In the first two pieces of the marketing automation basics series, I was talking about the definition of marketing automation and the trends that are shaping it. Today I will tell you about how marketing automation is so much more than e-mail marketing and why it is important to understand if you want to shift your email marketing to the next level.
Email marketing as such has been around forever. It was literally the first digital way to connect with people – or rather talk to them. And this was the very thing that brought spam to life as well.
Email marketing is an easy to access way to connect with your customers, so no wonder that every company – digitally advanced or not – has already invested in means to be able to send emails to their target audience. It is high on the top tactics of digital marketing and a significant amount of marketing budget (between 9-16%) is allocated to it. And just as it always has, it still works quite well and most recently it has been on the rise again.
But contrary to popular belief it is not that easy to do it properly. The world is changing, and customers are being more cautious with their inboxes. They are more selective, more informed and more skeptical, and the information that gets to them within a day has grown exponentially these past years. Marketers need to discover ways to deliver relevant messages more frequently in a way that it still reaches that specific part of the inbox that is actually read. In most cases though, the emails that customers receive are still of low quality. They are ill-timed, poorly formatted and do not generate engagement at all. Another problem with it is that emails are still limited to their own silo, not being connected to other marketing tools, such as CRM or landing pages, web analytics or social media. It has little or no segmentation and creates a lot of manual work for marketing teams to consolidate the reporting in a manual way. This result is two things: 1, email marketing becomes more expensive than it should be with low ROI and 2, unsatisfied and disappointed customers who would have expected consistent and personalized experiences.
Marketing automation is to solve these challenges
- To create better-performing email campaigns,
- That are coordinated with other marketing tools,
- And that can build relationships and engagement with customers,
- On the terms of the customers, not of the companies.
As mentioned above, every company uses email marketing in some form, some better than others. But how can you know if you should move from generic email marketing towards a marketing automation platform that allows you to make more of it? Let’s look at the tell-tale signs of a company who has already surpassed the capabilities provided by email marketing.
#1 You are using email as a linear tool instead of using it to create an engaging customer dialogue
You can’t fool your customers, not anymore. They see through mass email campaigns, they recognize if they are being sold something – and they refuse to take it. On the other hand, they are open and willing to engage with relevant content, to interact with brands they like and who talk to them in the right way. To master that it is crucial to map your customers' workflows and once it’s done you have to adapt to the ever-changing expectations. A customer journey map is never static, it has to be treated as a fluid, dynamic flow that is dictated by them, not you. It is their time you want to get access to, you need to earn it.
#2 You have more campaigns than it is possible to manage manually
Nurturing a relationship is about being there when there is an open opportunity and retract when there is none. This way those who are willing can get more information and those who are not ready are left alone until a next momentum comes along to talk to them again. Most companies monitor their email marketing efficiency and they are fully aware of open rates and bounce rates and other metrics... but they don’t do anything about it. Not because they don’t want to, but because managing several email campaigns on a scale at once requires an enormous amount of resources, manpower, and coordination. As a result, companies tend to build new and new campaigns one after the other, without following up the responses and the opportunities that were reached by the first one – losing customers, maybe even leaving them disappointed. Marketing automation helps to automate those scenarios with personalized and individually crafted follow up messages, reaching the right audience with a relevant message at the right time.
#3 Email marketing is unrelated to your other tools
Email is usually considered as an individual tool, separate from all other tactics. But the momentum we create with an email could be taken forward with the help of other tools, just as continuing a conversation with a friend where we left it off, instead of restarting it and repeating everything all over.
Marketing automation consolidates the tools and messages and provides a single view of the given user that we started the interaction with. It means that there are customer behaviors that could trigger a follow-up response on another surface. When the customer visits your webpage or interacts with you on social media or fill out a form or gets an update in the CRM system – these are all triggers that can create a relevant and well-timed opportunity to nurture that very client further. And as being automated means that it can happen in a very short time (a matter of seconds, not days) it has a positive influence on the responsiveness of that specific customer.
#4 There is room for improvement in your targeting and segmentation
Everyone understands the importance of segmentation and targeting, yet it is still not taken seriously enough. As a general rule, half of your campaigns’ success comes from targeting: the better your segmentation is, the better the targeting is, the more relevant your messages will be, and it will show in response rates and ROI. We are talking about demographics as well as behavioral factors, such as website visits, social media interactions, and keyword searches. For that, you need to consolidate all your marketing tools and you need to start looking at your customers from a single user view, instead of from the aspects of every silo.
Also, you need to understand where your customers are within their buying cycle. It makes all the difference to talk to a customer who is an early stage prospect only looking for information, or an active lead waiting for a convincing offer, or an engaged customer expecting to be rewarded. Sending the right message is only possible if you know your audience and you choose your messages – one by one in a scalable way.
#5 There is no information on how the emails are fitting into the revenue stream
Maybe you have a brilliant marketing person or team, capable of delivering outstanding email campaigns for your company. Maybe you have exceptionally high open rates and click-through rates. It is even measured! But do you know if these results are contributing to the pipeline or they are driving revenue? Do you know if the leads your marketing team is handing over to the sales are of good quality? Does the marketing department get feedback from the sales if their leads were poor or outstanding, so that they can tailor their next campaign accordingly? Do they work together, sales and marketing, are their goals the same – because at the end of the day they are the same?
With marketing automation processes, the alignment of marketing and sales, the common understanding of lead quality and proper feedback on campaigns is a given – and no email marketing solution can consolidate this.
Summarizing it, you need to move forward from email marketing if you want more engagement, if you need your campaigns to be scaled, if you want to integrate the email with the rest of your tools, if you need to take a step further with segmentation and targeting, and if you want to have the proper place for email marketing within your revenue stream.
To maximize the impact of how marketing automation can be beneficial for your company, you need to understand the fundamental features, and then you'll need an expert to guide you through the process of finding the perfect fit for your expectations.
This is our mission at Capture, you bring your problems and expectations, and we bring you solutions to help you with becoming a better marketer and to create an ideal customer experience.
And watch this space for the next chapter:
What are the main functions of a marketing automation platform?