In part four of our six part Digital Marketing Webinar Series our attendees learned how marketing automation brings accountability, energy, and provides a new system for success in 2015.
So what is marketing automation? In a nutshell, it’s an integrated system for communicating with and nurturing relationships with prospects. At its best, marketing automation is software and tactics that allow companies to buy and sell to nurture leads with highly personalized, useful content that helps convert prospects to customers.
However you define it, marketing automation is a channel that growing companies can’t afford to overlook. It saw a 50% increase from 2012-2015. It’s a real-time management tool for deploying relevant content that nurtures relationships.
Fact: Approximately 75% of companies using marketing automation see ROI within 12 months and 44% within six months (SOURCE: Focus Research).
How are you going to prepare your marketing practices for 2015? The webinar focused on five main takeaways:
1. Marketing automation is on the rise
Originally, large, B2B companies utilized marketing automation to stay in touch with their major accounts. But moving into 2015 more and more consumer companies are discovering the tremendous value that marketing automation has to offer and are investing in the future of their companies.
2. Lead nurturing
Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50 percent more sales-ready leads at 33 percent lower cost (SOURCE: Forrester Research.) Marketing Automation is digital marketing that delivers an indisputable record of accountability. Using emails, landing pages, microsites, and clickable content, marketers are able to:
- Track all actionable behavior
- Make note of email activities
- Use landing page activity to direct drip targeting
- Allow visitors to self-identify and segment for a tailored experience
- Deliver a content download link in the first email, then provide it immediately for subsequent content requests
3. Tracking Interest
Did you know that 60% of the sales funnel is now happening in the digital space (SOURCE: Web Trends)? Marketing Automation offers numerous ways to connect with prospects and keep them interested. Most can be easily executed, and analyzed, using the systems’ sophisticated tracking tools. Relevant emails sent through marketing automation generate 18 times more revenue than email blasts.
4. Create compelling content
What marketers need to understand is that the right content must be delivered through the right channel at the right time- in the right format. Companies with 30-plus landing pages generate seven times more leads than those with fewer than ten.
5. Measure return on marketing automation growing success
Sales and marketing systems that are highly integrated provide a distinct revenue achievement advantage. You can measure campaign ROI by tracking each prospect’s activities from browsing to purchase so you can have a precise idea of the sales generated by each campaign. Marketing automation solutions also see a 70% faster sales cycle times and a 54% improvement in quota achievement (SOURCE: Bulldog Solutions).
