"Marketers and brands can benefit greatly from streamlining and automating their marketing campaigns. Automation not only lightens the workload on your marketing team, thereby enabling more time for you to scrutinise reports and deliver better-targeted campaigns as a result, but it holds benefits for customers too," says Vera Romano, head of online at Everlytic.
Marketing automation makes email and SMS marketing processes efficient and effective as it involves the setting up of default reply emails, drip-campaigns, and automated messages; for example, birthday messages.
According to MarketingSherpa, the average open rate for welcome emails is 50%, making them 86% more effective than email newsletters. "Marketing automation starts with a solid foundation. Automated welcome emails that are triggered when someone subscribes to your newsletter should be a given and one of the first steps in an email marketing strategy," she says.
According to ClickZ, birthday emails can result in a 30% increase in opens and a 60% increase in clicks. "Email timing is one of the several areas where we have included automation options. You can schedule the email so that the system will automatically send it at a specific date and time. Marketers can also set up recurring messages, which will be sent at the interval they set, which is great for automatic birthday greetings," she adds.
The guide shows how improved data utilisation is one of the benefits of automated marketing. Others include gaining qualified leads, identifying leads effectively, and increasing open and click-through rates as well as conversions.
According to the guide, when integrated with Google Analytics, marketing automation can also help marketers understand prospective customers’ journeys to conversion and the content that resonates with them.
"Marketing automation, when implemented correctly, has the potential to set marketers up to nurture relationships with future customers and gain long-term success," concludes Romano.
You can view the Guide to Marketing Automation here.
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*Image courtesy of Everlytic