Marketing Automation deserves more attention.
I feel bad for Marketing Automation it has been tainted with the spam brush and its horizons are…
Marketing Automation deserves more attention.
I feel bad for Marketing Automation it has been tainted with the spam brush and its horizons are limited to email. It generally always appears in the lists of top 10 marketing trends, or the guilt list as I call them! However, it often hovers around the 8-10 regions Marketing Automation is actually a part of most of the big hitters!
The problem is that Marketing Automation is viewed on its own. Is lead conversion a priority for your business? Is saving the time of your sales team? Is personalisation? Is customer engagement? Is content marketing? Wow who’d have thought it! It is?
Maybe Marketing Automation shouldn’t be separated at all.
Marketing Automation is becoming less siloed and it is no longer restricted to email. We saw just the other day when Oracle announced plans to integrate the newly acquired Eloqua into their platform. This is recognition of marketing automation becoming part of the sales and marketing’s daily activity. Having marketing automation on one platform which is devoted to the nurturing of customer engagement is really important.
The news of Eloqua shows that marketing automation needs to be integrated with the common features of any business- the CRM in their case. Another company which has everything on one platform is Sitecore. They are at the cutting edge of website personalisation not only does this mean that the marketing is personalised but so is the website. The personalisation of the website is informed by the visitor’s interests and what piece of marketing they have engaged with.
If you are currently searching for the ways and trends that will give your brand more effective marketing, sales activity and customer engagement then you should seriously consider a single platform which includes marketing automation.
Yes email is the most common form of direct marketing and yes it can and should be automated. A recent Econsultancy report found that 68% of people use their smart phone to check their email and 26% use it for shopping and 82% for web access. Your marketing message and content must be multi-channel if you are to engage with your customers on their turf.
More about the impact and importance of marketing automation here.