Digital marketing has advanced rapidly over the past two decades. For one, it followed the internet’s evolution from a rare commodity to a household asset within just 15 years. The advent of smartphones soon followed, which let social media boom and, in turn, provided immense digital marketing opportunities. Now, innovative technologies like AI serve to enhance digital marketing as well, with automation at their forefront. However, this broad subject can sometimes confuse or dismay the uninitiated. Thus, we’ll use this article to explore automation and suggest 7 reasons to use automation in your digital marketing efforts.
Automation in digital marketing: CRM, BPA, and business software
At its core, automation is a simple enough concept; it streamlines processes that don’t require creative oversight. Examples of such processes may include:
- Scheduled outgoing emails
- Automated reporting
- Automatic notifications for specified events
As such, automation is seeing widespread adoption across digitally-minded businesses. Notable examples of software that provide automation include:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Business Process Automation (BPA)
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Of course, each such software type serves a different purpose. Businesses may automate email campaigns boosted with the help of CRM, or automate processes through BPA or RPA. Nonetheless, automation offers a plethora of benefits, from streamlined internal processes to marketing automation.
Reasons to use automation in your digital marketing efforts
On the subject of its benefits, then, let us highlight 7 reasons to use automation in your digital marketing efforts. Retail or now-booming eCommerce, B2C or B2B, these benefits are universal.
#1 Time efficiency
Time efficiency should likely come to mind as the first benefit for most of us. Indeed, the very concept of automation hinges on time efficiency – and that it achieves.
SugarMarket, formerly SalesFusion, reports that saving time is the primary benefit of automation in the minds of marketers. That’s a very understandable concern, and automation indeed allows businesses to save time in many ways:
- Improved internal organization
- Reduced time wasted on uncreative tasks
- Enhanced lead segmentation
These, and other applications of automation, can undoubtedly help businesses save time and streamline their workflows.
#2 Better target audience identification and improved lead nurturing
To delve into specifics, segmentation and lead nurturing are both crucial reasons to use automation in your digital marketing efforts. They enhance time efficiency, and in turn, help ensure reduced costs and increased profits.
These processes are frequently left to software since such massive data can’t usually be effectively processed by humans. For example, software like CRMs tracks interactions, collects data, and segments audiences based on the business’s criteria. In turn, this wealth of data informs digital marketing decisions, from content creation to outreach timing.
#3 Increased customer retention
Such benefits then yield an improved customer experience, leading to better customer retention rates. And since acquiring new customers costs many times more than retaining existing ones, this benefit is highly lucrative.
Customer retention largely hinges on customer experience, which in turn consists of many factors:
- Marketing appropriateness, effectiveness, and timing
- Customer service quality
- An optimal customer journey, from research to post-purchase engagement
Automation can address these concerns in many ways. In the context of digital marketing, automation informs such aspects as optimal lead nurturing and post-purchase engagement, improving retention rates.
#4 Better team oversight and accountability
Similarly, such software allows team managers to ensure that teams are always on the right track. Thus, automation doesn’t aim to enhance outreach alone but also internal processes.
To do so, such solutions offer an overview of marketing departments’ campaigns. Additionally, they provide a clear picture of individual sales reps’ performance through individual profiles and automated reports. These insights provide clear key performance indicators (KPIs); lead acquisition rates, conversion rates, sales, and so on. With this valuable information in hand, managers can identify specific bottlenecks and address them.
#5 Improved communications
Moreover, on the subject of internal processes, automation helps ensure that internal communications are seamless. In doing so, it keeps marketing and sales teams coordinated, securing better return on investment (ROI) for each campaign. Moreover, it helps streamline outgoing communications, as it can assist with channel management.
Internally, automated lead scoring provides an excellent starting point toward improved communication. Lead scoring can be configured to assess leads based on a plethora of automatically collected insights, like:
- Customer demographics
- Actions taken before the conversion phase
- Prior interaction history
In turn, scoring can help sales teams prioritize leads. Communicating such data can naturally present problems, but automation software effectively breaks down data silos.
Finally, specialized software like collaborative CRM focuses explicitly on communication. Consolidating communication channels, from social media to internal channels, guarantees swifter responses to requests and inquiries. This benefit is only enhanced by other automation options, such as live chat and chatbots for customer service management.
#6 Reduced costs, increased profits
All of the above converge into reduced costs and increased profits. Among all the reasons to use automation in your digital marketing efforts, this one is arguably the most substantive.
On the benefits of marketing automation, GetResponse reports 3 main ones:
- Saving time (30%)
- Lead generation (22%)
- Increase in revenue (17%)
All of these benefits directly translate to reduced costs and increased profits. Time is money, and automation saves time by design. Improved lead generation boosts the cost-effectiveness of marketing campaigns. And, finally, a streamlined workflow, improved customer service, and efficient communications all directly affect final profits.
#7 Simplification
Finally, automation simplifies digital marketing. It helps consolidate information, manage channels, and bring together all the components of an effective marketing campaign.
In essence, automation brings together all the different tools marketers may use. It provides automatic data entry that doesn’t come with human error. It consolidates channels and automates responses and outreach. Put simply, automation simplifies digital marketing, allowing businesses to focus on what matters most.
Conclusion
In summary, there are many reasons to use automation in your digital marketing efforts. It can offer substantial benefits, from time efficiency and better team oversight to improved lead nurturing and customer retention. Automation streamlines workflows, reduces costs, and, ultimately, increases profits. Regardless of one’s industry, automation is a crucial asset toward digitization – and a lucrative one at that.
Looking to take your Digital Marketing Efforts to the next level? Trust Innovative Flare for help. Since 2005, we have been helping small business owners succeed with our dedicated services. Find out more here on our website or by calling 561-247-2776.
