What is Marketing Automation?

In simple terms, marketing automation is the process of automating manual workflows and activities to more efficiently manage all of your marketing. Marketing automation used to be a privilege for large businesses with big budgets and a team of Operations people. Today, with tools like Zapier, Constant Contact, Automate.io and others, Marketing automation is now available to small businesses at a very low cost. With marketing automation, you can put repetitive tasks on auto-pilot, and get some of your precious hours back. In the blog post, we will share a few ways to automate your small business marketing!

Wikipedia definition of marketing automation: Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online and automate repetitive tasks.

Why do I need it?

The reality is that everyone can benefit from marketing automation. Whether you run a multi-million dollar company or are just starting out today. If you aren’t using services to automate parts of your marketing then you are essentially working harder, not smarter. According to Saleforce.com, 67% of marketing leaders rely on marketing automation and 21% plan on adding more automated services in the future. Along with this, the vast majority, nearly 80% of marketers recognize the benefits of automation and say it makes them more efficient.

Constant Contact

Email marketing campaigns can easily be automated. Constant Contact allows you to create a targeted email campaign easily. To share an example. We at Recipi use Constant Contact to send our prospects and customers a weekly email sharing tips, promoting services, and staying top of mind with our customers.

Sales professionals can create automated follow-up emails. You can add a prospect to your mailing list, then send follow-up emails automatically on set days of your choice. For example, you could send a follow up one week after adding a contact to your list, then another reminder ten days later. This eliminates the need to send manual follow-up emails. The bonus is that Constant Contact tracks your opens and clicks, and manages unsubscribes easily.

Zapier

Zapier is a service that connects all of your company’s various apps to be able to work together without the need for code or developers. If for example, you can create a “zap” (workflow automation) that sends new inquiries from your website into your CRM automatically. Another create trick is to use Zapier to connect your website inquiries to Trello (collaboration tool mentioned in our “best free tools for small business in 2019 blog), so that your sales team and follow up.

These are the two simplest examples, but the possibilities to automate your sales, marketing, operations and other workflows is endless. Recipi is here to help you learn and compete in digital marketing and we would be thrilled to discuss your marketing automation needs. Ready for marketing automation? Get in touch today!

What we have learned

Hopefully, by now, you have a much better understanding of what marketing automation is and how it can help your business. The ultimate goal for any marketer should be to find quality prospects for their sales team to close. With marketing automation that becomes a much more streamlined process.

Marketing automation generally does not require technical skills, but it can be tricky. Recipi is ready to help any business looking to automate.