Marketing automation is your new best friend.
The marketing team is busy. Emails need to be sent and blog posts written. The social media channels need attention, and campaigns must be run. Targeted advertising should go out, and the list goes on.
New tools and technologies have come a long way in terms of simplifying these kinds of tasks. However, this has also raised the customers’ expectations. For example, do you send a welcome email when someone signs up for your newsletter?
No? Then go ahead and add that to your to-do list.
But one technological marvel has made life a lot easier for 'marketers' - marketing automation. In this article, we take you through the most important benefits of marketing automation and how you can use it in your everyday work.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is software that aims to automate your marketing efforts and tasks. It's typically triggered by a buyer’s action on your website, such as signing up for a newsletter, filling in a form or booking a meeting.
If you've ever tried online shopping late in the evening or at night, you've most likely also experienced receiving a confirmation email right away. It is a classic example of marketing automation.
Don’t worry! It’s not a student assistant on the clock 24 hours a day who sits and waits for new orders to come in. Instead, the store or company has written the email in advance and used email automation to send it as soon as you have completed your purchase.
With marketing automation, you can plan emails to automatically go off at the right time and with the right content.
And emails are, of course, only one of the things you can automate. You can also use marketing automation for digital marketing, social media, advertising and much more.
In general, marketing automation helps you streamline your marketing activities and minimizes the need for manual processing. The whole thing is set up in an always-on setup, which matures both potential and existing customers throughout their buyer’s journey.
Let's take a closer look at the benefits of HubSpot marketing automation and how it can help grow your business.
The benefits of HubSpot marketing automation
First of all, with HubSpot, you can gather all your marketing efforts in one platform. HubSpot contains all the tools you need for sales and marketing, including CRM, CMS, SEO, Sales Pipeline and SoMe Management.
In addition, you have access to specific marketing disciplines such as email, blogging, landing pages and call-to-actions.
All your data is gathered in one system. That way, no information is lost between different systems. You can track your leads' behavior and compare their engagement across systems and departments.
Besides the fact that it is a great resource, it is also a great advantage to keep all customer data in one place, as it frees up a lot of time when you no longer have to keep track of a large number of systems and data.
And this is where we start. One of the biggest advantages of HubSpot marketing automation is increased efficiency:
1. Efficiency
With HubSpot marketing automation, your marketing department can save a lot of time. Instead of spending time and energy on manual processes, you can make the system do the hard work.
- You don’t have to manually send out marketing material or follow-up emails to customers and leads. You can set up automatic workflows that do the work for you.
- You can pre-produce your content and schedule it to depend on a certain action. It also has the advantage that no one gets deprioritized, and you never forget to follow up on an interesting lead again.
Not only is it super efficient, but it also strengthens your relationships with both existing customers and leads because you ensure continuous communication.
2. Marketing and sales alignment
By using HubSpot, you can combine both your sales and marketing automation. This way, the two departments are better aligned toward the company's goals and efforts.
HubSpot makes the process from a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) to a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) much easier. No Excel sheets need to be updated or cross-checked to move a lead. The system does it all by itself.
Studies show that marketing automation can lead to a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing costs.
HubSpot marketing automation helps you generate more leads which, in turn, increases your sales. It's a win-win situation as your marketing team can spend more time on strategically increasing your conversions while sales can increase their productivity.
3. Better conversion rates
Regarding increased conversions, HubSpot marketing automation can also streamline your team and how you handle your leads.
HubSpot marketing automation software can track the behavior of your leads, so you can keep an eye on which conversion points work - and which don't. You get an overview of the effectiveness of all your conversion points, so you have a better opportunity to optimize conversion rates.
In addition, you can use it to target website visitors who do not convert in the first place. Marketing automation can have a significant influence on—and help increase —your CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization).
The purpose of a marketing automation system is simply to give your team more time to analyze your marketing strategy so that you can optimize the conversion points on your website continuously.
4. Reporting
Reporting on your data and analytics can quickly feel like a lengthy process. But with marketing automation, you can, of course, also automate this part.
