Marketing automation and client segmentation

Business automation is an efficient technology to reduce resources spent on performing similar and repetitive tasks. Process automation helps reduce employee time spent on regular tasks, which leads to fewer mistakes and lower human factors. It enables you to easily scale the operations that used to be manual and get into analytics that help make the right management decisions. This improvement provides high-quality customer service and increased loyalty. And loyal clients are surely the key to business growth. 

Building and managing business processes is essential if you care about the company’s reputation and client loyalty. Business processes are often integrated into software systems, as it makes marketing management convenient. Specialized services ensure sending emails, posting on social networks, launching online advertising campaigns, analyzing client behavior on landing pages, and so on. Automation makes the work of the marketing department as fast and efficient as possible. Marketing dep now can focus on strategy development and other creative tasks and new ideas, while PC takes care of the routine. 

What marketing automation can bring into your life

Analytics, analytics of analytics, and more 

When the processes are automated, you can collect statistics on the advertising campaigns and other processes right away, whatever platform they are launched at. With this data, you can evaluate and adjust the advertising, budget, and further steps so it brings the maximum positive result. 

Client data collection, processing, and protection 

Imagine a huge amount of target audience information almost impossible to process manually. In no time, automated tools can collect this data, and systematize it, while keeping it confidential and preventing the breach. 

Warm leads evaluation 

The program can evaluate the probability of a transaction by a particular buyer, and provide you with the needed proof. An automated platform tracks clients’ actions, evaluates their journey, and identifies a working purchase scenario that can be used in further campaigns. For example, if a user opens your emails, follows their directions, visits your website, and checks the price list, they are a warm lead highly likely to make a purchase. A cold buyer would rarely visit your website and open emails, they may unsubscribe from special offers notifications, etc. 

Promotion segmentation 

Automation also allows you to easily segment your audience by dividing it into groups. Such segmentation increases the chances of your product reaching the customer who needs it. 

Complex marketing strategies are not as complicated 

Automated tools track your advertising and critical communications. Using them can help you understand which marketing actions and channels work the best. 

Benefits of marketing automation 

• Boost of Analysts and Marketing Dep performance 
• Advertising budget optimization 
• Increase the Sales and Marketing communication productivity 
• Duplicate process elimination 
• Website conversion growth 
• Activities transparency and control 
• Increase the target audience’s loyalty 
• Sales boost 
• New clients attraction 
• Client relationship improvement leads to a better reputation 

Automation capabilities depend on the service you use. Only some of them offer comprehensive communication channels tracking and analysis, lead segmentation, trigger marketing, website activities tracking, and much more. Salesforce Marketing Cloud tracks the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns including email newsletters, SMS and MMS, SMM, push notifications, and other marketing activities in a unified interface. 

The processes to automate

Advertising campaigns 

Automation enables you to run ads on several platforms at the same time and set campaign start and end dates. For example, several social networks or search engines. You can automate target ads to remind customers about your company, and get part of the lost audience back. 

Email campaigns 

Manual emailing is not perfect: emails are limited up to the amount that your team can process. An automated system can process even more emails faster, regardless of time zones, and working hours of the company. It helps you track the opening rate, clicks, and targeted actions. The easiest way to send emails while collecting analytical data. 

Some examples of automated mailing are emails reminding about goods left in the shopping cart, or reminders about orders to complete if the client didn’t finish the buying process.  

Mobile ads 

Push notifications that come on behalf of your company can play a great role in your marketing. Instead of expensive SMS messages that require a phone number, you can send messages directly on the clients’ mobile phones. 

Social media posting 

Manual social media posting requires a lot of time and energy. It makes mass posting and simultaneous posting on several platforms impossible. Automation allows making work more efficient: you can schedule a simultaneous posting on several platforms, optimize the text and graphics, and track the engagement level, adjusting further content plans. 

Lead conversion 

Marketing automation is essential when the audience sees the proposed content for the first time. It allows you to receive customer contacts, study their needs and demands, and prepare individual offers. 

How to automate your business marketing

1. Join your expert forces

Bridge your Marketing, Web Analysts, and Sales. A Joint work of the three departments can guarantee the success of your business. Automated tools track joint actions and guide each potential lead through the interaction with the company, working with their request, and satisfying their needs, when it’s needed. 

2. Set your goals and plan the dates 

If some specialists help you with process automation, base your plan on their experience. If you set automation by yourself, consider your goals and deadlines. Start with the small and urgent tasks, and then move on to more and more issues. 

3. Develop lead management processes together with the Sales team. 

The marketing dep deals with the leads: sales reps warm them up, make demos, and transfer them further to account managers. At this stage, you need to have quality criteria that will help you define and automate the process. 

4. Create different content types for different product life cycles. 

Track customer behavior at all purchase stages, and build a detailed customer journey map. At each stage of the purchase, give them a personalized offer that encourages them to close the deal. These can be promotional posts, links to research, user or customer stories, blog articles, sales emails, etc. 

5. Choose the right automation platform. 

Choosing a marketing automation platform

1. Functionality 

The perfect platform should support a wide range of features. Ensure that the service chosen can offer the following: 

• email automation based on a unified messenger or platform; 
• Customer Journey automation; 
• detailed analytics and reporting; 
• tracking customer actions and activities; 
• combining customer data from different sources; 
• audience segmentation based on the information received. 

2. Education 

Your employees will have to learn to operate the new system. It means a training program would be really helpful. Request software demo and training materials, and check the interface. For example, Salesforce provides a unique online learning community — Trailblazer — where you can learn a lot, and have step-by-step instructions and a detailed training plan. 

3. Scalability 

Some services limit the number of customers or data they collect. Choose platforms that can scale as your business grows. 

4. Integration with other services 

The selected program should be able to integrate with the advertising tools that you already use in your work. 

5. Client Support 

The platform manufacturer must provide you with a phone number and email of a support service, so you could reach out when you encounter any difficulties. A telephone is preferable, as it may take several days to get a reply by email. 

6. Price. 

Choose if the platform cost would depend on the number of the amount of data stored. 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud combines a wide variety of solutions available to any user in the unified interface. It provides a personalized customer experience across all channels and on any device. The solution helps create a consistent and integral client experience. 

MD Cloud’s expertise to use

Automated tools allow you to increase the client flow and enhance your sales with no additional marketing investment. MD Cloud’s expert team offers their experience in selecting, implementing and supporting automation tools into your business. 15+ years of successful automation allow us to quickly choose the perfect tool for your business and start gaining more revenue while spending less time and efforts, right away. Contact our team to learn more.