CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software has a lot to offer on its own. It can handle and track client communications, manage customer service experiences, and reorganize the distribution of data over all sectors. However, CRM software has certain restriction as with any other software application. CRM is not planned or conceived to handle everything.
Marketing automation software works fine without CRM software, and the other way around, but they work so well when they’re combined together.
So, what is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation platform, in simple words, is a technical platform that lets businesses to automate their marketing activities. It offers an enhanced customer service experience with more conversions and efficiency.
The main aim of marketing is to generate more income for your business. To attain this, you have to bring in more traffic to your site, turn that traffic into leads and then those leads into potential clients.
How Marketing Automation Tools Work?
Most of the digital marketers, today, are depending on email marketing to drive in more traffic and achieve better outcomes. They send out continuous emails to their complete list of clients and recipients, wishing that the email might attract some of them and making them to buy their product. But the real question is, whether or not it’s helping businesses to success?
Repeatedly sending out the same email to everyone in your mailing list would probably annoy them, making them to “unsubscribe” from your mailing list, taking away the chance of doing further business with them. This is the part where marketing automation software comes into play. Marketing automation software allows you to serve your leads all over the buying process and deliver highly targeted, customized content that really deals with the specific requirements of the client.
Top Features of Marketing Automation Software
Drip marketing and lead nurturing are the exciting features of marketing automation tools. A wide array of automation tools is available in the market, but it’s really hard to find a tool that offers all-in-one platform. Before choosing an automation tool or a vendor, it is necessary to make sure that you’re getting all the required features.
Marketing automation software acts as a smart gatekeeper. Potential leads are nurtured and pursued until they’re persuaded to be eligible leads, then they are prompted further into the funnel. This prevents the sales people from being swamped with leads that don’t convert into actual clients. By retaining non-starters out of the lead conversion process, the tool increases ROI for both the marketing and sales departments.
While leads are being nurtured and pursued, their actions are constantly monitored and evaluated. And if they remain idle, the nurturing and engagement continues automatically. But if the lead becomes active, the tool will automatically notify the particular staff of the sales department. Information and interactions that are stored automatically by the tool will show all the info about a lead’s communications with the sales department. Having all the info about how an active lead turned into a hot lead would be a great advantage for the sales team.