© 2019 Act-On Software. All rights reserved. | www.act-on.com

What Is Marketing Automation

And Why Should You Care?

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MARKETING FUNDAMENTALS: What Is Marketing Automation 1

Marketing Automation/ mahr-ki-ting • aw-tuh-mey-shuh n /

nounSoftware designed to automate, sync, and streamline essential marketing and sales tasks and processes.

When used to its full capacity, this innovative technology can empower marketers to deliver more targeted and effective marketing efforts to better reach their audience and achieve serious ROI.

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о Collect critical insights and information through landing pages and forms

о Score leads and accounts to determine the appropriate course of action for optimal engagement

о Segment contacts based on industry, preferences, product interests, and more to deliver targeted marketing efforts

о Nurture leads through targeted automated programs to improve engagement and conversions at every step of the buyer journey

о Deliver the right message at the right time by implementing behavior-triggered messages and campaigns

о Improve customer retention through onboarding, nurture, and upsell campaigns

о Integrate your CRM to improve marketing and sales alignment and improve visibility across your organization

о Easily measure your impact to learn what’s resonating with customers and optimize efforts accordingly

о Implement website visitor tracking to gain valuable insights to help you enhance your most powerful marketing tool

о Empower your team to launch more effective marketing efforts and campaign faster than ever before

о And much more!

Marketing automation equips marketers with the tools and resources they need to get to know their audience, engage prospective customers with relevant messaging and content, and shorten and close the marketing and sales loop.

Unlike a basic Email Service Provider (ESP) such as Constant Contact or MailChimp, marketing automation allows organizations to go beyond basic email marketing and enhance their outreach. These are just some of the critical tasks you can perform without having to leave the platform.

The sky’s the limit when it comes to marketing automation because it truly is that powerful. While we can’t cover it all in one sitting, we’re going to provide an overview of how it can elevate your marketing while saving you time and resources.

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69%OF MARKETERS

feel that marketing automation improves the targeting of their messages.

Liana Technologies, 2017

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Deliver Personalized Messaging and Content That Drives Conversions

Thanks to the rise of Amazon and social media, today’s customers are accustomed to receiving product and content recommendations tailored to their needs and interests everywhere they go. This new norm has set an expectation for all B2B and B2C companies to follow suit and deliver a more targeted marketing experience for their customers than ever before.

Marketing automation makes it possible for organizations of any size to easily launch targeted multi-channel campaigns that yield results with activities and features such as:

Marketing automation gives you everything you need to get to know your prospects and leads, deliver tailored content and messaging, and inspire them to convert into loyal customers. In the next section, we’ll cover how we make this process fast, easy, and effective.

Lead Scoring: Lead scoring is the process of assigning each lead a score based on specific actions (such as downloading an eBook or scheduling a demo) to determine where they are in the sales funnel and gauge buyer intent. This information allows you to know when a lead needs more nurturing or is ready to be transferred to a member of your sales team.

Website Visitor Tracking: Marketing automation allows you to easily track website visitor behavior to gain insight into which content and CTAs are resonating with your audience so you can make sure your website always speaks to their pain points and interests.

Automated Nurture Programs: These campaigns automatically trigger whenever your lead completes an action, allowing you to deliver relevant content based on their interests and stage in the sales funnel.

A/B testing: Continuously testing your efforts is an essential step in optimizing your marketing efforts. Marketing automation lets you easily test everything from subject lines, content, design, and more.

Customized landing pages: These tailored pages allow you to create a curated experience for your leads and direct them to the best content and information to help them keep progressing through the buyer journey.

Adaptive Forms: Act-On’s forms use progressive profiling so you can collect new information on your customers over time.

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Equip Your Team With the Tools and Resources They Need to Enhance and Scale Your Marketing With Ease

Most marketers want to enhance their marketing strategy and implement new and innovative tactics, but they’re handcuffed by limited funds and resources. With marketing automation, however, that’s no longer the case.

These platforms are a bit more expensive than basic email marketing tools, but the return on investment and the ability to streamline and scale your marketing efforts are well worth the investment.

These are just some of the marketing automation features that empower marketing teams and organizations of any size and budget to easily innovate and grow their marketing.

With marketing automation, bringing your marketing vision to life is within reach because it eliminates tedious manual processes and allows your marketing team to do so much more in less time and with fewer resources.

Automatic Lead Segmentation: Grouping contacts based on their interests, demographics, and stage in the customer journey is a tedious task that is prone to error when performed manually. Marketing automation allows you to streamline this process by automatically grouping your contacts as you uncover important insights about who they are and what they want.

