We know that a marketing automation system is a useful tool in our business arsenal. Lead nurturing, customer support and a range of other marketing tasks are all made much easier by implementing automation.
However, these are not the only benefits. Read on for some of the more unexpected benefits of marketing automation.
More time to develop other areas of business
What was the impetus that led you to pursue a career in business in the first place? Was it the thrill of applying your skill, talent and experience to all manner of different situations, and watching the fruits of your labors grow organically? Or was your career born from a passion for lead scoring, sending emails, and performing lots of fiddly little tasks?
I’m going to assume it was the former. If it was the latter, well, more power to you, but for the majority of us, these menial marketing and lead nurturing tasks simply get in the way.
Marketing automation is designed to support those tasks, handling them automatically while you spend time on more rewarding areas of business. This could include developing new products and services, creating great content, introducing new philosophies across your company or… well… the possibilities are endless.
Culture of collaboration
On the subject of a business philosophy, this brings me to another, somewhat unexpected, benefit of implementing marketing automation within a company. Marketing automation, by its very nature, is a collaborative and unifying platform, bringing together different aspects and elements of business and pooling their efforts towards common goals.
Different teams, working with the same piece of overarching software, begin to understand how their work fits into the wider spectrum of the business. They gain insight into how the actions they take impact on the working practices and duties of other teams, and vice versa.
A culture of collaboration is formed, fostering a spirit of organizational harmony between teams. And it doesn’t stop here. This harmonized effect is felt even beyond the confines of the marketing automation system; it bleeds into all aspects of business. A far-reaching culture of collaboration and integration is achieved.
Connections across every channel
What happens when we try to pursue leads across a range of channels manually? At the very best, the outcome is a few conversions and a well and truly fried brain; at the worst, we miss out on the business of some of our most valuable prospects.
Marketing automation relieves this pressure, supporting you as you nurture and support prospects across your usual channels and beyond. With a robust automation system providing a handy safety net, you should never have to suffer the irritation of letting a prospect slip through your fingers.
What’s more, automating key processes enables you to create a seamless omni-channel experience. Store your lead data in a central hub, and then use this data to ensure that each and every channel is pulling its weight. The modern customer is an elusive one; stay one step ahead of them by ensuring your omni-channel strategies are strong.
One step closer to a tailored service
In any industry in which client relationships are key, providing a bespoke, tailored service to each and every client who comes through your door represents the gold standard. This is marketing-Nirvana, a shimmering Shangri-La of customer service optimization which – truth be told – is impossible to reach.
But one of the more surprising benefits of marketing automation can help us to move a step or two closer to this goal. It might seem like an automated process is a completely impersonal one, but – through automated lead scoring and client profiling – it need not be.
These techniques help us to understand our clients better, and give us a means to segment them into ever smaller sections of our customer-base. These segments may be grouped according to circumstance or preference, and can be marketed to en masse.
As your data stores grow increasingly extensive, you can further hone these segments, getting ever closer to the level of service you dream of. Suddenly, that beacon of client-service excellence doesn’t seem so distant.
Sales opportunities you hadn’t even considered
Acquire a lead, nurture that lead, achieve conversion, support the customer, hope for a repeat sale; that’s all there is to it, right? Of course not, there is so much more to successful marketing than this.
One of the fundamental rules of the craft is to optimize the value of the customer over their entire life-cycle. This means identifying other products that might be of interest to them, additional services which can be administered, and securing loyal clients for the long term.
This is possible to achieve manually, here and there, but do we really want to be dealing in ‘heres’ and ‘theres’? Is it such a good idea to leave things to chance?
By implementing marketing automation systems, we don’t need to. We use the understanding that we gain to connect customers with these additional services, and we develop close relationships which blossom into long term client-provider partnerships.
The automation system can even tell us directly what upselling and value-enhancement opportunities pertain to each client or prospect. To put it simply, you will be able to enjoy direct sales opportunities you never even knew existed.
Falling in love with business once again
This is it; this is the crux. What is the end product of all of the above? The answer, of course, is a smoothly-run business, a company which is agile enough to meet the demands of an ever changing marketplace, and an organization which is a joy to be a part of.
Most people in business have had dark days; days in which they considered chucking it all in, selling up and getting a stable job with a monthly wage and a retirement plan, but something drew them back.
Perhaps I’m overly romantic, or perhaps I’m just speaking the truth, but could it be a love of business which reignited that passion for their work? With marketing automation, you can rediscover that love all over again. Enjoy the journey.
Over to you
Has your business embraced marketing automation? If so, what unexpected benefits of marketing automation have you discovered? Tell us about it in the comments below.