Phil Lauterjung

Before we dive into Marketing Automation I think it would be good to clarify a very important point.  Leads are people.  I know that might be stating the obvious, but it is critical that we keep that in mind.

The person at the other end of your electronic piece of information has hopes and dreams, fears and frustrations, goals, maybe a family, friends who like them, etc. – just like you and I do.  Never, ever lose sight of that while you are trying to sell to them.  Marketing Automation is all about developing relationships that will lead to long-term customer relationships.

Ok, now I’ll put my soapbox aside.

There will come a point in time when your quantity of leads will exceed your ability to keep track of them.  They will begin to “fall through the cracks” and you will miss out on potential sales.  This when a marketing automation system can help immensely.

Before you start to freak out and think that you can’t afford it, or it’s just for larger companies, take a deep breath.  Marketing Automation is basically an efficiency booster.  It enables you to speed up current tasks and gives you the ability to implement tactics that you haven’t been able to do.  It gives you new avenues to reach potential customers and becomes a game-changing asset for your business.

You can afford it even if you have a small business.  The cost ranges from a couple of hundred dollars per month to many thousands per month.  It all depends on how many contacts you need to manage and how many bells and whistles you want.

Here is a list of eight benefits that can be gained from implementing a Marketing Automation system, courtesy of Focus Research.

1. Gain a wider reach into potential leads. You can handle larger lists and greater numbers of contacts without having to apply more resources and manpower.
2. Manage leads as individuals, not as batches. Create campaigns and workflows and be able to add new contacts whenever they arrive in your system.
3. Prove your campaigns’ effectiveness in real-time. Perform A/B testing of campaigns and compare your results.  Because the process is automated, changes can be made at any time and results monitored along the way.
4. Segment contacts more specifically and accurately. Allows you to classify leads into more categories and make your messages more targeted and relevant to each segment.
5. Make you messages truly personal. Remember they are people.  You will be able to personalize your communications to a greater degree than ever before.
6. Build a closed-loop marketing process. Sales can pass leads back to marketing (instead of trashing them) for nurturing.  Automation provides the framework for leads to be updated and evaluated, and then identified for sales as hot leads when the time is right.
7. Tie all your channels together. Provides for coordination of online and off-line marketing efforts, and gives you a complete view of all of your marketing efforts effectiveness.
8. Justify your marketing budget. Many automation solutions include tools for calculating ROI, which in turn takes much of the guess work out setting marketing budgets according to what is effective.

Want a little solid justification?  The Aberdeen Group did a research study earlier this year with 106 companies using Marketing Automation.  There were small companies (53% with revenue below $50 million/year) and medium to large companies (47%).  They scored those companies into three categories:  Best-in-Class (20%), Average (50%), and Laggards (20%).

The results were significant.  The Best-in-Class companies realized a 67% current increase in annual revenue and 65% year-over-year increase in Return On Marketing Investment (ROMI).

The Average companies realized a 12% increase in annual revenue and a 7% increase in ROMI.

The Laggard companies realized a 20% DECREASE in annual revenue and a 0% change in ROMI.

There are numerous companies offering Marketing Automation solutions, way too many to discuss here.  You can find most of them by entering the term “marketing automation” into your favorite search engine.  There is are also companies that do some research on this and attempts to rank the vendors, but that seems to be fraught with accusations of “pay-to-play” in order to be listed.  I have been doing some investigation into some of the companies and will review them in future blogs if there is enough interest in that.

As always, enter comments and questions below.

Photo:  Fotalia

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