In HubSpot, you can draw automatic reports and choose which data and parameters you want to measure. But you can also choose one of HubSpot's many report templates, which measure all the 'typical' data.
Automatic reporting gives you a complete overview of all your processes. It helps you spot friction or challenges to correct the situation in time.
With precise and streamlined reporting, you always know what is going on, where things are going well and where optimization is needed.
5. Personal marketing
If your marketing department no longer has to enter data manually, it stands to reason that they have more time to produce content. They can spend energy creating personalized content based on marketing automation's segmentation capabilities.
With marketing automation, you can target your buyer persona on different channels. You can reach them on social media, with advertising or by email.
What's so smart about marketing automation is that it can convert your website visitors into leads. And when you know who your leads are, you can start segmenting based on their behavior and characteristics.
Your entire lead nurturing process can be personalized and tailored to the individual lead.
Read more: How EasyTranslate tripled leads using a product-led strategy
A good example of personal communication is smart CTAs.
A smart CTA is based on the individual lead's buyer’s journey and conversions.
Let's say a lead reads an article on your blog. At the bottom of the article, you have inserted a CTA which encourages them (your lead) to sign up for your newsletter. But they have already done that, so this CTA is irrelevant to them.
With a smart CTA, you can adapt your CTAs to match the needs of the individual lead. If they’ve already signed up for your newsletter, you show them a CTA to download your latest e-book.
You can also use marketing automation to target specific user behavior.
For example, when a lead visits the price page on your website x number of times. You can use marketing automation to notify sales that this specific lead has visited the price page x number of times and that it might be worth reaching out even if they still need to convert.
With marketing automation, you can ensure that your leads always receive relevant and personal communication. You can track their engagement and thus reach out at precisely the right time, which also helps your lead scoring.
6. Lead scoring
In HubSpot, you can set up lead scoring, which is a system that automatically qualifies your leads.
More specifically, lead scoring is numerical values you can add to various contact points on your website, such as your product pages, newsletters, blogs or premium content pieces.
When a lead visits the product page, the specific lead is assigned a numerical value that you determine. And if they subsequently download an ebook, they are assigned another value. This way, they are qualified based on their actual behavior.
You can also use marketing automation to notify marketing or sales when a lead achieves a specific numerical value in the lead scoring, thus, minimizing the risk of contacting your leads too early and appearing too eager. Instead, you will be able to reach out precisely when your leads are most ready.
It makes the transition from marketing qualified to sales qualified much easier, as it’s completely automatic.
No leads fall through the cracks, and no time is wasted as sales can reach out to qualified leads immediately.
7. Lead nurturing
Last but not least, you can do lead nurturing with HubSpot marketing automation. Lead nurturing consists of various email workflows that automatically mature your leads with personal communication matching the individual lead’s behavior.
Let's look at an example of an automated email lead nurturing flow:
A lead fills out a form on your website and downloads an e-book. You now have that person's name and email, and they automatically enter your lead nurturing flow.
Shortly after the person has filled in the form, the system automatically sends a 'thank you for downloading our e-book' email.
A few days go by, and the system then automatically sends them a new email. This time, the email contains a case study on the same topic as the ebook.
The aim is always to get the person to convert further down the sales funnel. Therefore, the last email in the workflow contains, for example, a price list download. You have ensured that your lead has been trained in the relevant subject through an e-book and a case study, so now they are ready to look at prices.
You gently push your lead through the sales funnel by constantly offering a new opportunity to convert - thus getting closer to a purchase decision.
Lead nurturing is the alpha omega for companies with long or complex buyer’s journeys. Without lead nurturing, you will have difficulty converting leads into customers.
A scalable setup
When setting up your marketing system and automated processes, it's important to keep growth in mind. Can this process grow with your company?
If the process is not scalable, it will be difficult for your company to expand.
HubSpot marketing automation helps you create scalable processes and setups. Because the more manual a process is and the more it depends on one person, the harder it will be to scale as your team and business grow.
