What is Marketing Automation Software?

Marketing automation software helps you build a relationship with existing customers and those who may not be ready to buy from you yet. It not only allows you to build out full-scale campaigns that run on a schedule or behavioral triggers. It also allows you to track key metrics that can indicate growing interest or readiness to buy. All of this is to your advantage.

Marketing automation software can become your best friend because it does something that makes your job a little bit easier: it automates marketing processes.

What is Marketing Automation NOT?

Email Marketing

Marketing automation and email marketing are terms that are often incorrectly used interchangeably. Maybe we should say it this way marketing automation is not just email marketing.

True marketing automation is multi-channel. It allows you to connect to your customers through whichever channel or medium they prefer by dictating the platform’s behavior based on the customers behavior or specified timing. And it allows you to leverage customer data to send out the right message to the right person at the right time.

Inbound Marketing

The other thing marketing automation is not is inbound marketing.

Like email marketing, the term inbound marketing is often used interchangeably with marketing automation, but that’s also not quite correct either. It’s certainly true that marketing automation has made inbound marketing strategies a lot more viable, because of how the software allows you to gauge interest and respond in a relevant way.

However, it’s equally possible to use marketing automation to power your outbound marketing strategies.

Whichever method you choose (inbound or outbound), make sure you understand what your prospects and customers need in order to gain their trust and, ultimately, their business.

What is Marketing Automation ABOUT?

It’s about the timing.
Marketing automation software allows you to do two crucial things:

1. 1. It helps you build a relationship with people that aren’t ready to buy from you yet. Only a fraction of the people first encountering your business will raise their hand and say: I’ll take it! You’re most likely selling a high-value product, service or solution. Your prospective customers won’t make a purchasing decision overnight; they’ll do research first. Just like your company did when choosing a marketing automation solution (we are so happy you chose us!).

1. It allows you to find out when a prospects timing is changing to your advantage. Those people you’re building a relationship with? At some point in time, they might be ready to buy. The marketing automation platform will be able (if you set it up correctly) to detect when this is happening and subsequently warn you it’s time to act! This way you’ll actually be talking to people that are interested in buying, saving you (and especially your sales team) heaps of time and frustration.

This functionality is the core of a marketing automation platform. Everything else is mostly meant to make our lives as marketers easier.

Who doesn’t want that?

Customer Journey: Explained.

Just like the term marketing automation can mean various things to various people, so can the words “Customer Journey. Most likely you’ll have heard this phrase before, perhaps alongside similar terms such as “Sales Funnel” and “Marketing Funnel” to name a few.

The difference? It’s mostly semantics.

Most often, the term Sales Funnel applies to the process your prospective customers go through before making a purchase. If you envision an actual funnel, entry usually occurs at the top. When a prospective buyer first emerges we tend to refer to the “top of the Sales Funnel” with the mindset of guiding them into and through the process of becoming a customer. Top of the funnel efforts, not surprisingly, tend to be very broad while the bottom of the funnel efforts are more focused and targeted. This too works with the image of the narrowing shape of a funnel.

The term “Customer Journey” is also used to describe the process a prospective buyer goes through on their way to becoming a customer, but in many cases, it also encompasses what comes after the initial purchase. A premium is also placed on Customer Retention.

At Net-Results, we use Customer Journey in precisely this way. We fully realize that when a customer decides to buy our product, it’s just the start of their journey with us. As a software-as-a-service company, we generate revenue on a subscription basis. It’s absolutely vital that we continue to interact and wow you, our customers after the initial purchase takes place. Not only must we earn your trust, we must also value it fully so you’ll keep coming back!

How Can Marketing Automation Help Me Generate More Leads?

Many businesses have websites that generate a considerable amount of traffic. What they often fail to do is convert any of that anonymous traffic into identified prospects.

Sound familiar? Marketing automation software will help you fix this problem.

Most marketing automation software comes with the means to capture website visitor data and insert it into the database. Common examples are forms, pop-ups, and progress bars.

Where before a visitor would just leave your website, now you can give them an incentive to identify themselves to you. If the only way to interact with your business is a contact form on your website, you’re missing out on potential relationship-building opportunities.

How Can Marketing Automation Help Me Generate Better Leads?

How do you improve the quality of your leads? By making sure they don’t talk to sales until they’re actually ready for a Sales conversation.

Remember when we said timing is important? Marketing automation software can help you recognize which leads are exhibiting buying behavior. Looking at a pricing page, or downloading a prospectus from you website. Or simply looking at a ton of webpages in a short amount of time, indicating they’re really interested in your stuff.

Until they do exhibit such behavior, you can apply lead nurturing to build a relationship with them. By sharing relevant content with your leads as they exist in your Sales Funnel, you nurture your relationship with them and nurture them into the buying process when they are ready to talk to an actual sales person.