What is Marketing Automation? 

Marketing automation is the process of using technology or software to complete marketing tasks. Marketing automation often looks like sending out email marketing to target customers, automating social media postings, or even organizing advertising campaigns. 

What Does Marketing Automation Aim To Do? 

Simplifying these tedious practices, like email marketing, not only does it promote efficiency for businesses, but it also means there can be a more personalized experience for target customers. Automating an email to include the user’s name with a sweet ‘Hey You, This Would Be Great For You’, can create quite an impact with your audience. This can be the difference between them deleting your email the moment it arrives in their inbox and taking the time to see if the products truly capture their attention.  

Identifying the Pros and Cons of Marketing Automation

In theory, marketing automation sets out to capture your audience’s attention and helps to build rapport. In action, many businesses rely on marketing automation as the ‘be-all, end-all’, and neglect to just use it as a tool on the path to creating a long-standing customer base. Sending personalized emails out are not enough, instead, your customer should be at the center of what you do. They should not be an afterthought or merely captured through a software process. 

The Pros: 

1.Seamless Interactions With Customers & Personalized Customer Experiences 

Customers get to be at the heart of what your marketing automation hopes to achieve. By automating email marketing processes, your company is able to build a personal connection in the eyes of your customers. They are receiving emails geared towards them and their interests - they are able to identify that your business fits their wants/needs while you are boosting their perceived image of your brand. This can extend far beyond adding a name into the intro of an email, this can be sending individualized content out to users based on their previous interest points, sending text messages about fresh, new deals, or generating ads in their timelines on Instagram. 

2. You Can Use the Automation to Understand The Needs of Your Leads

The wonders of marketing automation mean every clicked link, and targeting process is created with your target consumer in mind. You have the ability to gather data that can be refined and adjusted because you have implemented automation that allows you to understand the analytics behind what your customers like. Notice your customer base has a greater interest in one product over another? This is extremely useful information to not only maintain your current customer base, but this is strong information that can help to pull more leads in. 

3. Strong Long-Term Strategy 

Success in marketing automation is found when brands slow their rollout of content. Staggering launches, testing the waters, and constantly reflecting on the points of failure, improvement, or success are crucial for utilizing marketing automation to its fullest extent. Not only does this mean you can put time and thought into your marketing process and flow, but you also get to develop a stronger content strategy. The importance of data and feedback is at the right hand in creating content that is interesting, captivating, and energizing to your audience. 

The Cons: 

1.Relying Solely on Marketing Automation 

Marketing automation is meant to be an asset and a tool in the entire marketing process. Automation alone is not enough to build your customer base or capture the leads you need. It acts as a stepping stone to keep your audience engaging and further interested in what you have to offer. 

2. Missing a Significant Database of Leads 

This ties with not only relying on marketing automation, for automation practices to be successful, but businesses also need to have a large database of leads. Marketing automation focuses on keeping or further interesting your audience, but first, you need to have a set of leads to follow, reach out to, and capture. 

3. Full Effectiveness Needs to Have Various Channels 

To be truly effective, marketing automation should not simply just be personalized emails. Though this may be one of the most common marketing automation practices, there are other ways to appeal to your customer base. Having various channels like delivering ads to certain potential customers or sending out text messages at specific times are essential for using marketing automation extremely effectively. 

In Conclusion: Marketing Automation Can Elevate Your Business 

The capabilities offered by automating your marketing processes can shift the way your customers view your business, can generate stronger connections with your leads, and can be a method that works in collaboration with your other marketing practices to reach your target customer.

HubSpot dives into the 101 on Marketing Automation at HubSpot Marketing | What is Marketing Automation?. Starting the marketing automation journey without guidance can feel stressful, confusing, and complicated. ISU Corp is here to be a guide while you develop the right marketing methods for you.

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