Why Use Marketing Automation

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Why use automation and email marketing?

Standing out in today’s email landscape has never been more difficult — or more rewarding.

In 2019 293.6 billion emails were sent each day. And that number is expected to rise to 347.3 billion daily emails by 2022.
With the average user receiving 121 emails a day, you might be tempted to think that all the work it takes to cut through the noise isn’t worth it.

But, in 2019, the Direct Marketing Association reported a 4200% return on spend among 197 surveyed marketers. That’s $42 return on every $1 spent. This wasn’t accomplished by just sending more emails and seeing what sticks. Fewer emails than ever are reaching the recipient’s inbox. This incredible return was accomplished by sending smarter, more strategic emails and using the best marketing automation strategies.

Don’t leave money on the table.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is the use of a software platform to automate repetitive marketing tasks. These platforms are typically associated with email marketing but can also automate tasks within lead segmentation, lead scoring, and sales processes.

As you visit sites and engage with companies online, your actions are most often recorded and segmented so the company can help you along the buying process effectively. If you visit pricing pages, download eBooks, subscribe to newsletters, and more, you’re helping the company understand who you are and how they might earn you as a customer.

Using these platforms and segment information, a business can send valuable, relevant information to customers at the right time in their customer journey.

What are the benefits of marketing automation?

Marketing automation is an incredibly versatile tool that can help your business accomplish a variety of goals. Automation can help you optimize and shorten sales cycles, lose fewer leads, deliver segmented content to unique audiences, and more. Below are some of the most common benefits that businesses can see from an effective marketing automation strategy.

What email marketing can accomplish:

  • Attract and build a list of leads and potential customers
  • Automate repetitive tasks like rescheduling and abandoned carts
  • Automate CRM tasks like lead status, customer type, and buyer stage
  • Provide timely updates and promotions directly to interested buyers
  • Nurture and propel leads through the buyer’s journey
  • Build and nurture customer relationships through timely and helpful content

Customer Relationships and Automation

Customers today have a variety of choices for every product and service, and it’s never been easier to share customer experiences online. 84% of customers state that they trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Considering how much rests upon your customer reputation, it’s more important than ever that you manage that relationship proactively and effectively.

Marketing automation software can help you build a quality reputation online by serving your customers in a timely and efficient manner.

Some of the ways automation can help manage customer relationships:

  • Sending thank you and confirmation emails after subscriptions and purchases
  • Sending customers relevant FAQ content after they’ve made a purchase
  • Reminding customers promptly about scheduled maintenance or other time-centric concerns they might have
  • Emailing customers review invites at a specific point in the buyer’s journey
  • Emailing customers if they visit critical pages such as cancelation or complaint pages

What are marketing automation platforms?

Choosing a marketing automation platform can be overwhelming. There’s a significant variety of choices with different features and prices. Some platforms are all-in-one and can host your entire marketing and sales automation strategy. Some are small and will help you manage essential email campaigns and tasks. What’s more important than any one specific service is that you choose one that fits with your company’s short and medium-term goals.

Switching from platform to platform is an incredibly time-consuming task. We strongly recommend choosing a platform that will meet your needs not only today but years down the road.

Popular Automation Platforms

  • HubSpot
  • Marketo
  • ActiveCampaign
  • Drip
  • ConvertKit
  • Infusionsoft

How do you get started with marketing automation?

If you’d like to learn more about how marketing automation can help you and your business, and how to get started, you can read more from our eBook on the marketing automation fundamentals.

If you’d like to speak with an Epic Marketing representative about being your trusted email automation partner, fill out the form at the bottom of the page, and we’ll get in touch!

What is lead generation?

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Lead Generation

The lead generation process helps you build interest in your products and acquire new customer leads. These leads can be gathered through a variety of channels like eBooks, guides, webinars, online tools and more. These leads are often created for list building, lead nurture or sales outreach.

Lead generation (creating new interest in your product or service) is an essential part of any business wishing to grow. Even if you only operate out of a single brick and mortar location, new customer foot traffic past your storefront is naturally a part of your lead generation strategy. Most businesses today need to find ways of generating this same spark of interest—but have to do so online.

