Marketing automation software is an advanced platform designed to help marketers plan marketing campaigns, assess buying intent across different channels like websites and social media, capture leads, nurture them through the marketing funnel until they become qualified sales leads, and analyze campaign performance and lead behavior. Marketing automation software streamlines and simplifies some of the most time-consuming marketing responsibilities, making it an essential tool for B2C and B2B companies looking to connect with potential customers.
Marketing automation is often done as part of a customer relationship management (CRM) system. According to research, B2C marketers who are using automation can gain conversion rates as high as 50%. Moreover, about 95% of companies report benefits from marketing automation software.
Common marketing automation features
Marketing automation software incorporates a number of features, including:
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Email marketing: Email remains one of the most effective marketing strategies despite some customers having grown jaded due to some marketers abuse of the medium. Marketing automation software allows users to send emails to segmented audiences, and more advanced systems can send triggered emails after prospects take a specific action such as downloading certain content or filling out a form
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Lead nurturing: Lead nurturing is segmenting, tracking, and communicating with leads to turn them into prospects for sales teams.
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Social media: Marketing automation software often comes with social analytics tools to track audience interaction across social platforms. More advanced software can include creating polls, referral programs, and sweepstakes.
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Analytics and reporting: One of the biggest benefits of marketing automation software is getting in-depth analytics, with dashboards that can look like business intelligence software interfaces, displaying the most important KPIs for a user’s marketing programs
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Paid media, SEO, and digital advertising: These features help marketing reps run paid campaigns from the centralized marketing tool
Benefits of marketing automation software
Marketing automation software offers businesses a number of benefits by:
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Automating time-consuming manual tasks
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Using multiple channels to create more comprehensive prospect profiles
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Unifying sales and marketing teams by setting scoring parameters and defining qualified leads
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Increasing lead conversion and ROI
