Sending an email blast to your entire database, failing to target your audience, or emailing without permission are just a few examples of email marketing tactics that are not only dated but also unwanted, and likely to get your company blacklisted.
The days of sending out mass emails to reach potential buyers and expecting a return on investment are over. Simply put, if your marketing automation strategy is characterized by an email service provider (ESP) alone, the industry has left you behind. Today marketers must bring value in exchange for mindshare. In this new economy based on attention and engagement, marketing automation tools have advanced beyond the functionality of common email marketing solutions, such as sending mass emails and tracking opens and clicks, to offer a much broader data analytics infrastructure, aligning target marketing tactics to reach the right person at the right time with the right message.
An advanced marketing automation tool can ensure marketing strategies stay efficient, consumer-focused and competitive in a crowded digital marketplace. In fact, 75 percent of all businesses that use a valid marketing automation system see positive return on investment the first year.
Here are four reasons why this approach is superior to traditional email marketing:
Buyers want and expect personal engagement
Consumers are becoming much savvier. In fact, industry statistics suggest that 57 percent of the buyer’s journey is completed before they engage a sales representative, and 78 percent expect personalized interaction based on their interests. These trends underscore the need for tactics to reach potential prospects earlier in the discovery process as well as provide relevant information based on where they are in the journey.
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Traditional email marketing tactics that have existed since the late 1990s have reached their limits in terms of targeting potential buyers in a meaningful, value-added way. Without a method for identifying a prospect’s demographics or level of interest, marketing professionals are limited in their ability to personalize outreach.
Advanced tracking features provided through marketing automation solutions offer the functionality needed to track leads and group them according to predetermined parameters. Audiences can be sorted by demographics, high-priority leads, cold leads or for targeted campaigns based on where they are in the sales cycle. Emails can be automatically triggered based on customer behavior and engagement, ensuring that content is timely and relevant and improving interaction that leads to customer wins.
Wrap it up and put a bow on it with integrated communications
Marketing automation is a major time-saver. In fact, 36 percent of marketers state that marketing automation systems help them get more out of their efforts by taking repetitive tasks out of their hands. When email marketing, content management, social media marketing and lead management are integrated into one platform of analytics, the efficiencies created are impressive.
Leads come from variety of sources, and marketing professionals must be able to tie all this information together to garner a clear picture of where a lead is in the buying process. Without a consolidated platform, marketing professionals are left to sifting through a variety of reports from such sources as Google Analytics, Hootsuite or Salesforce to determine the status of a lead.
Marketing automation solutions bring these tools together and equip marketing professionals with critical knowledge of how each is performing and how efforts to drive inbound leads across channels needs to be tweaked or enhanced. The end result is greater efficiency to focus on higher-level lead generation initiatives and better decision making.
A few good leads beat a bunch of tirekickers any day of the week
Traditional email marketing efforts provide no way to qualify leads. Marketing professionals are stuck making critical decisions based on the limited information produced by open rates and clicks data.
By contrast, a marketing automation platform with a foundation of analytics enables leads to be scored and graded based on key identifiers. Information is tracked based on how a prospect is engaging with online content, and demographics data is graded based on a pre-defined customer profile. By blending lead score and grade, marketing professionals can pass on the most qualified leads to sales, streamlining the sales lifecycle.
Marketing automation improves revenue tracking
Across industry verticals, marketing professionals must do more with less by leveraging lean strategies to make the most of investment dollars. Marketing automation enables professionals to shift the focus from metrics that have limited meaning to more weighty statistics that reveal cost per lead and cost per opportunity.
Automation helps organizations of all sizes monitor and manage truly integrated marketing campaigns. Equipped with more powerful data that ties the value of campaigns back to closed deals, marketing professionals can make better decisions about resource allocation. They can also more effectively present the business case for high-value campaigns and initiatives back to the C-suite for future consideration.
Say goodbye to email marketing and its one-size-fits-all approach for good. Marketing automation’s powerful combination of features can extend the value of digital marketing efforts well beyond what is offered through email marketing tools, helping organizations of all sizes manage truly integrated marketing campaigns.
Out With the Old Email Marketing and In With the New Marketing Automation
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