The Basics Of Marketing Automation Systems

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.

The process starts when marking individuals or the department involved in marketing specifies what outcome they would like to have from any process or task that touches on marketing. The software picks up the commands, makes a quick interpretation, and implements them as needed. It is efficient and not prone to error as humans are. In the recent past, such systems have been used to analyze behavior online and its effect on overall results. Cloud hosting enables clients to use the platform as a service.

There are three distinct categories of the common Marketing Automation platforms. The commonest one does the work of collecting how the company is interacting with its online visitors. This function is called marketing Intelligence. Codes are set to track the behavior of visitors that interact with the products. They could have interacted with your firm on email, on social media or other online channel. The software goes further to measure the probability of buying the product.

A good example of tracking is recording when one clicks a link in the email, capturing what search terms visitors use when accessing the website, detecting what forum thread is attracting many visitors and getting to know what social media group is attracting many visitors. The retailing team uses this feedback to develop plans that match the prospects interest.

Developments have also brought platforms with the sole aim of moving prospects down the sales funnel. Normal visitors are guides slowly until they are hot customers in waiting. The software scores the prospects in the normal interaction with the online presence of the brand and help nurture their interest until they are ready to buy.

There are sales cycles used in the process. The most common ones include B2G (Business-to-government, B2B (Business-to-Business), and B2C (Business-to-Consumer). Marketers use these platforms to mix the traditional email retailing with a structured process of business. They do not have to chase customers that are not interested in a product, but keep in contact to those who are warming up to the products.

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.

The rules that these programs follow are set by a CRM administrator. On their part, the platforms trigger other process to be implemented by other programs or by the sales team. These may be sending newsletter, emails, and uploading some marketing files. Marketing automation makes retailing faster and is less prone to human error.




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