Is 'marketing automation' for BIG companies only?
Email Automation and Marketing Automation are both automation solution types that allow business owners, small and large, to develop closer relationships with their customers by maintaining effective communication and brand awareness.
As from my experience at first I wasn't aware that ‘'Marketing automation’ stands for a much larger concept compared to email marketing. But there are some important differences that would have saved me lot's of re-work when starting out. Let’s cut the clutter and have a look at the how marketing- and email- automation platform types differ.
Email Automation
Email Automation, I used MailChimp. Which was a no-brainer since a free service with two thousand subscribers per month for free). MailChimp just as so many is all about automating the process of sending email and building your email list. Every business needs to send out messages to customers at designated times. MailChimp, ConvertKit, Aweber, Sendgrid,... all are great email service platforms for Small-business owners. You can orient communication in that way, that sending messages let your customers and contacts take specific desired actions.
Contacts are displayed in lists primarily with their email addresses. So all email campaigns campaigns are triggered using your contacts email. Email automation is great for all your email centric communication with contacts.
Snapshot - me testing ConvertKit email automation
Do you need integration with your email marketing?
For some business, ‘email marketing’ could become one of the so many solutions to integrate with. Integrating email lists with project management solutions, e-commerce, sales support application,... Further, you will need exporting email contacts lists into Google Sheets or Excel spreadsheet due to lack of CRM functionality.
Email automation - MailChimp and list management
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is the process of automating business processes through a sequence of events and by this translates your entire business marketing strategy.
Where Email Marketing is mainly focused on working from inside out and all based on contact's email. ‘Marketing automation’ refers to internal and external processes regarding your business contacts’. There can be automation running processes internal to your business that your contact(s) would never know about.
Much more than sending emails since it is about automating business processes, sales processes, support requests, (sales) pipelines, deals, lead scoring, …and integrating all that data in one solution.
The three primary functions of marketing automation are
1. On Boarding - Lead Generation.
2. Engagement - Lead Nurturing
3. Closing the deal - Campaign Goals
Marketing automation platforms let you manage automated deals progression in (sales)pipelines
How about Marketing Automation for SMBs?
Large enterprises have long found value in this technology, but marketing automation isn't just for big companies. In fact, for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses (SMBs ..) marketing automation is an important opportunity to increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster.
SMBs can through marketing automation compete with large organisations since marketing automation help them accomplish more, with less manpower and time.
Is marketing automation a right fit solution ?
If you start out and have low-traffic base and you want to grow traffic organically, you will see by using marketing solutions a significant increase of your traffic in 6 months. Marketing Automation however, is not an out of the box solution.
Marketing automation platforms let you manage campaign goals in customer's journey
As from my experience I have learned that one needs a good understanding of his buyer personas and the customer's journey with upfront made resources to share quality content to start with.
Do you want to fuel, stage-to-stage progression through your customer journey and increase the probability to achieve and even surpass your ultimate business objectives? Then, marketing automation could be yours if it is good for your marketing.
Get this free pdf ebook and decide for yourself if Automation is really for you or not.
