There is no greater pleasure for a marketer than knowing the outcome of a marketing campaign. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a future prediction crystal ball to look at the future? As futuristic as it may sound, it’s now real and available to use for all marketers. Yes, marketing automation is the crystal ball now available at a small cost to all tech savvy marketers. When marketers did not have access to any technology, they had to use traditional marketing strategies to drive demand. In those days, all marketers could do was predict the outcome of their campaigns and wait for the results. There was no way of being sure of any prediction nor was it easy to hit the target at all times. Also, compiling campaign data and deriving inference out of it would take a lot of time. Today, marketers are so used to real time data and analytics. This wasn’t how it used to be. Marketing automation can help you predict the future.
However, with the advent of marketing technology, a new piece of tech evolved partly out of CRM systems, marketing automation. The age-old marketer’s dream had now come true. The dream of being able to correctly predict outcomes of campaigns was now just one marketing automation platform away.
Marketers have always wanted to know the number of leads that would ultimately become paying customers. They would like to know how many of them would continue buying from them and et cetera. When marketers used to nurture their leads earlier, they did not even have the option to know when a lead will ultimately qualify.
But, now with marketing automation, predictive analytics have arrived. Marketing automation platforms have the ability to track every unique visitor on your website/app including their every action.
Having the ability to record and scrutinize every individual action taken by unique prospects, is considered invaluable by all marketers across industries. You will be able to see who opened your emails, who clicked on CTAs, who signed-up for your newsletter as a result, interacted with your social media posts and so on and so forth.
Armed with this information, predictive capabilities of every marketing automation platform becomes enhanced. Along with the ability to assign scores to every action taken by a prospect, this technology’s predictability improves by another notch.
When a lead visits a site, you may assign it one point, while when they open your email, assign them two points. If they download an eBook, assign them five points and if they make a purchase, they are assigned fifteen. The higher the score is, the higher will be their level of engagement with your brand. Not only will the lead scores help you identify the leads in your buy cycle who are qualified to make a purchase but it will also help you identify the ones that have gone cold. You will be able to launch re-engagement campaigns to nurture them further.
For example, depending upon the action of a lead, you could add tags to segment them further. For example there could be a group of leads who have signed up for your emails and have been just introduced to your organization. There could be another group who have opted for a trial but did not make a purchase. Hence lead segmentation can allow you to create as many groups as you want to personalize customer experience.
What marketing automation offers you is a way to determine or predict a client’s future behaviour. It also allows you to monitor how audiences in general are behaving when they interact with your campaigns.
For marketers with steep lead generation targets, marketing automation comes as a blessing. Not only are marketers able to accurately predict their marketing budgets but are also able to send correct lead estimates to Sales, so that they in turn are ready for the influx of leads, when the campaigns are launched.
Most well-oiled Sales-Marketing machineries would in sync and have standard conversion rates. Ask a seasoned marketer and he will tell you how many visits does he need to get ‘x’ number of signups on the website, she will also tell you how many of these signups will become marketing qualified leads and what percentage of these leads will be accepted by sales as sales qualified leads. Not just that, marketers are also aware of the prowess of their Sales colleagues and know how many of the sales qualified leads will convert into customers. To add to this, they also know how many of the delighted customers will continue using the product and come brand ambassadors. This data is pure gold mine and must have for modern marketers.
Then finally the cherry-on-top is the detailed easy-to-read report that you can access periodically. These reports will let you know how your campaigns are performing overall. You will get to know which email got more clicks, and which product do your clients like the most. This will help you tweak your marketing automation further.
Marketing automation even helps marketers predict how many customers will continue to be paying customers but monitoring their product-usage and their comments about your product within their peer group. This data is vital, especially for SaaS marketers who have a high CAC.
Marketing automation, undoubtedly, provides marketers with a gold mine of data which is visually appealing and easy to comprehend. With marketing automation, many marketers have been able to exceed their demand generation targets month on month since they are more aware than others on what to tweak in their campaigns to get the desired results. For example, if on the 15th of a month, you realize you are 60% short of leads for the month and your sales-cycle is 15 days, you know that a ‘x’ percentage of last month’s leads will convert plus you have increase the budgets for the month to meet your monthly target.
So, in a nutshell, marketing automation gives marketers unlimited powers to foresee the future. It will help your team generate more leads, qualify and nurture them successfully, eventually passing them off to sales.
If you are struggling to generate enough quality leads, increase your conversions or retain customers, do invest in a robust marketing automation system and see your marketing grow. Get in touch with us now, if you need assistance.
