Out With the Old Email Marketing and In With the New Marketing Automation

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.

Author: Nicole Wojno

Wojno oversees all marketing automation and content marketing services for Dodge and the agency’s clients, serving as the lead strategist for these accounts. In this role, she works with clients to understand their goals and develop a custom plan to nurture prospects, convert them to customers and deliver measurable ROI…. View full profile ›

Out With the Old Email Marketing and In With the New Marketing Automation

Beyond Email: Use Multi-channel Marketing Automation to Generate and Nurture Leads

While marketing automation is a hot topic across industries, many marketers are daunted by the complexities of combining customer journeys, content strategies, and dense technologies. Marketing automation technology allows marketers to generate and nurture leads with sequenced, segmented, and automated campaigns that deliver content at scale, with minimal intervention. Automation can be used to dynamically change content; test messaging; and sequence messages and notifications. As with any marketing initiative, the goal should always be focused on providing content that benefits your customers.

Here are some of the simplest ways to use automation to generate and nurture leads now.

Email

Email is the granddaddy of marketing automation. It’s the best documented and most mature automation channel, and is the gateway to automation for many marketers. There are several types of emails that can be automated:

• Lead nurturing – Lead nurturing is an integral part of a successful marketing strategy, and it builds relationships at scale. Craft content that guides a potential customer through the purchasing process, incorporating third-party reviews, purchase incentives, a sense of urgency, and strong calls to action.


• Existing customer programs – Encouraging repeat purchases increases the lifetime value of your customers. If your product has a typical expiration or consumption rate, you can automate emails reminding customers to make their next purchase. You can also automate product recommendations based on past purchase behavior, broadening the customer’s awareness of your products and services.


• Cart abandonment – If a customer adds an item to their cart, and then abandons their cart before purchasing, you can automate a retargeting workflow that triggers an email to the customer with a discount code or other incentive to buy now.


• Feedback requests – Sending a well-timed message requesting customers leave an online review of a recent purchase is an efficient way to improve product ratings and reviews while gathering important feedback that strengthens your connection with existing customers.

Social Media

While social media is expected to be Always-On, your social media manager doesn’t need to be ever-present. The advantages of social media automation are as much about consistency and optimization as they are about time savings and reduced demand on resources.

• Scheduling – Content schedulers allow you to manage your content by day, week, or month and can be set up to auto publish for specific times and dates. Social media automation tools also use algorithms to optimize posts to increase the likelihood of engagement. These algorithms look beyond general best practices, and consider the engagement behavior of your followers. There are tools to manage auto-paid social advertising, which is key for improving reach and engagement.


• DMs – There are several tools that can automate direct messages to new followers. However, while many marketers want and use this feature, there’s little evidence to suggest that it works.


• Multi-platform publishing – These tools allow marketers to manage their social media content for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more from a single dashboard. However, marketers should still customize the content for each platform and its audience.


• Analytics – You can schedule standard reports for your social media platforms rather than manually running the reports each day, week, or month.

Website

Website automation is the use of special programs and other tools to manage website information. As site visitors increasingly demand precise targeting tools, marketers turn to marketing automation to optimize customer experiences and improve conversion rates.

• Shopping cart – Marketing automation can be used to reengage consumers who have abandoned their purchase after they’ve filled their shopping cart. Using behavior data as an indication of purchase intent, automation software can personalize banner ads, emails, and landing pages to reflect the interest of an individual customer.


• Retargeting ads – By implementing a sequence of JavaScript on each page of a website, retargeting or tracking IDs create a cookie or pixel that follows visitors after they leave a site. Marketers can publish banner ads that reinforce brand awareness, promote content, or encourage a purchase. This technique is among the most highly adopted lead generation tactics in use today.

Mobile

Customers have come to expect a complete experience from brands that spans time, space, and devices. Mobile marketing automation has the added complexity of context such as location and environment, but it also presents an opportunity to deliver value to your customers when they are most captive and interested in hearing from your brand.

• Location-based marketing: With GPS, geo-fencing, and iBeacon technology, marketers can present messages based on a customer’s physical location.


• Event-based triggers: Marketers can send personalized push notifications based on specific in-app behaviors


• SMS: Use SMS or “short messaging service” to market loyalty programs and communicate with your most active and opted in customers. SMS can also be automated to deliver service alerts and to keep customers aware of product status throughout their customer experience.

