Written by Emmaline Shettel
Emmaline Shettel is an alum of The Selling Factory. She graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications and a minor in digital arts and sciences. She is passionate about content creation, music, and video games.
Photo by Carlos Muza
Knowing how to appeal to your customers’ needs and maintaining a relationship with them is vital in sales. Effective automated marketing is a great way to improve relationships by reaching out to customers and generating sales leads.
Automated marketing is “technology that manages marketing processes and multifunctional campaigns, across multiple channels, automatically,” according to Salesforce. Although mass marketing to everyone in your contact list is not automated marketing, it does minimize the backend work to reach customers.
Say you want to schedule a post on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat simultaneously – it is possible with automated marketing. Automation in marketing saves you more time without taking quality away from the content. According to Nucleus Research, marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. Additionally, 63% of survey respondents indicated that the ability to set measurable objectives for each campaign is the most valuable aspect of marketing automation.
Automation in marketing is beneficial for those that like to spend time crafting the message and posting them in one place. As a result, with the repetitive marketing tasks handled, more time can go into the campaigns and genuinely interacting with customers. Also, this is great for posts that are on a schedule, like weekly and biweekly spotlights that will now post automatically.
The automation of marketing is helpful in a mass marketing strategy as well. Some platforms may receive more traffic overall, but different platforms cater to different demographics. However, executing content manually and steadily first is necessary. With this approach, you can gather data on how your target audience engages with which kind of post and platform.
Hootsuite is an example of an automated marketing platform that I earned a certificate from and continue to use. With this platform, users schedule posts, manage all channels, plan upcoming campaigns, stay on top of interactions, and view the analytics for each post.
It is crucial to go in-depth with marketing analytics, specifically with automation in marketing. One of the perks of automated marketing apps is the analytics from each post. It is impossible to measure the user engagement on a post without analyzing the data that users generate.
These analytics promote relationships with customers and set goals to increase user engagement in the future. This all-in-one solution takes away from using another platform such as Google Analytics.
Additionally, automated marketing software usually has a free trial option. With this option, you notice the value that you and your customers get from automation in marketing will eliminate the cost paid for the software. The automation of marketing allows for many well-fostered relationships with customers and more consistent business from them. In other words, your monthly investment results in more success in sales.
The automation of marketing is also beneficial in sales. As a sales development representative (SDR), automation in marketing helps us find the right contacts, understand our prospects’ behaviors, and coordinate follow-ups. Distinguishing market-qualified leads (MQLs) from non-MQLs is pivotal for achieving sales team goals.
Customers are the priority, and marketing identifies their pain points, needs, and buyer behavior. Furthermore, this is a win-win for the business and the customer. We don’t want our SDRs knocking on doors that aren’t fit for our product, so this allows companies to funnel MQLs for the sales team to approach.
Moreover, generating sales leads is expensive and requires nurturing with timely interactions. Having a sales cadence in place is crucial to ensure this process. Engaging these prospects with valuable content, calls, and email outreach is vital. With consistency, automated marketing enforces relationship building, increases user engagement, and promotes an increase in sales.
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