Gathering leads online poses new, unique challenges that the physical storefront may not have. The first, most apparent issue, is that “foot traffic” is difficult to come by online. Traffic must be earned through SEO, social media channels, or bought with ads. But once you are able to bring people to your site, you’re still not done.

Information is the currency of the web. You may want the visitor to subscribe, fill out a form, or leave their name and email, but the visitor won’t do this without anything in exchange. Giving the visitor a reason to exchange their information is called providing a value offer but is also referred to as lead magnet, or lead bait.

We’re lucky to have so many value offer options when choosing a lead generation strategy. The basic plan is to offer an asset of real value for free in exchange for contact information such as name, email, or other helpful information.
Some of these list-building options involve in-person interaction. Some are entirely online. Choosing what fits best within your marketing plan is more important than choosing any one specific strategy.

Value Offers

  • eBooks
  • Guides
  • Videos
  • Templates
  • Case Studies
  • Webinars
  • Online Tools
  • Workbooks
  • Cheat Sheets
  • Memberships
  • Offers/Coupons

    • No one lead magnet is best. What’s most important is that it’s perceived to have value to your customer and delivers on that promised value. Think about when you give out your email address. Users guard their email and will only exchange it when they believe and trust that the exchange will be worthwhile.

    The best lead magnets have several standard features.

    1. Addresses a real problem that your customer faces.
    2. Promises a quick win.
    3. Are specific in the value offered.
    4. Are easily assessed or digested.
    5. Perceived as high-value.
    6. Instantly available.
    7. Relevant to the host’s domain.

    Once you’re driving traffic to your site and gathering leads with your value offers, you’re generating leads! If your traffic sources are organic and earned, you can anticipate a steady flow of leads as long as you maintain your earned traffic. If your traffic is bought through ads, you can monitor the flow of leads and adjust your traffic accordingly.

    Is lead generation sales or marketing?

    The lead generation process is typically owned by the marketing team but is definitely developed and maintained through collaboration with sales. It’s helpful to think of lead generation as a feedback loop between the leads delivered by marketing, and their sales experience. You can increase your lead quality by closely monitoring results and encouraging communication between your sales and marketing teams.

    It’s important to remember that once you’ve captured a lead, there’s still much more to do. After the lead is earned, you’ll need to nurture your leads.

    Lead Nurture

    Lead nurturing is the practice of helping your contact down the sales funnel by delivering timely and relevant content. This is accomplished by thorough lead segmentation, and message personalization.
    Lead nurture is the process of building relationships and trust with your customers. Answering their questions, and delivering value through the customer experience. The types of content that a customer finds valuable will change as they progress through the sales process. Lead nurture is where you deliver those valuable interactions at the right time.

      Lead Segmentation
      Segmentation is the process of separating your contact list into groups by a chosen characteristic. These groups can be qualities of the contact themselves, such as income or interests. These identifiers can, and should, also include sales-actions indicating the buyer’s journey position. You likely have a variety of customers. Creating unique experiences for them is a powerful way to build relationships, and increase sales.
      Personalization
      Automation platforms allow for a variety of personalization options. These options can include contact names in the subject lines or email bodies to changing pieces of content (like images) on a webpage to match a segmented group of visitors.
      Timely and Relevant Value
      Once you’re segmenting your audience and personalizing the customer experience, your focus should be to provide valuable and timely assets to help them along the buyer’s journey. The types of emails, links, and content that are helpful and appreciated early on in the decision process are much different from those that are appreciated near the end.

      For example, near the beginning of a customer’s experience with your brand, they might appreciate content explaining your product or service. Near the middle of the journey, they might want content comparing similar products or companies via pricing guides or feature comparisons. Near the end, a customer might be concerned with return policies, guarantees, promotions, or bundles

      Your Marketing Automation Strategy
      Effective lead generation is an important part of every business. With powerful and effective marketing automation, your lead generation strategies can help you reach your business goals.