Despite claims to the contrary, marketing automation doesn’t exist to make marketing easier – the value of marketing automation is that it makes programs better. Use automation software to deliver a more consistent message, better track results, and to be there for your customers when they need you. Automated programs should be kept in balance with a personalized and approachable marketing content strategy that makes it clear people are behind the brand. 

Beyond Email: Use Multi-channel Marketing Automation to Generate and Nurture Leads

3 Steps To Integrate Video With Email Marketing Automation

Many marketers have found that adding video to their email programs drives increased engagement and customer loyalty. People love watching videos online (4 billion video views on Facebook alone in 2014), and they aren’t all cat videos and sport bloopers.

Emails with “video” in the subject line have a 65% higher click-through rate on average, according to Vidcaster. When video is a central part of your email campaign, the CTR can be 200% higher than a similar campaign without video.

Email Video Strategies: Two B2C Examples

Video can help you cut costs and increase customer satisfaction as well as identify prospects and move them closer to a purchase decision when you integrate your email video strategy with your marketing automation and ecommerce platforms.

Reduce returns: A sports retailer uses video to help ski-boot buyers fit their new boots correctly and reduce unnecessary returns or customer-service contacts.

Every ski-boot purchase triggers a three-part follow-up emails series, which begins with a how-to video. The series generates a 57% open rate and 26% CTR., but most importantly has reduced costly returns and calls to customer service.

Welcome newcomers: A U.K. sports retailer’s welcome email to new customers and subscribers links to video interviews with the CEO and three customers to explain its flash-sale ordering and fulfillment system.

This email moves new members back to the website and uses video to answer questions and reduce uncertainties about the buying process. While helpful, text and images would not bring the story and value proposition to life as powerfully as interviews with athlete customers and the company’s founder.

3 Steps to a Video-Email Marketing Strategy

The innate activity associated with sports makes video marketing a natural for outfitters, but integrating email and video can help any brand achieve a variety of marketing and business goals.

Here are some suggestions (taken from a webinar I co-presented) for launching a video marketing strategy that incorporates email, ecommerce and marketing automation in a top-to-bottom sales funnel model:

1. Top of the funnel: Just get started.  All you need is a camera (even the one on your phone), a topic and a platform (embed on your website or host on Facebook, YouTube or Vimeo). Most smartphones and desktops have basic recording and editing tools like QuickTime or iMovie, or you can purchase a video editing software solution.

And you need one more thing: a clear business goal for the video. This, in turn, sets up a distinct call to action. Videos at this level can raise awareness and drive traffic to your website.

Your company might even be in the video business already. Scout around for product demo and trouble-shooting videos, even customer/fan videos. Don’t forget your own recorded webinars.

2. Middle: Qualify and move leads faster. Here, prospects reach your website from a public platform (Facebook, YouTube, etc.). Put up a simple lead-generation form that collects identifying information to unlock premium content.

Use that data to launch a drip campaign to these viewers, but watch their video viewing choices for indications that your prospects are closer to buying. This can let you skip ahead a few levels in your campaign schedule and move them to the funnel’s bottom.

At this point, you might need to move from a basic video platform to an enterprise-level program that provides more data management and integration with your marketing-automation program.

3. Bottom: Decision time. At this level, you have enough data on your prospects to point them to the videos that will persuade them to take the business action you want (purchase, sign up for a demo, call for an appointment, etc.).

Where are you on the video spectrum? What works, what doesn’t? Let me know in the comments.

Until next time, take it up a notch!

3 Steps To Integrate Video With Email Marketing Automation

Global Marketing Automation Software Market 2015-2019

NEW YORK, June 1, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — About Marketing Automation Software
Marketing automation is a part of digital marketing software, which focuses on streamlining, scheduling, segmentation, and tracking of marketing campaigns. It helps to reduce repetitive tasks associated with the process. It also provides better user experience and help customers make better purchase decisions. Marketing automation software has features such as email marketing, campaign creation and management, data collection and storage, data analysis, and reporting. Marketing automation connects various marketing channels such as social media, email, and content marketing to collect data and analyze them.
Technavio’s analysts forecast the global marketing automation software market to grow at a CAGR of 9.29% over the period 2014-2019.

