Marketing Automation, why bother?

Well, let’s start off with this – businesses that use Marketing Automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. In turn, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads (The Annuitas Group, Nov 2012). That not enough to whet your appetite? Tough crowd, but ok, we’ll move on. Companies that adopt Marketing Automation see 53% higher conversion rates (from initial touch to MQL) and 3.1% higher annual revenue rates than do non-adopters (Aberdeen Group, Jul 2012).

Don’t worry; I’m not going to sit here quoting stats from well-respected companies all day. After all, you might be thinking, “This is all too evangelistic for me. There’s no way we can adopt Marketing Automation to such an extent that we’ll achieve those results.” Those that are thinking that have a point – I’m not going to kid you, this won’t happen by Christmas. Let’s be honest here though, nothing does.

The first place to start is not by selecting a platform, it’s by producing a strategy incorporating Marketing Automation. Get everyone involved (that means those pesky sales guys too). I guarantee you’ll generate some fantastic ideas. More often than not, these ideas will be aligned with the capabilities of Marketing Automation, even if you don’t know it. Time is precious, everyone knows that, so with a day’s thinking and a bit of know-how, you can produce a solid plan. Plus, using Marketing Automation achieves this, meaning you only have one platform to run your digital marketing strategy from. That’s another case for why bother – cost.

It isn’t expensive at all when you consider the fact the majority of companies have 3 or 4 disjointed systems, which achieve lesser results than one all-in-one platform. Let’s get down to some figures. You can estimate that Marketing Automation will take up between 3-5% of your marketing program’s budget (www.idc.com, 2013).

Next, you’ll make friends, mainly with sales. Once implemented properly, Marketing Automation will give your sales team hot prospects that are actually hot, give them updates on what their leads are doing, and help manage their daily tasks. They’ll love you for it – if they don’t, they’re 65 and retiring, or a Freemason!

Finally, it comes down to ROI, as everything does. So what can you expect? Well, in a study by Razor Social, more than 10 per cent [of companies] saw a 50-74 per cent increase, and almost 20 per cent experienced greater than a 75 per cent increase in revenue (www.razorsocial.com, 2014) – I couldn’t resist slipping in one more stat, sorry.

So I think we all agree that Marketing Automation is worth the cost and effort; if not, you’re probably a Freemason and get it for free. Just Google it – there’s thousands of stats backing up my views. One quick caveat before I sign off however. Make sure you know what you’re doing. Without the knowledge, process, and strategy, as with any technology, you can easily waste time and money.