Despite popular myths that an online business is easy to run, reality is, it can be very exhausting. With a million and one tasks that need your attention, such as product development and inventory, marketing research and strategies and sales, it is easy to be burnt out. There are certainly days when you wished to wave a magic wand and everything would be magically completed. Fortunately, with B2C marketing automation software, you don’t need magic to make it all easy.
Marketing Automation Explained
According to HubSpot, a marketing and sales solutions provider, marketing automation software is a tool that helps automate marketing processes to be more efficiently managed. From sparking interests to encouraging sales, the software allows you to maximize your leads and helps you nurture your contacts so you can create specific strategies for prospects and existing customers. You lessen the risk of losing customers due to inefficient marketing campaigns.
With automated marketing software, campaigns run on autopilot while staying in control. Features offered by various marketing automation software vendors give you a full view of your leads and marketing strategies so you can measure how much traffic you are able to convert. Email marketing automation software lets you create customized correspondences making customers feel more valued.
Your goal is to generate revenue without incurring high costs in the process, as what marketing automation software delivers and allows you to manage emails, monitors leads performance and stay on top of consumer purchase behaviors. With the number of marketing processes made simpler, business owners have more time to focus on growing your business.
Features that Improve Business
Automation software helps manage your online business more efficiently. With your marketing strategies and sales interactions, keeping track of the process is certainly of the utmost importance. While the top marketing automation software available in the market comes with different features, below are the most common across the board:
1. Email Marketing
According to a study by The Radicati Group, Inc in 2015, there are over 2.6 billion email users worldwide. This is projected to increase to 2.9 billion by the end of 2019. The same group also cited that in the US alone, each user has an average of 1.8 email accounts by the end of 2016. Email Marketing Automation Software allows you to create professional correspondences with pre-formatted templates with a user-friendly visual editor. It also allows you to run tests if your emails can get through spam filters so consumers actually get to read what you send. More advanced email marketing features even allow you to track the success of your email campaigns, so you can make necessary adjustments to get more results that are favorable.
2. Lead Nurturing
One of the challenges in email marketing is the high risk of leads falling through the crack. With hundreds or thousands of leads on your list, segregating these can be an arduous and time-consuming task. B2B and B2C marketing automation software helps you set-up personalized correspondences. It reduces the risk of irrelevant marketing emails sent out to existing customers or ones that have already shown interest in a completely unrelated product or service. By nurturing your lead efficiently, you ensure that the correspondences you sent out are not considered spam or harassment.
3. Reporting
This feature turns software into a necessary marketing tool. According to Campaign Monitor, an email marketing automation software provider, tracking your marketing campaign metrics is important to improve your results.
To get more customers for your online business, run a variety of campaigns to target different consumer profiles. Having multiple campaigns running can become quite confusing, so it’s easy to forego tracking the results of each. With all of your information available in one database, you can efficiently track how well each campaign is running. You also get a visual of which leads have higher success rates.
4. Landing Pages and Forms
While the benefits of marketing automation software are often in the middle of the process, this feature allows you to enjoy it at a much earlier stage. Landing pages and online forms integrated into your strategy allows you to easily collect information to improve your leads.
5. Prospect or Consumer Behavior Tracking
For an online business, your website is both your marketing tool and place of business. The software allows you to keep track on customer or prospect activities. It keeps a record of what the consumer has purchased before, which products have they viewed or had a query on and other important details. This information can prove to be invaluable when it comes to deciding what campaigns to run and which ones to discontinue.
Top 5 Benefits of Marketing Automation Software
1. Build better relationships with prospects and customers by efficiently nurturing your leads.
According to Business 2 Community, an online open community for business professionals, a good customer relationship is a great marketing angle. Your customers are confident in doing repeat business with you, as well as will act as reputable endorsers. The software helps you build this relationship to both prospects and customers. To avoid sending out generic emails that can be considered as spam, show to your customers that they are truly more than just numbers to you.
For example, if you were running an online clothing store, you can get many queries about sizes or colors. By keeping track of these emailed questions, you can ensure that correspondences that you send are relevant to their interests. If the inquiry was about plus sizes available, then it is not ideal to send out marketing emails about the sale on petite sizes. When consumers feel that you have their best interest at heart, they turn good customers into loyal ones.
2. Increase revenue for your online business from existing customers by tracking purchase and email behavior
Understanding your customer’s interests will certainly help improve revenue for your online business. According to a 2015 research cited on Email Monday, an email marketing consultant firm, business owners have seen an increase in revenue after using the software. The ROI increases with prolonged use. Eight percent of companies see an increase within six months. While that may not sound quite impressive, it does increase the longer it is used. In fact, 40% of companies enjoy better revenues within two years of use.
3. Strategize marketing campaigns more efficiently through closed-loop reporting
Inbound Marketing Agents, a marketing firm based in Nashville, defines closed-loop reporting a tool that allows you to see how successful your marketing campaigns are. This information helps you strategize future marketing strategies for your business. It lets you identify what wins customers so you can stay away from campaigns that consumers don’t really care about. This type of reporting is only possible when you use tools that make data easy to understand and analyze. According to marketing automation software reviews, this is exactly what it delivers.
4. Maximize your marketing budget by efficiently tracking leads
With the information you get from reports and lead tracking, you can lower your marketing costs by improving lead management practices. Leads are an investment that you certainly want to get ROI on. When these fall through the cracks because of bad management, you lose revenue. An automated marketing system allows you to track leads from the time they learn your business to POS. Moreover, learning about the different parts of the journey can help improve your marketing strategies. It gives you insight on which campaigns yield higher to sale conversion so you can focus on the ones that work. It allows you to distinguish between leads that need to be followed-up from dead ends, so you won’t waste time.
5. Maximize Sales and Marketing Workforce Productivity
Whether you have staff taking care marketing and sales or you do it on your own, you understand how time consuming it can be. Unfortunately, not all the time is spent on generating revenue to grow your business. There are files and date to sift through and emails to send out, plus dozens of other necessary tasks. With the tools that automate the system, you and your employees can spend time on income-generating activities.
Your online business may not have a physical location, but working to make it a success still requires a lot of effort. With the right tools, you can simplify the processes involved in promoting your brand and closing sales. Discover how you can bring the advantages and benefits discussed by checking the list of Marketing Automation Software providers on Crowdreviews.com.
Jeev Trika
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