Covered in this Report
This report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global marketing automation software market for the period 2015-2019. To calculate the market size, the report considers revenue generated from marketing automation software, solutions, tools, applications, services, support, and maintenance.
Technavio’s report, Global Marketing Automation Software Market 2015-2019, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. It covers market landscape and its growth prospects in the coming years. The report also includes profile of key vendors operating in this market.

Key Regions
– Americas
– APAC
– EMEA

Key Vendors
– Adobe Systems
– IBM
– Oracle
– Salesforce
– SAP
– SAS Institute

Other Prominent Vendors

– Act-On Software
– Cognizant Technology Solutions
– eTrigue
– GreenRope
– Hatchbuck
– HubSpot
– inBoundio
– Infusionsoft
– Marketo
– Peaberry Software
– SharpSpring
– SilverPop Systems
– Teradata

Market Driver
– Increased Adoption of Digital Media
– For a full, detailed list, view our report

Market Challenge
– Selection of Appropriate Solution
– For a full, detailed list, view our report

Market Trend
– Cloud-based Solutions
– For a full, detailed list, view our report

Key Questions Answered in this Report
– What will the market size be in 2019 and what will the growth rate be?
– What are the key market trends?
– What is driving this market?
– What are the challenges to market growth?
– Who are the key vendors in this market space?
– What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?
– What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?
Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p02015360-summary/view-report.html

About Reportlinker
ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution that finds, filters and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need – instantly, in one place.

http://www.reportlinker.com

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Global Marketing Automation Software Market 2015-2019

The Rise of Marketing Automation [Infographic]

Marketing automation has grown to a $1.65 billion industry, according to the following Marketing Automation Insider infographic. An estimated 142,00 businesses now use marketing automation.

Here’s a look at the rise of marketing automation and reasons for its popularity.

The first marketing automation tool was Unica in 1992.

Due to faster Internet speeds in 2006, marketing automation vendors began creating Cloud-based tools.

The emergence and popularity of social media also spurred email marketing vendors to build other automated marketing tools.

To find out more about marketing automation’s growth and reasons for it, click or tap on the infographic:

Veronica Maria Jarski is the Opinions editor and a senior writer at MarketingProfs.

Twitter: @Veronica_Jarski

The Rise of Marketing Automation [Infographic]

Marketing Automation: The ROI Reality [Infographic]

Through the years, there have always been assertions and assurances that particular marketing campaigns will deliver a return on investment (ROI). This may in some instances be the case, but especially before digital, it was always very difficult to equate.

Even in the digital age these assertions continue to proliferate, and in many cases there is no solid evidence made available for these claims, due to the lack of accurate analytical data available. That is, until now.

Real time performance data

Unlike conventional email marketing, Marketing Automation (MA) offers a real time picture of how a marketing campaign is actually performing.

This is because target audience activity data is harvested from a variety of specific touch-points across the campaign, which can range from email engagement (opens and clicks) through to website visits and activity, to video content downloads.

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Fluid interactivity

Real time data harvesting has two big benefits: firstly, it means you can monitor engagement performance levels at each stage of the campaign and secondly, if data indicates stronger levels of engagement will become available through modifying user behaviour slightly, you can do this simply, and in real time.

This means that you not only monitor engagement and therefore ROI, but if data starts indicating new and more effective routes to engagement over your original campaign plan, you can simply make minor adjustments to the communication trend and also help improve ROI performance.

Data harvest optimization

This situation, where you control both campaign communication dynamics, their effect on campaign performance and by extension, campaign ROI, means you are also now interacting directly with your target audience.

And direct interactivity with target audiences is surely a prime objective in any marketing campaign. It is at the pinnacle of all we do in the marketing arena, and is the fast track to campaign success.

Strategic planning is key

Some say marketing automation is lazy marketing. If you understand MA you will know that is untrue. To use MA dynamically in the way described here requires meticulous strategic planning to ensure the chosen communications route remains in alignment with brand values.

This level of carefully considered strategic planning is critical. Deviations from the original plan in order to optimise communication performance must be carefully monitored and having the reference points of the original plan keeps every slight variation under control.

