Your sales and marketing teams share many of the same goals. As they say, marketing is actually just sales at scale.
Both teams likely understand the importance of maintaining good data and knowing what the customer experience and buyer’s journey look like. Both teams want to improve and optimize their efforts over time. So it makes sense that both your sales and marketing teams use a marketing automation platform that enables them to reach these goals collectively.
When asked if marketing automation can be used for both sales and marketing, the answer is that not only can it, but it absolutely should be.
In this article, we’ll review some of the main benefits of marketing automation and integrating your sales and marketing efforts on a shared platform.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation refers to the use of software to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks and processes such as email marketing, social media posting, lead generation, and lead nurturing. By automating these tasks, digital marketing and sales teams can work more efficiently, share data and insights on the same platform, and ultimately grow their bottom line.
Automation for Marketing
For inbound marketing teams, automation can help generate leads and manage marketing campaigns that are targeted to either specific segments of their audience, or to prospects in a specific stage of the buying cycle. CRM systems such as Salesforce or HubSpot can also help track campaign’s effectiveness, help to optimize marketing processes, and improve results over time.
A/B Testing
Automation allows marketing departments to perform A/B testing, also known as split testing, on their marketing campaigns, in which different versions of email campaigns, landing pages, ads, or calls-to-action (CTA) are tested on audiences in order to identify top-performing content.
Depending on the marketing automation platform you use, you can A/B test entire processes, allowing you to determine not only which email got the most clicks, but also which sales funnel drove the most conversions. This type of testing should be a part of any effective marketing strategy.
In addition to testing the strength of your marketing campaigns, a marketing automation platform can provide valuable insight into the content that resonates the most with your customer. Not only does this help you save time, but also helps allocate your dollars to the marketing activities that deliver the best results.
Audience segmentation
Marketing automation tools allow many ways to segment or tailor communications to specific audiences rather than “e-blast” an entire contact list with broad topics that might be irrelevant and off-putting to them. Delivering content that’s razor-focused ensures your message is reaching the right contacts at the right stage of the sales process.
You can segment your contact list according to industry, location, and even behaviors like website browsing and purchase history. Your marketing automation system may also be able to analyze your customer data and recommend new areas for email segmentation.
And when your customer relationship management (CRM) program is integrated with your website, automation can not only send the initial marketing email but also follow up and move potential customers through the sales pipeline by responding with requested information to those who clicked a particular button or navigated to a specific page.
After a marketing team has created the content, automated the testing, segmented the list, and executed the campaign, they can use marketing automation to streamline the process of gathering and examining the key metrics that will determine the next steps. This allows the team to continually optimize their marketing strategy over time.
Automation for Sales
For sales teams, sales automation tools can help qualify, prioritize, and manage leads based on a prospect’s level of engagement and readiness to buy. In short, automation is used to close deals more efficiently and cost-effectively. It can also assist in lead nurturing and lead scoring, as well as enable salespeople to focus their efforts on the most qualified leads.
Prospect tracking
Sales automation is critical in lead management to prevent prospects from slipping through the cracks. Enrolling prospects into a sequence that includes a series of emails and follow-up tasks save sales reps from having to manage these tasks manually with spreadsheets or worse—sticky notes.
Additionally, marketing automation can help sales teams better understand the customer journey and provide more relevant and personalized follow-ups.
Saving time
Marketing automation software helps sales teams avoid the busy work of response and follow-up. Put in action, for example, if a marketing email sat in a prospect’s inbox for several weeks before they opened it, an automated follow-up template could be delivered with relevant content based on what they clicked, allowing salespeople to avoid the burdensome task of creating reminders to periodically check in with each individual prospect.
Transactional emails can also be automated. These triggered responses and workflows allow a sales team to save time when responding to a variety of transactional emails. Responses to information and meeting requests, page visits, and downloads can all be automated to reduce administrative labor.
Saving money
Studies show it costs significantly more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one, and marketing automation plays an important role in customer retention.
Automation can be as simple as reminding customers when it’s time for regularly scheduled maintenance or when a subscription or policy is up for renewal. For a healthcare clinic or medical practice, marketing automation can cover reminders for appointments, follow-ups, and prescription refills. In eCommerce businesses, automation can remind customers when it’s time to purchase replacement parts.
Marketing Automation is a helpful tool for both marketing and sales teams
When your website traffic, campaigns, and contacts are synced, you’ll know how your prospects are interacting with your content in real time. Knowing who is on your website, where your prospects are in the journey, and what they’re looking at allows you to place relevant materials at their fingertips, be more informed, and reach them at precisely the right time.
Marketing automation is a valuable tool for both sales efforts and marketing teams, enabling those teams to coordinate efforts more effectively in reaching and responding to quality leads in order to drive better business results.
If you’re considering automating your business’ sales and marketing tasks, connect with a top-rated HubSpot provider or Salesforce expert to streamline your set up and get help along the way.