Marketing automation has become a necessity for today's entrepreneurs, as it's used not only to automate processes but to restructure and quantify their marketing campaigns and workflows. Sales automation can eliminate repetitive tasks related to follow up, sales pipelines, and lead acquisition.
From saving time and energy to generating more revenue, the impact of sales and marketing automation combined goes beyond automating repetitive tasks. It streamlines business operations, helping entrepreneurs focus more on nurturing client relationships.
Automation can help businesses increase ROI, customer satisfaction, and overall growth. Not sold yet? Here’s how else sales and marketing automation can benefit your business.
- Reduced costs
- Additional revenue
- Generate and nurture leads
- Better data for smarter decisions
- Refined marketing process
- Personalized customer journey
- Marketing and sales on one page
- Save time on marketing campaigns
- Customize software for your needs
Proven Benefits of Using Sales and Marketing Automation
1. Reduced costs
In Keap’s 2020 Customer Survey, small business respondents expressed that finding time and resources for marketing was their greatest challenge. For instance, 22.9% of respondents stated that they collect contact information manually over the phone or in-person rather than automating the process.
Software not only saves time, but provides much needed resources to get more done.
If you're using the right software for marketing automation, such as Keap, it’s like one employee accomplishing what 50 employees can perform manually.
All you have to do is create a process for generating and nurturing leads along with marketing campaigns, which are spontaneously activated based on certain benchmarks. Within several months of implementing automated campaigns, you can send out thousands of customized emails daily using simple autopilot software.
For example, after starting to use Keap as their sales and marketing automation software, a small bed and breakfast in France saw their workload reduced by 25%. The small business established automated follow-up email campaigns that allowed it to generate repeat business and attract new guests, resulting in doubled revenue—while saving time.
2. Additional revenues
While bringing down expenditures, a further benefit of using marketing automation software is more revenue. Combining lead management with prioritization can result in increased ROI from your sales activities.
Several small businesses have reported an 800% growth in revenue, $100k in additional revenue, and even growing revenue to goals of over $1 million annually after adopting automation software.
Automation's features, such as its personalization capabilities, play a part in these revenue increases. For example, using a personalized CTA based on visitor behavior is able to increase conversions by 42%.
3. Generate and nurture leads
Did you know that over 30% of sales activities can be automated, according to McKinsey & Company? Tasks include pipeline management, following up, scheduling appointments, and other general administrative duties—all time-consuming yet critical lead nurturing activities.
If you are a small business owner, you know that generating leads is crucial to your business development. Through automation of procedures between marketing and sales, you can concentrate more on formulating strategies that can generate and nurture promising leads. In other words, you can land more customers because of more prospects.
And the data from sales and marketing automation statistics agrees. Those who have adopted sales automation early on consistently report sales uplift potential of up to 10 percent.
4. Better data for smarter decisions
Big Data is one of the buzzwords in IT these days. Unfortunately, not all businesses are efficient in collecting and using this data in their marketing and sales efforts. Marketing automation facilitates understanding of Big Data, and gathering the required intelligence makes things work for you.
A sales and marketing automation platform like Keap is one of the more complete solutions to gauge marketing campaigns and forecast consumer attitude or reaction. It can put together a full profile of your prospects.
5. Refined marketing process
Software used for marketing automation allows you to map out your customer journey. At the same time, your marketing strategy will allow you to build processes centered on the experience of your potential customers. Through the creation of processes around this customer journey, it becomes easier to process targets and nurture leads.
Something as simple as understanding that 44% of clients move on to another company if you don’t respond fast enough can help you rethink your follow-up process and the advantages of using marketing automation for better customer satisfaction.
6. Personalized customer journey
Among the difficult challenges that confront companies regularly is how to convert a one-time customer into a loyal fan. One way of achieving this is to opt for personalized social media and blog content through automation. McKinsey reports that early adopters of sales automation also see higher customer satisfaction.
According to video marketing statistics, more than 70% of consumers search for exceptional, original, and targeted content. Tools in marketing automation streamline the procedure of conveying the appropriate content via email to the correct buyers at the correct time.
More advantages of using marketing automation lie in the data collected, which is effective in qualifying leads from marketing and forwarding them to sales. By scoring leads and grading them, marketing automation obtains and processes data of unique visitors to assign qualified leads to the right salesperson, further personalizing their journey and setting your sales reps up for success.
7. Marketing and sales on one page
Marketing and sales should be on the “same page.”
Many businesses find it hard to properly integrate these two departments. However, this is necessary since technology continues to progress and influence the purchasing cycle.It makes collaboration between the two functions more efficient than ever. Sales and marketing automation is the key to help promote quality of leads and automates the conventional, manual procedures such as assigning and following up target leads.
8. Save time on marketing campaigns
Many marketing automation systems like Keap have drag and drop interfaces that will enable you to create effective email campaigns, social media campaigns and landing pages. This is possible even if you aren't technically adept or well-versed in creative design. For example, a multimedia marketing and event production business saved dozens of hours a month by using Keap’s email templates and campaign builders.
Keap customers save 10 hours a week just by automating repetitive tasks. And now Easy Automations makes setting up marketing campaigns even easier.
9. Use of software and methods
With the immense benefits that sales and marketing automation hold for company growth, it’s no wonder that the global marketing automation market is estimated to grow 9.8% from 2020 to 2027. However, a unique advantage of software like Keap is the level of personalization for your unique business needs.
Regardless of which automation platform you choose, don’t overlook these important features to maximize value:
- Sales and Marketing Automation
- CRM
- Email Marketing
- Invoicing and Checkout Forms
- Appointment Scheduling
- Mobile App and Texting
- Reporting and Analytics
- Internal and External Forms
- Landing Page Creation
- Sales Pipeline
- Lead Scoring
However, it’s not enough to acquire complex software to automate the funnel. Marketing automation solutions are required to generate and nurture leads consistently and logically. Quick fixes are not sufficient to ensure long-term business success.
What’s next?
Marketing automation means a lot to all shapes and sizes of businesses. This is why modern entrepreneurs must jump on the bandwagon and begin looking at all available platforms for automation to truly streamline their company for this age.
make sure to assess your specific requirements, available resources and business goals prior to launching automated marketing campaigns. Study the necessary resources before procuring software for optimization purposes. These tools are essential to \ensuring the growth and success of your business.
About the author
Lidia Hovhan is part of the content and marketing team at OmnicoreAgency. She contributes articles about how to integrate digital marketing strategy with traditional marketing to help business owners to meet their online goals.