Most small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) consider marketing automation as a nice-to-have tool that isn’t necessary until perhaps they’ve grown to a much larger size or feel that manually executed campaigns are just as effective as an automated one. We’re debunking these assumptions and we’ve got data to back it up.
- 64% of marketers reported that they benefited from using marketing automation within the first 6 months of usage.
- Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead.
- Nurtured leads produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities on average versus non-nurtured leads.
Marketing Automation isn’t just about automating your marketing tasks; it’s also meant to be used as a tool to make a marketer’s job easier. Via this tool, you’re able to see real-time analytics and identify parts of your campaign that are and aren’t successful.
These analytics can be used when deciding how to improve your future campaigns instead of doing guesswork. You can even automate interactions to provide excellent customer service to your customers.
But most importantly, companies that are busy manually carrying out marketing tasks, tend to miss opportunities such as following up or identifying a potential lead. Automating your marketing process lets you set up patterns to keep up with potential opportunities with minimal human effort and this is is critical for SMEs as they have lesser manpower.
Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified lead.
Why Do SMEs Consider Marketing Automation as a Big Challenge?
If cost is an issue, automating your marketing can actually be affordable if you’re able to identify the exact functions needed for your business as this reduces the pricing of marketing automation packages. SMEs also worry that marketing automation tools are too complicated to use. On the contrary, these tools are designed to be user-friendly and can be used by anyone, especially non-technical folks.
Another concern of SME marketers is lacking bulk content to be used in marketing automation. But the truth is, you only need to create a handful of templates that should be tweaked for new campaigns. Why tweak? Because personalize marketing email campaigns can determine how a prospect interacts with your content. If it solves a problem they’re facing, your prospect could actually click a link to your site and take time to go through your products and services – all of which can be tracked and analysed via a marketing automation tool. Behavioral based email marketing helps you create connections with your prospects a lot better because you’re highlighting topics that are of importance to them.
Staying Connected Through The Departments
Marketing automation is considered to be a part of a full-fledged CRM system. This means that having a complete CRM system allows for an easier flow of information between your sales and marketing department. You can closely track a lead and then quickly transfer it to your sales team to convert the lead into a customer. This ensures that your marketing campaign initiatives are highly effective and giving you the best ROIs.
Pardot is a B2B marketing automation tool by Salesforce that offers a central platform for sales and marketing departments to create, utilize, and manage online marketing campaigns. Got a burning question on Pardot or marketing automation? Drop us an email at asklava@lavaprotocols.com.
Lava is an authorised Salesforce Partner in Malaysia and has more than 9 years of cloud solutions, CRM implementation and consultation experience. We pride ourselves in not just being a CRM partner but in also understanding the needs of our customers and taking their business to the next level. Are you an SME that needs help to start off their marketing automation journey? Start your marketing automation journey with us.