Event-Triggered Email Sending: Remembering to follow up with a new contact is a thing of the past with event-triggered email sending. These emails are triggered by specific events (such as downloading a content asset, filling out a form, or visiting a specific landing page), so you can rest assured that your leads and customers always receive the appropriate email response.

CRM Integration: A marketing automation platform that integrates with your CRM of choice makes it easy for you to automatically transfer qualified leads to members of your sales team and equip them for success by providing them with valuable insights and information.

Easy-to-Build Landing Pages: Building curated experiences that address the pain points and interests of your customers and inspire engagement is easy if you have the right marketing automation tool. Look for a solution with an easy-to-use interface and plenty of templates to get you started.

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451%Business 2 Community

increase in qualified leads

Organizations that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a

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Align Marketing and Sales to Identify, Nurture, and Convert the Best Leads

Lack of marketing and sales alignment is a challenge for many organizations and one that can easily send all of your hard work down the drain. Even for organizations with a robust marketing strategy, lacking a reliable lead transferring process will ultimately result in lost opportunities. In the same vein, failing to equip your salespeople with insights will prevent them from having tailored, meaningful conversations that result in closed deals.

Marketing automation minimizes these issues by helping organizations close the marketing/sales loop by equipping your marketing and sales teams to do the following:

If you’d like to learn even more about how marketing automation can bridge the gap between marketing and sales, please check out our eBook “10 Ways Sales Benefits from Marketing Automation.”

Identify and Target the Best OpportunitiesMarketing automation allows you to target the best customers and determine when they’re qualified to talk to a member of your sales team. This results in less time wasted on the wrong types of opportunities.

Gain Visibility Into Customer Behavior and InsightsA marketing automation platform that integrates with your CRM allows you to provide your salespeople with important lead insights to help them speed up the sales cycle and close more deals.

Practice Better OutreachJust like marketers, salespeople can also set up behavior-triggered emails to ensure that their leads are being nurtured right up to the point they close a deal.

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Track Key Insights and Measurements to Optimize Your Marketing Strategy

Going blind into any high-stakes situation isn’t ideal, but it’s something countless marketers without proper data and analytics are often forced to do. This forces them to guess which efforts will yield the best audience engagement, increase qualified leads, and result in more closed deals.

Act-On provides these tools and features to eliminate the guesswork and place you on the path to success.

Providing the insights you need to make more informed and strategic decisions is just one of the many ways that marketing automation empowers you to enhance and innovate your marketing.

Data Studio: Track and consolidate your data so you can easily optimize your efforts on the go.

Website Visitor Tracking: See which landing pages and CTAs are resonating with your audience — and which ones need a little more fine-tuning.

A/B Testing: Test a variety of variables to learn your audience’s preferences and optimize your efforts.

Real-Time Marketing Funnel Insights: Gain a holistic understanding of where your prospects and leads are in the sales funnel and easily identify and address any bottlenecks that are preventing your leads from progressing from one phase of the customer journey to the next.

Act-On Google Ads Integration: View the performance of your Google Ads campaigns without having to toggle back and forth between platforms.

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59%OF MARKETERS

say that the principle benefit of marketing automation is that it improves the user

experience and campaign relevance.

Walker Sands, 2018

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Why Is Marketing Automation Important?

Modern marketers have access to an array of marketing tools and resources that allow them to launch more effective marketing efforts faster than ever before. However, not all marketing technology investments will generate the same return for your organization. Marketing automation stands apart from other solutions available because it empowers marketers to consolidate their efforts, achieve greater visibility into their work, and launch more robust campaigns and efforts while reducing costs.

Of course, this eBook, only covers the tip of the iceberg when it comes to exploring the power of marketing automation and how it can help organizations stand out in a saturated market. If you’re interested in learning more about how Act-On’s easy-to-use platform can help you improve your digital marketing efforts with the industry’s fastest time-to-value, please complete this brief form to schedule a demo with one of our marketing automation experts!

© 2019 Act-On Software. All rights reserved. | www.act-on.com

Act-On Software is the leader in Adaptive Marketing solutions that empower marketers to achieve the purposeful and personalized engagement that their business needs to thrive. Act-On makes customer data actionable, enabling marketers to strategize better business outcomes, drive more relevant multi-channel marketing, and generate higher customer lifetime value--all with the fastest time-to-value.

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