Marketing automation is the use of software to automatically manage marketing processes and campaigns across multiple channels. It handles routine tasks on its own without needing any human action; this allows businesses to target customers with automated messages and campaigns across the web, email, text and social platforms.
Messages will be sent automatically according to a preset schedule or instructions called workflows. Some common marketing automation workflows include personalised advertising, lead generation, nurturing and scoring, lead prioritisation, behavioural targeting and email marketing. Workflows may be custom-built from scratch, defined by templates or modified mid-campaign to get the marketing results you desire.
By automating certain marketing tasks, marketing teams and businesses can function better with less workload and provide more relevant and personalised content for prospects and customers. They can also save time and money, increase revenue and maximise efficiency. Most importantly human error will be reduced in marketing campaigns.
What Does Marketing Automation Mean for the Customer Journey?
Marketing automation has so many benefits, but they are not all for the business or marketing team alone, the customers also share the amazing experience. With marketing automation, you can tailor every one of your customers’ interactions based on customer data to create a consistent, and seamless journey for them through the marketing funnel.
Marketing automation makes it very easy to create content at scale across multiple marketing channels. It offers advanced personalisation for email messages that go far beyond the first name in the subject line, the entire content can be tailored to their needs. You can also integrate mobile messaging with your social and email campaigns through push notifications, SMS/MMS, and group messaging.
Your customers will get to see relevant ads that appear at the right time and recommendations on your websites that suit their needs based on previous data. So generally marketing automation benefits the business and also makes brand interaction a lot easier for prospects and customers with consistent engagement and direction as they progress in their journey to becoming loyal customers.