“What is Marketing Automation?”

Before you say, “It’s kind of like the CRM we have in the office,” allow us to stop you right there. A lot of marketers think a CRM system — even the ones with marketing components — overlaps with their marketing office and therefore expect their CRM tool to deliver both sales and marketing ROI. But after much disappointment, marketing teams find out that this is not true. While it is true that the two technologies can both collect information and share several features, their rationale and functions are different.

Marketing Automation, according to Hubspot , refers to any software that aims to automate marketing activities. This software’s main audience is your marketing team, as it works to make tasks like lead nurturing, lead management, and campaign management easier for them. Any automated top-of-funnel activities that work to nurture a prospect’s interest is part of the  Marketing Automation’s job. But once Marketing Qualified Leads turn into Sales Accepted Leads, the hand-off begins. CRM software, by definition, focuses on serving your sales team and covers bottom-funnel stages. It helps manage your brand’s interactions with sales-ready prospects and customers through customer profiling, targeted campaigns, and scheduling and alerts.
So, while you have CRM software tools that take care of your clients and your warmest leads, don’t forget that your marketing efforts helped attract those leads and drive them down the funnel. Those hundreds of big and small efforts that you count on can use some boost from Marketing Automation solutions, if you want them to be efficient, measurable, and scalable.

Top Marketing Automation Features

One way to further explore this technology is to do some window shopping and take a peek into the capabilities that you can leverage to maximize for your business. We’ve listed for you some of the features that Marketing Automation users love and why your CRM strategy can definitely benefit from them.

• Email Marketing – If you’re still sending emails one click at a time, then it’s time to automate. Most Marketing Automation tools have features like triggered emails, landing page customization, form creation, personalization, dynamic content, and A/B testing. They also help you manage deliverability scores even when sending high volumes of email, so email Marketing Automation takes  a lot off your marketing team’s plates.

• Social Media – Ever wonder how your brand is being talked about on social media? Marketing Automation can get you closer to understanding your market through social monitoring, listening, and analytics tools. our Marketing Automation tool can also automate your social media promotions.

• Lead Management – Probably one of the most valuable features of this tool is lead management. This helps you collect information about your leads and their behavior, segment them, score them, and ultimately nurture them until they are ready to be passed on to sales. The most popular tools in the market, such as Act-On, can integrate with your CRM software to make sure your leads don’t fall through the cracks during the hand-off.

• Analytics – Another component of marketing that you’ll be glad to automate is analytics. There’s no need to manually compile, match, and run reports that usually come from multiple sources. Aside from the common reports on your email campaigns, other reports such as web analytics, SEO analytics, social media analytics, and ROI tracking also come with most Marketing Automation solutions. The beautiful thing here is that you get all the important numbers right from your dashboard.

• SEO – Every marketer loves a good SEO tool that can audit and track landing pages and websites, and if your Marketing Automation software can take care of that for you, then that’s awesome! You can view how your marketing keywords rank and perform against other sites in your field in real time so your team can act on them right away.

• Integration – The strength and viability of business software like CRM and Marketing Automation is rooted in their integration capabilities. Your Marketing Automation solution will not exist in a vacuum and therefore will need to communicate with your other productivity tools and programs. Most Marketing Automation solutions, at least the most popular and trusted ones, have strong integration options in place. When all else fails, you can also ask your vendor about APIs.

Which of these features got you the most excited? Which ones do you think can definitely complement your CRM efforts?

Many Marketing Automation vendors offer a longer list of features and you should definitely try those out when you can (hint: free trials!). Bottomline: Marketing Automation may just be the most important piece in your sales and marketing puzzle that you never knew you needed — and it can’t hurt to think of marketing beyond the confines of your CRM strategy.
Want to learn more about what Marketing Automation can do for your business? Download our buyers’ guide!

References:

Marketing Automation Features (That You Won’t Find in a CRM)

10 Cutting-edge Marketing Automation Features