What Is Marketing Automation?

‘Marketing automation’ refers to the use of software to complete repetitive marketing tasks. Those tasks could be nurturing sales leads or personalising marketing messages and content. 

One of the benefits of marketing automation is that it saves marketers time and effort. Most agree that activities such as nurturing sales leads and personalising marketing messages are vitally important, but they do take quite a bit of effort. Automation allows marketers to make these activities more efficient without sacrificing the human touch.

How Does Marketing Automation Work?

First, a marketer opens the marketing automation platform and decides which tasks he or she wants to automate. Automation works by defining rules; suppose you want a sales lead to receive content that will help move that person further along the sales funnel. You would set your marketing automation platform to only send that person relevant content if he or she completes a certain action (such as setting up an appointment for a demo).

Additionally, marketing automation software collects information about how a customer (or lead) interacts with your content. That information can be used in future campaigns to tailor content even further (and increase its chances of success).

What Are the Benefits of Marketing Automation?

There are three benefits of marketing automation:

• Greater efficiency
• Greater effectiveness
• Opportunities for personalisation

It’s Efficient

Automation allows marketers to reach a greater audience without making customers feel as though they’re just a number. 

Marketing automation also lets marketers focus on the most valuable customer segments, resulting in a more efficient use of their time. Your most valuable customers are the ones who are enthusiastic about your products or services, who advocate for you, and who see the value in what you do. They’re also more willing to buy from you. By segmenting and personalising content for this group of customers, you’re saving yourself time by not trying to reach those who aren’t likely to purchase from you.

It’s Effective

In addition, marketing automation is effective. Here are a few statistics that illustrate how well it works:

• 76% of marketers using marketing automation see ROI within a year.
• 44% of them see a return in six months.
  77% of marketers see an increase in conversions as a result of marketing automation.
• Automated lead nurturing converts an average of 15–20% of leads to sales.
• Marketing automation can boost productivity by an average of 20%.

Customers Appreciate Personalisation

One of the clearest benefits of marketing automation is that it personalises content and messaging at scale. Customers want content that relates directly to them. A 2017 study found that only 22% of customers are satisfied with the level of personalisation they receive from marketers.

You’re probably reading this and nodding your head; it’s highly likely that you’re one of the 78% of customers who has received poorly personalised marketing content or messages.  You may clearly remember a time when you received something from a company you’d been doing business with for a while, and the message completely missed the mark. It might have left a bad taste in your mouth—maybe you even stopped doing business with them.

A Real-life Example of Marketing Automation

Over the past eighty years, The Gallagher Group has transformed from being a global leader in animal management technology, manufacturing design, and fuel management to being an expert in security. The organisation has leveraged its expertise in electric fence technology to create innovative perimeter, access control, and intruder alarm systems to protect some of the world’s highest-profile locations. But Gallagher saw an opportunity to offer small businesses the same high-quality security.

To reach those customers, the security organisation realised it needed a platform that would enable small businesses to find what they needed at a glance, as well as a solution that would provide Gallagher with data on those customers, so it could scale-up its services to this market.

Gallagher chose Enlighten Designs to partner in the project. Like Gallagher, Enlighten is based in the Waikato and, with a history of collaboration between the two entities, Enlighten instinctively understood what Gallagher were aiming to achieve. They joined forces via an on-site team and created a plan to implement the Sitecore marketing automation platform.

The platform is highly flexible and user-friendly; moreover, it integrates with a number of other solutions, such as Azure, which is what Enlighten used to host Gallagher’s mobile and automated security solutions. With the Sitecore marketing automation platform, the Enlighten team was able to gather data on how users navigated Gallagher’s site so they could quickly adjust it for a better user experience.

Even though the project is still quite new, Gallagher has already been able to transform the way it does business. With the Sitecore marketing automation platform, customers no longer have to request brochures; they automatically receive relevant marketing content. Gallagher CMO Evan Morgans said, ‘We’ve moved from a static website with brochures to something that will enable us to review the location customers are visiting us from and their customer profile to deliver content that’s really relevant to them.’

Implement the Sitecore Marketing Automation Platform with Enlighten Designs

Since 1998, Enlighten Designs has delivered amazing digital experiences, and as a proud Sitecore Gold partner, we’d love to share more about leveraging the Sitecore marketing automation platform for maximum benefit. To shine a light on your next website project, sign up for our Illuminate workshop and benefit from our experience.