Applying MA in this dynamic form does increase campaign complexity slightly, and requires greater attention to analytical feedback from the communications plan. But if you take this route, you will have no doubts about ROI, because it will be as visible as the campaign is successful.

This post was originally published on the Novacom blog.

Author: William Yates

William Yates is Client Services Director at Novacom, an award-winning strategic B2B digital marketing agency. He works closely with Novacom’s strategic creative and technical teams to deliver highly engaging and powerful strategic digital campaigns for Novacom’s leading global client base…. View full profile ›

Marketing Automation: The ROI Reality [Infographic]

B2B Marketing Automation Platforms 2015: New Market Intelligence Report

Our sister site Digital Marketing Depot has just published a new Market Intelligence Report, “B2B Marketing Automation Platforms 2015.”

You may have noticed the increasing number of options for automating marketing tasks such as landing page development, email marketing, lead nurturing, tracking website visitors and analyzing results. This 46-page report will help you navigate those choices and make a more informed decision about the current market of B2B marketing automation vendors.

This guide analyzes the current market for marketing automation platforms including the types of vendors serving the market and the capabilities available. If you are considering licensing a marketing automation platform, this guide will help you decide whether or not you need to. It provides recommended steps for evaluating which is best for your business and contains profiles of leading vendors.

Click here to download your copy.

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About The Author

Search Engine Land is a daily publication and information site covering search engine industry news, plus SEO, PPC and search engine marketing tips, tactics and strategies. Special content features, site announcements and occasional sponsor messages are posted by Search Engine Land.

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B2B Marketing Automation Platforms 2015: New Market Intelligence Report

Great Ways to Use Marketing Automation to Help You Start Your Own Business

When you start your own business there aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done. Making your life a little easier by using the awesome marketing software we have available to us makes perfect sense. Read on for some innovative ideas that businesses have used to ramp up their marketing efforts and lets learn from what they have done to become the successes they are today…

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Our friends at Pardot marketing automation shared some great insights into how their customers have used their software to great effect:

Using Pardot’s intuitive, efficient, and consistent email functionality, Jet Reports successfully rolled out two new product launches. Web traffic increased by 107%, unique visitors to the site increased by 115%, and the average time spent on the website per visit increased by 35% in Jet Report’s first year using Pardot.

With Pardot, Demand Metric was able to launch online campaigns and begin qualifying leads so the sales team could better allocate their time. Using forms and special offers, Demand Metric began converting visitors to leads, reducing the average number of calls to make a sale from 328 to 70. Now, 1 in 3 demos results in a sale, as opposed to 1 in 12.

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Nurturing leads and building your network is crucial, but also time-consuming. By using marketing automation software, whether it is the full marketing suite, or one aspect of it such as email marketing, you can get the ball rolling and let the technology do the hard work for you. You can’t possibly be in all places at once so scheduling and multiple network marketing, all from one great platform is definitely the way to go.

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Users of Hatchbuck, the sales and marketing software platform, had this to say about using this tool:

“As a non-profit, our greatest problem was getting the word out. We had so many great ways to allow companies and the greater community to get involved and I felt like we were missing a huge opportunity because we didn’t have the right sales and marketing tools in place. Using Hatchbuck has been a lifesaver. It has really helped us to centralize everything into one place and enabled us to increase our awareness and stay out in front of people.”

Craig Jung, Executive Director of St Louis Green.

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Pinpointe email marketing software, shared one of their customer’s success stories with us:

“TROY Group had already started using an email marketing program, but wasn’t satisfied with the features, delivery rates or customer feedback. With the help of Pinpointe, TROY Group can now create, send and track their email campaigns and have a guaranteed delivery rate.”

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We would love to hear how you have used to marketing and email marketing software to start your own business, tell us your stories! You can also take a look at more great marketing apps on our GetApp marketplace and read about Marketing Automation Software to Rock your World on our GetApp blog for more fabulous alternatives.

Author: GetApp

GetApp is a Business Apps Marketplace that helps Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), to discover, compare and review popular business software solutions and services for their needs. GetApp supports millions of users in their “best app” research with independent product reviews, comprehensive directories, interactive search tools, side-by-side comparison tables, user… View full profile ›

Great Ways to Use Marketing Automation to Help You Start Your Own Business