Beyond email campaigns: why marketing automation should be at the heart of your marketing strategy

Automation has been widely embraced by organizations as a means to boost productivity and future-proof their business. But in our experience, marketing automation does not receive the attention it deserves and remains at a low level of maturity in many companies.

Case studies show that those who take the leap, vastly improve the efficiency of their marketing initiatives and get a greater return on their investments (HubSpot estimates a massive 3,800% ROI on email alone). Marketing automation also offers a great opportunity to harmonize technologies, from platform to frontend and across all channels, meaning those omnichannel ambitions can finally take flight.

In this article, we explain what marketing automation is, why it is important, how to do it and what you can expect as benefits if you get it right.

So, what is marketing automation, exactly?

To date, automation in marketing has been mainly associated with email and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) activity. However, true marketing automation reaches every customer touchpoint and involves each part of the marketing and sales landscape, from content creation and management to customer interactions. Powered by a strong technology architecture (read our latest on this topic here), it aims to bridge the gap between marketing and digitization and offers a route to the CMO’s ultimate goal: consumer centricity (read our latest on this topic here). For these reasons and more, it is now making its way to the top of many strategic agendas.

Why should I automate when I communicate?

As the saying goes, “it’s complicated”. In recent years, marketing operations have become dizzyingly complex, due to rising user expectations, rapidly advancing technological possibilities, an exponential increase in data sources, and the continuing proliferation of marketing channels (as shown in Figure 1).

Figure 1: Complexity drivers in marketing and examples

In such an intricate landscape, disconnected and manual processes just don’t make the grade anymore. It’s impossible to clean, transform, and analyze consumer data from a single online sales channel by hand, let alone cater for the multiple extra data sources being introduced as omnichannel experiences assume more importance.

The same holds for content management. As interaction with online marketing has grown, expectations of high-quality content have risen at the same time. Consumers are also looking for personalized recommendations, content, and offerings, which would require an army of designers to handle. In the face of this complexity, many companies will easily need to double their marketing budgets just to maintain the status quo.

But with marketing automation, it’s possible to communicate with customers in a more efficient and effective manner. Modern data pipelines can process inputs from a variety of sales channels in milliseconds, while experience platforms that manage consumer journeys can personalize messaging based on target audience profiles. In addition, data can be used to automatically evaluate and optimize the marketing content itself.

Marketing automation can also provide a strong competitive advantage, as we have seen from digital challengers taking over additional markets, thanks to their ability to provide seamless online-offline experiences. For example, since buying the Whole Foods grocery chain, Amazon has been able to merge information about its Prime members with data generated when consumers shop in a Whole Foods outlet, laying the foundation for targeted marketing across all channels.

Sounds great. How do I do it?

There are three key steps companies need to take to be successful with marketing automation: making it a strategic priority; using automation throughout the marketing process with the holistic customer experience in mind; and matching the implementation plan with the ambition.

1. Make it a key strategic priority.

Despite the tremendous potential marketing automation presents, many companies are missing significant opportunities. Why? It hasn’t been made a priority. Before even considering implementation, it’s critical to develop a sound, holistic strategy. Individual use cases and MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) are great starting points, but to avoid wasting time with siloed pilot projects, marketing automation must be understood as a holistic system following a clear strategic directive. Otherwise, the value generated will be limited.

2. Use automation throughout the marketing process, from first customer contact to regular interaction.

Automation can come into play from the very first interaction with a new customer, cleaning and categorizing registration data and managing hygiene factors, e.g. their consent to be contacted. Next, data can be analyzed to create and segment customer profiles, which lays the groundwork for personalized advertising. Content can then be created, evaluated and customized automatically before marketing initiatives are executed, and further enhanced by conversion and POS (Point of Sale) information. Finally, individual customer contact is automated. Here, solutions are well advanced, having transitioned from written ads to audio, video and other multimedia formats, e.g. the virtual tellers now “employed” by banks.

By embedding automation into each step of the funnel, and integrating it across activities and channels, its impact is only multiplied.

Figure 2: Marketing automation along the marketing process

3. Match your implementation to your ambition.

Many companies struggle with implementation, even if their strategy is sound. This is because the technology architecture is not mature enough to support their strategic ambitions. To overcome this common obstacle, the technology architecture should be aligned with the organization’s strategic business goals, laying the foundation for marketing automation systems.

We outline our six-step approach our recent whitepaper, Developing a strategic e-commerce architecture. With this approach we enable companies to translate their strategic ambitions into technical requirements, to define a suitable tech architecture, and to finally select and implement relevant technologies and applications.

As companies develop their marketing automation capabilities, they go through four implementation stages, or maturity levels.

Figure 3: Marketing automation technology maturity levels and benchmarking

Level 1 – Unified architecture

Here, marketing technology has been aligned with strategic goals and a centralized architecture has been implemented. This enables different systems to exchange information in an automated manner, smoothing the way for holistic process automation, from information gathering, to analysis, content creation and contact initiation.

Level 2 – Central data collection and analysis

At this stage, the collection and analysis of all relevant customer data points has been centralized. Since the impact of marketing automation correlates strongly with the system’s ability to manage data from several sources, one classic building block is a consumer data platform to store, connect, and analyze all relevant customer information. This enables customer segmentation and clustering, followed by personalized customer interaction and targeted advertising.

Level 3 – Automated promotion execution

Now, marketing campaigns are executed by the system. Personalized marketing content is developed and tailored to pre-defined target audiences, using the customer insights made possible at the previous stage, and sent out automatically across all digital marketing channels.

Level 4 – Dynamic automated marketing

Finally, machine learning takes automation to another level. The system is now able to gather and process feedback on the success of individual initiatives and use this learning to optimize campaigns autonomously. At this point, organizations can automatically calibrate their marketing strategies based on the quantifiable success of previous activities.

What will it really do for me?

The results of marketing automation speak for themselves. Solutions are becoming more standardized and affordable, and sending customer acquisition, conversion, and retention numbers rocketing.

To put this in context, one Forrester study found that Adobe Experience Cloud delivered a 242% return on investment in three years, across industries. The organizations included significantly improved their customer acquisition metrics, improving unique visitor traffic by 14% and conversion rates by 25%. Furthermore, average order rates went up by 10% and upselling conversions increased by 60%.

But the benefits extend beyond the marketing performance scorecard. Marketing automation will force the entire organization to become more effective regarding processes, collaboration, and IT:

First, your marketing processes will improve – dramatically. There’s no point in automating weak processes, as this will only absorb cost, without yielding the appropriate returns. But by standardizing, optimizing and synchronizing processes before they are automated, your entire marketing function will gain from a leaner, more efficient operating model.

Second, a new level of collaboration, both inside the marketing function and across the organization, will also result as you enable the experience customers expect across touchpoints and channels, amplifying the impact of initiatives. Siloes between departments will be broken down, and multiple areas will have responsibility for shared targets.

Finally, your business strategy will become more aligned with technological capabilities, beyond specific marketing applications. This holistic system approach will mean companies with marketing as a core competence will also have IT as a core competence.

What now?

There’s never been a better time to tackle marketing automation. Failing to act could mean falling behind, and as every company knows, piecemeal efforts to modernize technology don’t work in the long run. For those who grab the opportunity however, the rewards could be game-changing: a better competitive position, increased marketing and sales efficiency, and unmatched returns on marketing investment – all built around a better customer experience.

Interested in what marketing automation could do for your business? Let’s talk.

Contact the authors:

Sebastian Schoemann, Miroslav Lazic, Rene Ceipek, Alexander Mix, Julian Enz, Julius Appelhagen