Marketing automation in a B2B company – how does its implementation support business? The use of marketing automation in the B2B sector allows for the regular delivery of carefully selected content to numerous groups of recipients while maintaining a personalized form.
Marketing automation for business
Personalized content, meeting the needs of the recipients, is perfectly tailored to their individual needs. Thanks to this, they are happy to read them and do not treat them as SPAM. These types of messages are of great value because the customer receives the content they are interested in. From the marketer’s point of view, customer segmentation, data integration, or campaign management is no longer done manually. A system works for him, which, according to the instructions, continuously segments the database and manages automatic e-mail dispatches.
Therefore, marketing automation uses the automation of marketing processes that have worked well in our company on a unit scale, created by hand. The important thing is that we want to automate only effective processes. Actions that have been ineffective so far will not bring effects only due to the fact that they are multiplied many times among a larger number of recipients. In this case, marketing automation will not change anything.
There are many factors influencing the fact that more and more companies decide to digitize in the B2B area. Global trends that influence the dynamics of the market are making digitization gain momentum and being present all over the world. Another important issue is the growing needs of customers, contractors, and business partners who expect convenient communication and modern sales solutions. Another very important factor is the various limitations related to the COVID-19 pandemic that has changed the face of B2B marketing and sales forever.
What is marketing automation?
It is primarily about reaching the right users with well-chosen content at the right time. Marketing automation is aimed at the maximum improvement and acceleration of repetitive marketing activities, such as:
- collecting data about users visiting our website;
- segmentation of these users based on the collected data and their interests;
- sending personalized e-mails;
- dynamic adjustment of messages and marketing activities to the behavior of specific users.
Today, there is a whole range of IT systems available on the market that help automate these processes. So it’s worth considering which one suits your needs and works best.
- Marketo.
- Eloqua.
- Customer.io
- Constant Contact.
- HubSpot.
- ExactTarget/Pardot.
- Userfox.
A wide range of marketing automation activities
Properly and carefully selected e-mail messages sent to the right recipients are the basis of marketing automation. However, this is just the beginning of activities, because there are many more possibilities.
- SMS – it is also irreplaceable support in communication with the client in properly planned marketing automation processes. Sending the customer information about the commencement of the order and the shipment of the goods is very valuable information, which at the same time has a positive effect on the customer’s perception of the store. And this is just one of the possibilities offered by SMS messages in online stores.
- Push newsletter – in turn, this is short content that usually appears as a small, pop-up window in the lower right corner of the web browser. The most important advantage of this tool is the ability to reach the recipient thanks to a running web browser, he does not have to be on the website of our online store at the moment to receive a message from us.
Professional marketing automation tools also allow you to communicate with customers via the Facebook platform. A good example of use can be the creation of custom audiences based on segments that we previously prepared in the marketing automation tool. Thanks to this, we can implement dedicated advertising campaigns for micro-segments, such as:
- people who abandoned their cart in the last 4 days;
- women who haven’t bought anything in 30 days;
- men who spent at least $500 in our store in the last year.
What does Business Automation value for the business?
According to a study conducted by DemandGen Report, 63% of marketers plan to increase their Marketing Automation expenses, and 74% of respondents considered saving time the greatest benefit of Marketing Automation. As many as 80% of the surveyed marketers noticed an increase in the number of leads collected, and 77% noted an increase in the conversion of their activities.
When asked by GetResponse about which marketing automation technique they use, marketers most often answered, as much as 52% of the respondents, that it was email automation. 42% used basic recipient targeting, 32% personalization with the use of dynamic content, i.e. automatic adjustment of the entire content or individual elements of an email message based on a set of rules and in relation to an individual recipient. The shipping schedule based on location, registration time, or other criteria was used by 23% of respondents, and 21% used advanced targeting.
Where to start implementing Marketing Automation?
You should start with the conscious collection of data about your clients with the intention of using them to personalize communication. This can be information about their behavior on our website, on social media, or about the history of cooperation. The next stage in the implementation of Marketing Automation should be the selection of a marketing system and the preparation of message scenarios. It should not be forgotten that acquiring new customers is one thing, but taking the best care of existing ones is an equally important aspect of your automation strategy.
Do you want to talk about marketing automation in your company and find out what benefits it can bring? Schedule a free consultation.