Marketing Automation attempts to streamline sales and marketing in an
efficient way through engaging campaigns meant to automatically appeal to customer/prospective customer behaviour by
replacing recurring manual processes
with automated tasks and reducing
human errors. The criteria, possible outcomes and processes are pre-defined;
these are interpreted, stored internally and executed by the software.
Right channel + right message + right person + right time
= Greater likelihood of converting prospects into actual sales
Every customer is unique and so are his/her demands, preferences and
choices. Consequently, automated campaigns run the risk of failing if there’s a
disconnect between what they offer and what the customer is interested in; they
stand to succeed more when the gap between their content and the customer’s
unique needs is as minimal as possible.
Marketing Automation enables companies to handle lead flows better by
optimizing marketing programmes. Improved response rates to campaigns help
companies gain better ROI by creating a more productive revenue cycle, syncing results
with approach and increasing profits through a better lead conversion rate.
Since automation provides a platform for continuous accumulation, assimilation
and analysis of data, predicting customer information and behavioural patterns
acquires a new edge. Reviews on social sites are also a great way of garnering
information in the form of feedback.
While Marketing Automation is an integral part of effective CRM, its
scope goes beyond that. It can be used to create an automated-yet-personalized bridge between company and customer by
taking the latter from “unaware and interested” to “engaged and loyal” in the Customer Engagement Continuum. It gives
the customer what he/she wants, yet imparts a dash of novelty to each serving,
thereby increasing profitability by being consistent, relevant and personalized.
Consider old TV ads like “Hamara Bajaj” and “Cadbury Kya Swaad Hai
Zindagi Mein”. The Cadbury commercials harped on happiness, which is experienced [when the brain releases serotonin
and dopamine] upon chocolate consumption. Similarly, the Bajaj ads focussed on
the family-oriented existence of the
middle class by playing up the loyalty
theme. These ads generated a feeling of being
personalized despite being mass-market vehicles for their respective
products. This is the ultimate goal of Marketing Automation: creating
personalized content despite automated, low-human-involvement processes.
Maximum ROI can be achieved through Marketing Automation by constantly
looking out for new leads and striving to understand their needs to be able to
provide an optimum solution, analysing customer behaviour minutely, engaging
with them rigorously and consistently to be considered ‘renewable’, providing complimentary
solutions based on their digital behaviour instead of aggressively pushing
unwanted products and services and ensuring customer satisfaction through
systematic and regular follow-up.
The whole point of
deploying automated campaigns is not to merely cut down on human effort, but to
create a design that attracts strangers, turns them into interested
and regular visitors, further converts them into prospective leads,
creates customers out of them through personalized and engaging
communication and ultimately, gets them to act as willing promoters of your brand—without
sacrificing creativity and human connect for automation.
[Image courtesy: Google Images]
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