What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation is an increasingly common name for processes and software that automates digital marketing and generates leads.
Marketing Automation is software and processes that are based on your website and that are linked to your e-mail system. The software makes it easier for you as a marketer to identify, manage and convert qualified leads as everything happens automatically.
Important to note: the software does not replace you as a marketer but rather helps you become more efficient!
Without exaggeration, Marketing Automation can transform your website into a full-fledged lead engine that spits out new qualified leads every day and provides valuable value for your leads in exchange. An increasing number of Swedish companies, large and small, have caught the eye for the last few years.
How Does Marketing Automation Work?
Marketing Automation works using web-based software whose script is embedded into your website’s source code. The software records the behavior of your visitors and talks to other systems eg. as a newsletter or CRM tool.
Visitor engagement is measured with the Scoring Marketing Automation software, which saves all visits to the site and scores them according to the visitor’s engagement, so-called “scoring”. Visitor interest profile is built up Every time someone visits your website, information about the visit is stored and the visitor’s interest profile is built on. The interest profile tells you what the visitor is interested in, based on the historical behavior of the site. The interest profile also tells you to what extent the visitor is interested, thanks to the points system.
The visitor is identified and becomes a lead – Lead Capturing On the day the visitor leaves contact information on the website, the information is linked to the interest profile. This step is called “Lead Capturing” and can occur when eg. a visitor downloads a guide to leave the e-mail address or fill out a contact form.
This makes it much easier to personalize your communication with an identified visitor (a lead), both digitally and analogously. In what way is it Automatic?
The Marketing Automation tool gives you a clear overview of your leads and can treat them as individuals. You can group them and qualify them and respond to them according to their interests. This is called “Lead Management”.
The automation part itself is based on the fact that the software can automatically trigger mail campaigns and e-mail messages (which have been prepared in advance), as your lead has a certain interest in the website. An educational example of Marketing Automation run a spa with organic treatments and offer your website visitors a download of a PDF with information on how to make one of the face masks at home. If you provide the PDF in exchange for an e-mail address, the visitor’s profile can be linked to the address while saving the information.
Lead nurturing – automatic processing of leads When the visitor comes in next time and spends a lot of time on your facial treatment pages, the software can send an email to the visitor’s specified e-mail address such as describes the difference between organic and non-organic face masks.
If the same person clicks on one of the links in that email (and thus exhibits a behavior that can be interpreted as a commitment or interest in your offers), the software can send another email with eg. a discount check that corresponds to the customer’s interests eg; “30% discount on first facial treatment”. This way you push their lead closer to the end and you finally have a qualified lead ready to buy your services or products.
Marketing Automation enables multiple “nurturing processes” at the same time, which means that your leads are constantly processed so that they eventually become paying customers.
What does it take to succeed?
Interesting Content is crucial.
A prerequisite for success with Marketing Automation is to offer interesting content on the site that attracts visitors but also gives visitors a content to immerse themselves in. This makes it easier to measure visitors’ interests depending on what they read. In addition, it is good to be able to offer reasons for capturing visitors’ e-mail addresses, either through “call to actions” and contact forms or content that becomes available in exchange for the e-mail address – so-called White-Papers.
A smart marketing automation software – with as low thresholds as possible To succeed with the automation processes you need an intelligent Marketing Automation tool. Regardless of which tool you choose, you will initially expect a high learning curve and a high calibration curve. Unfortunately, at the same time you will get quite a bit back. But over time, automation takes over and the exchange becomes extremely valuable.
To reduce the thresholds and get started faster, it may be advantageous to choose a Marketing Automation tool that already works with your existing systems, such as newsletter systems, CRM, your existing web platform, etc., instead of having to replace all of them.
