The idea of automation has always been one of the major draws of digital marketing.

But because there’s always an implication that automation is integrated into every aspect of digital marketing and online business management, businesses often overlook the possibilities of marketing automation.

They are not doing enough to maximize their campaigns and are not being creative with what they can achieve with the power of automation.

Surprising facts about marketing automation

In fact, here are some eye-opening stats that will entice any business owner take a closer look at their automation setups:

Forrester reported that B2B marketers that used marketing automation software increased their sales contribution by an average of 10 percent.

eMarketer stated that B2C marketers that use automation for everything from cart abandonment programs to birthday emails have seen conversion rates as high as 50%.

How can marketers take advantage of marketing automation?

The key to motivating more business owners to put more emphasis on their marketing automation lies in inspiring them with ideas. Here are a couple of ideas that may spark some creativity:

Idea #1: Integrate automation across all fronts

Automating marketing solely on the digital front can slow down the entire process. It’s important to integrate every department that is involved in the sales process from the sales team, customer support department, to the social media team.

For example, if there is a sales team that is responsible for following up with leads from digital marketing campaigns, an automated system to schedule sales calls and set up meetings can improve sales conversions.

Feedback can also be given to the digital marketing team from the sales team to trigger appropriate follow-up messages based on the results of the sales meeting.

Idea #2: Secure more lost sales

A great deal of shoppers abandons their carts right before they make the purchase.

One of the strategies that eCommerce businesses are using to get these shoppers to complete the transaction is to use retargeting. By using automation to move the leads into a retargeting campaign, you can quickly engage the shoppers without going through the trouble of keeping track of the lost shoppers and having to set up campaigns on the fly to get them to come back.

Idea #3: Nurturing leads through automated personalized content

Nurturing leads is an essential part of turning prospects into customers.

The idea behind nurturing leads is to provide prospects with value to educate them, establish credibility, and build a relationship with them. This process can be improved by using segmenting to personalize your message and following up with content that is relevant to the prospects.

For example, having a campaign set up for guitar players doesn’t mean it is necessarily targeted to their needs.

By qualifying the leads further via opt-ins or link triggers, you can segment the leads into acoustic, electric, bass, etc. This can then trigger automated follow ups based on their qualifications for a truly personalized content.

Idea #4: Following up with up-sell and cross-sell opportunities

Generating new customers is important but it’s more cost effective to focus on existing customers.

With marketing automation, you can upsell and cross-sell customers at the appropriate times using email. You can also make sure that you don’t inundate them with repetitive promotions by automating them into another email follow up sequence when they’ve either bought or ignored the offer enough times.

This creates space to make other offers and move customers down a deeper customer life cycle. Campaigns like these can become complex, so it often helps to work with an email marketing agency to set them up properly.

Those are some basic examples of how marketing automation can double a business’ annual revenue. There are many more ideas and strategies that can be used to increase the effectiveness of marketing campaigns while reducing overhead and delays. It’s all about analyzing how existing marketing systems work and being creative about how to make it them work better.

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