Marketing automation

Marketing automation is software or systems that take the grunt work out of digital marketing. Don’t worry, it’s not robots taking over marketers’ jobs. Marketing automation actually serves to make marketers look good. Systems are set up to organise and fulfil tasks in line with your marketing aims.

Digital marketers still have to use their skills to drive traffic to their site. Where marketing automation really shines is generating leads from that traffic and converting those leads into customers.

Marketing automation works by collecting customer data like location, contact information and previous site interactions. With this data, things like site content and email campaigns can be personalised to deliver the most engaging content and nurture leads through the entire customer journey.

Say goodbye to generic newsletters and carousels of content on your homepage. You don’t want to be the business whose emails end up in the junk folder. Marketing automation lets you take your marketing to a more personal level.

The benefits of marketing automation

Sounds good so far, doesn’t it? But what are the actual benefits of marketing automation? There’s some key advantages:

• Generate leads by giving users the most engaging content for their individual needs.
• Nurture leads with automated email campaigns, targeting users who are most likely to respond.
• Identify your quality leads based on what users do or don’t respond to, saving you time and energy.
• Increase customer retention with targeted marketing based on purchase history.
• Up sell and cross sell to users based on their needs and interests.
• Measure the success of your campaigns. Track what users respond to so you know what’s working.
• Increase marketing team productivity with better prioritising and streamlining of tasks.

Make no mistake, marketing automation isn’t just a quick fix for sending spam emails. It’s a tool for improving your customer experience by delivering the best content to quality leads. So, you won’t waste time and resources marketing to leads who may never be interested in becoming customers.

More than that, marketing automation doesn’t just serve marketers. Ultimately, by streamlining your marketing tactics you can align with sales objectives quicker. Understanding the customer’s needs will allow you to cross sell and up sell. So you generate more revenue. Everyone wins.

Sitecore makes marketing automation a breeze

A recent study by Uberflip showed that 85% of B2B marketers feel they’re not using their marketing automation systems to their full potential. It seems the biggest use of marketing automation is email marketing, at 95%

Some areas marketers admit to missing out on are campaign effectiveness analytics, integration with other systems and content management. But there are many more.

With Sitecore, marketing automation software is built right into the platform. Every aspect of your digital strategy can be automated and personalised using Sitecore systems or those which can be easily integrated with Sitecore.

Some key marketing automation features in Sitecore are:

• Cross-channel automation – manage your content across multiple channels. Synchronise content and responses, no matter what device your user approaches from. Control the look, feel and substance of your site for every individual user.
• Email Experience Management – easily integrate the system with your Sitecore CMS. Use customer data to align email marketing with your campaigns. Personalise email marketing using customer data to increase conversion.
• Sitecore Experience Database – the possibilities are endless with the Experience Database. The database tracks customer interactions with your business across channels and devices to make the most of real-time data.
• Sitecore Analytics – use analytics to track the effectiveness of your campaign across every channel. Stay on top of your game and increase engagement.
• Easy integration – integrate a whole host of marketing automation systems into Sitecore with ease. Keep everything in one place for a clear view your campaigns and strategies.
• Sitecore content management system – making content creation and management easy. Reuse content and media across multiple sites and personalise every bit of it.

With the recent release of Sitecore 8.1 came a number of improvements to Sitecore’s marketing automation systems. Namely the Campaign Creator has seen improvements, making it easier for marketers to create and manage marketing campaigns. There’s also been some improvements made to Sitecore’s content testing and personalisation capabilities.

So, what can Kagool do for marketers?

Finding the right digital partner is crucial to great enterprise website design. At Kagool, we’re all about Sitecore. We’re one of the top UK Sitecore Platinum partners. And the biggest UK partner to be exclusively Sitecore.

But we’re more than just a team of techies. Our marketing team is made up of digital marketers, copywriters and SEO experts. That’s the sort of know-how we like to share with our customers. We understand the power Sitecore gives to marketers and we want you to get your hands on it.

If you want to know more about how Sitecore, get a Sitecore demo or find out about Sitecore pricing, drop us a line. We’d love to hear from you.