Marketing Automation is the process of automating selected marketing tasks in order to build and nurture relationships with prospects by offering them content specifically tailored to their needs.
In our business practice at Rapid Cloud, we routinely encounter and debunk myths around marketing automation on behalf of our valued clients. Let’s go through five of the most common myths to help you better understand what marketing automation can mean for your business and how it can help improve your day-to-day operations.
1. “MARKETING AUTOMATION IS JUST A NEW KIND OF SPAM”
Spam, or unwanted email, also called junk email, is an electronic message sent without having been solicited by the recipient. It is usually some kind of email advertisement.
Not only do these types of emails annoy the recipients, they especially damage your corporate brand. The issue had become so prevalent that the Canadian government passed Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation in 2014.
Marketing automation applications do not send emails at random or to recipients that have not solicited them. Instead, they allow you to send the right content to the right people.
The software is able to pinpoint topics that interest your leads by compiling two types of information: an email address, as well as the industry and job role. This explicit information is submitted by the leads when they subscribe to one of your email lists. The system can also secure other information, designated as implicit, by analysing the prospects’ behavior on your web site, as well as the pages they visit.
2. “MARKETING AUTOMATION SYSTEMS ARE NOT AUTOMATIC AT ALL”
If a marketing automation system is to be functional and yield excellent results, it will initially require that you put in time and effort. However, to quote French chemist Antoine Lavoisier: “Nothing is lost, nothing is created. Everything is transformed.” Your hard work will generate a solid return on investment.
Not to worry, the system will only need your commitment during the implementation stage. More specifically, you will have to define two workflows and to configure the sequencing. For example, if a prospect has not opened your emails in the last month, you can tell the system to send him an email asking him to confirm his interest. Once activated, this rule will react in the right sequence for every other lead who ends up in the same situation down the line. So, once the rules are set up, you can contemplate the fruits of your labor and watch your list of prospects grow systematically.
Be careful however, don’t make the mistake of leaving the system alone for too long. Your marketing automation system will need to be updated with new commands and new content on a regular basis. Think of it as a ship, and you are the captain!
3. “IT IS VERY EXPENSIVE“
Used effectively, marketing automation can help generate new high-quality leads, shorten your sales cycle, demonstrate an empowered form of marketing and grow the ROI of your marketing activity.
By automating various repetitive tasks that add little value, not only do you free up more time to focus on your high value activities, you also save a considerable amount of money. In the end, your return on investment and your productivity will benefit.
According to LeadLiaison, an informed prospect will buy 47% more volume than a regular prospect. This difference can be explained by the trust and relationship established between the business and its leads through the marketing automation software.
To top it off, the study also concludes that an informed prospect will decide to buy 23% faster than a lead who has not been touched by marketing automation. As a matter of fact, your leads are getting all their questions answered via the different customised content before they even get in touch with the sales department.
It follows that a marketing automation system should be perceived as an investment since it helps you nurture your prospects and delivers savings by automating some of your most time consuming tasks.
4. “THERE IS NO NEED TO NURTURE PROSPECTS TO LEAD THEM TO THE PURCHASING PROCESS, COLD CALLING IS ENOUGH”
According to a study conducted by Wishpond, businesses that chose to implement a marketing automation system have seen their number of qualified prospects rise by 451%. In addition, these same companies are generating twice the amount of leads than organisations that only send out emails.
As part of your automation strategy, not only can you automate your emails, but you can do the same with your social media, lead generation, landing pages, etc.
The sales department will only need to contact the prospects once they reach the last step of the process. The step where the prospects voluntarily express their wish to secure your products or services.
5. “PERSONALIZED EMAILS WRITTEN BY HAND ARE FAR SUPERIOR”
In an ideal world, every single email would be written by your employees, to be more closely tailored to the recipient and establish human contact.
This would work very well if your database contained one to 20 contacts. Now imagine how long that would take if your list boasts more than 10 000 names.
In fact, not only would this method require many hours of work, it would never be profitable. These are repetitive tasks that don’t require anyone to be creative, so why not delegate them to a robot?
Once you’ve written a single email, you can customise messages for each recipient through a set of commands to the automated process. Here are a few examples:
Mention the contact’s name in one of the greetings;
Send the email from the address of the salesperson in charge of the account;
Segment your audience. As explained earlier, the goal is to send the right content to the right people. It is very likely that the recipient will open your email if it is directly related to his or her domain or job function.
These are only simple examples, there are many others, and it’s up to you to let your imagination go wild!
By automating messages, you allow staff to focus on more important projects, and consequently, be more productive. Not only can these tasks be automated by marketing automation, they can also be customised. In other words, you can kill two birds with one stone!
Pardot is a sophisticated yet simple marketing automation platform! It will help you grow your pipeline and generate better leads by allowing your marketing and sales departments to create, deploy, automate and manage online marketing campaigns.
If you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line, we’re ready to help.
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