      If you’d like to learn more about marketing automation, lead generation, and what it can do for your business, you can read more in our marketing automation essentials eBook.

    If you’d like to see how Epic Marketing can help your business develop effective lead generation, fill out our form at the bottom of the page and we’ll get in touch with you right away.

    What is marketing automation?

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    Marketing automation is the use of a software platform to automate repetitive marketing tasks. These platforms are typically associated with email marketing but can also automate tasks within lead segmentation, lead scoring, and sales processes.

    You interact with marketing automation every day. If you’ve ever left something in an online shopping cart for more than a few hours, you’ve almost certainly received an email trying to pull you back to the purchase. If you still don’t return and complete the sale you may have even started receiving offers and discounts to your inbox trying to sway you back. These marketing events were triggered by your actions and sent autonomously from an automation platform.

    As you visit sites and engage with companies online, your actions are most often recorded and segmented so the company can help you along the buying process effectively. If you visit pricing pages, download eBooks, subscribe to newsletters, and more, you’re helping the company understand who you are and how they might earn you as a customer.

    What does good marketing automation look like?

    Good marketing automation is an organic and natural extension of the company/customer interaction.

    Typically, marketing automation begins when a customer exchanges their contact information (name and email) for something that they perceive as being valuable such as an eBook or blog subscription. This process is called lead generation.

    When the customer subscribes to your blog they’re expecting to receive content similar to that which led them to subscribe. They’re expecting valuable, relevant information. They didn’t give the company license to endlessly fill their inbox with deals and promotions. When you do send this valuable, relevant content, you might link to further learning about your product or service.

    If the customer does start visiting pages about your product, then sending resources like FAQs, webinars or other comparable content can be helpful and timely.

    Maybe, the subscriber starts visiting competitor comparison pages, perhaps even pricing pages. You might send them an email asking if they have any questions about your product. And you might send an email from one of your sales representatives with their calendar availability. Testimonials, video demonstrations, and more can be helpful and powerful content to receive when making a purchase decision.

    All of these actions can take place autonomously. With little to no sales engagement. Helping your customer along the sales process naturally and empowering the customer to make decisions.

    What email marketing can accomplish:
    Attract and build a list of leads and potential customers
    Automate repetitive tasks like rescheduling and abandoned carts
    Automate CRM tasks like lead status, customer type, and buyer stage
    Provide timely updates and promotions directly to interested buyers
    Nurture and propel leads through the buyer’s journey
    Build and nurture customer relationships through timely and helpful content

    What email marketing won’t accomplish:
    Email marketing doesn’t open the door to list-buying. Cold-outreach may still have a place in some sales plans. But it’s widely considered ineffective and self-damaging to buy lists and perform cold-outreach.
    Email marketing won’t move customers directly to ready-to-buy stages. Only 27% of leads sent to sales are qualified to buy. Email marketing helps customers move from stage to stage in the buyer’s journey; it doesn’t move buyers straight to the ready-to-buy stage.

    How does marketing automation fit into the customer journey?

    Every business is different, so exactly how automation fits into your buyer’s journey will be unique. But for most businesses marketing automation is the framework that sits between almost every marketing event.

    Marketing automation can help capture new leads, nurture leads, close deals, boost up customer support, and encourage customer evangelism.

    What is the value of marketing automation?

    Effective email and marketing automation is consistently one of the highest-return marketing actions. This is because email marketing is one of the few channels that businesses typically can access where they can go to the customer instead of waiting for the customer to come to them.

    By meticulously assisting your customers through the buyer’s journey, you build trust and empower them to make purchasing decisions. According to the Direct Marketing Association, companies typically see a $42 return for every $1 spent with an effective automation strategy. With marketing automation, you can build a business that creates customers for life.

    How do you get started with marketing automation?

    If you’d like to learn more about how marketing automation can help you and your business, and how to get started, you can read more from our eBook on the marketing automation fundamentals.

    If you’d like to speak with an Epic Marketing representative about what we could do for you, fill out the form at the bottom of the page, and we’ll get in touch!