01. AN INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING AUTOMATION

WHAT IS MARKETING AUTOMATION?

Marketing automation is a category of software that streamlines, automates, and measures tasks and workflows, not just for the sake of increasing operational efficiency, but to provide personalized experiences at scale.

Beyond time-saving and efficiency benefits, marketing automation enables marketing operations that are essential to modern business processes (e.g., lead nurturing and lead scoring).

HOW IT WORKS

Marketing automation platforms or MAPs perform tasks and processes based on certain criteria that marketers define and set within the software.

FOR EXAMPLE

Imagine you're organizing a webinar and you want to treat your webinar registrants a certain way (e.g., send them confirmation emails and event reminders).You can then set your MAP to "listen" to every single time a visitor signs up for your webinar (e.g., via form fill-out on your webinar landing page), which could then trigger a series of actions. For example:

Send a confirmation email immediately after the visitor registers

Send a webinar reminder email 3 days before the event

Send a thank you email 1 hour after the event

...and it doesn't stop there.Marketing automation is, after all, more than just email marketing.Based on a lead's actions, demographics, or other types of data that a MAP stores about your leads, you can do a variety of different things: assign leads with "scores" (to define how ready they are to be passed to sales), re-target dormant leads, cross-sell or upsell products to existing customers, integrate your MAP with your CRM, and so much more.

IN SHORT, MARKETING AUTOMATION IS DESIGNED TO...

TARGET PROSPECTS

by their interests, demographics, and behaviours,

USE ANALYTICS

to test and optimise specific aspects of marketing campaigns; and

HELP QUALIFY

and push leads to sales!

THE KEY COMPONENTS WITHIN A MAP

Every MAP typically has these three key components:

The central database, where all the data related to your leads, prospects, or customers are stored. This includes both demographic and behavioural data that helps marketers better segment and target their audiences with the right messaging.

The engagement engine, where all the creative assets and automated work flows are stored. The engagement engine allows you to set different campaign triggers, filters, and automated actions, as well as different communication assets.

The analytics engine, where all the analytics and data dashboards can are stored. This section is crucial for the marketer's ability to measure and optimize their marketing efforts against revenue and ROI.

FEATURE	EXAMPLE
Triggers	Fills out form, clicks link in email, abandons cart
Filters	Age, industry, country, valid phone no., product interest
Automated Actions	Send email, alert sales, assign lead score, change lead status
Assets	Emails, landing pages, forms, images, files

IS MARKETING AUTOMATION RIGHT FOR YOU?

If you don't have a MAP yet and are wondering if you should, try the survey below to check your organizational readiness for Marketing Automation.

CHOOSE ALL THAT APPLY.

We want to improve the way we attribute revenue to our marketing efforts.
We don't have the bandwidth to personally follow up with all our leads.
Most of the leads we generate aren't ready to buy until they interact with us across multiple touch points over longer periods of time.
We need to improve the way we analyze and use data to drive our marketing decisions.
We have multiple products, buyer personas, and segmentations that require personalised messaging.

RESULTS

Checked of 4 or more.
You definitely should be using marketing automation.

Checked 2 to 3.
Marketing automation sounds right for you, and it will definitely become more important the more you scale your operations.

Checked 1 or 2.
Marketing automation is probably not right for you just yet.