used to access a website, a forum thread that was followed or a social media group that has so many followers. Buyer behavior can be tracked by use of such links for a product x. This feedback helps the retailing team develop programs that are in line with the interests of the prospects.

There are marketing automation platforms whose main aim is to move prospects down a retailing funnel. This turns prospects to hot prospects that are ready for sales proposals. The platforms score clients as they interact with the brand online and slowly create interest in the products until prospects become clients.

Commonly used sales cycles include (B2B) Business-to-business, B2C (Business-to consumer and B2G (Business-to-government). In essence, this is a mix of typical email marketing enjoined with structured business processes. This helps avoid following clients that have no intention to buy from the company and follow those that have shown interest in the products and services that the company is promoting.

Finally, workflow automation is concerned with the internal bit of the sales cycle. When worked manually, this component tends to delay the whole buying process. Such activities as formulating a marketing calendar, internal collaboration, planning and budgeting can be automated with much ease.

Your CRM administrator feeds the software with the rules and directions. The software then activate other actions needed to be done by the sales team when needed. For example, it may remind them to send emails, design marketing material, or call a client. With marketing automation you are more efficient with very few errors.




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