Tuesday, May 26, 2015

What Does Marketing Automation Systems Entails

By Tammie Caldwell


When talking of marketing automation, one normally refers to software platforms and technologies that are geared towards assisting the marketing teams and the organizations at large increase their effectiveness in promoting their products in various online platforms. Products may be promoted by email, through websites and social media platforms. The platforms take over repetitive online functions from being operated by human beings. They require a command that triggers action when the required task is achieved online hence the importance of the Marketing Automation systems.

Your marketing team will define what outcome they need from the platforms. They then specify the route the task that will lead to the desired outcome. The software takes in the commands, interprets them and implements what is required. The software is very efficient unlike human effort. Recent developments have made the platforms even better in analyzing visitors behavior and how to influence them to reach marketing goals. These software are normally hosted on cloud and used as a service.

There are three distinct categories of the common Marketing Automation platforms. The commonest one does the work of collecting how the company is interacting with its online visitors. This function is called marketing Intelligence. Codes are set to track the behavior of visitors that interact with the products. They could have interacted with your firm on email, on social media or other online channel. The software goes further to measure the probability of buying the product.

A common scenario of such software in action is tracking and capturing the information of a client who clicks on an emailed link, checking which thread on forums is attracting more people or the social media group that has many followers. With the feedback, your team is able to develop better plans to target these areas of interest.

Developments have also brought platforms with the sole aim of moving prospects down the sales funnel. Normal visitors are guides slowly until they are hot customers in waiting. The software scores the prospects in the normal interaction with the online presence of the brand and help nurture their interest until they are ready to buy.

There are sales cycles used in the process. The most common ones include B2G (Business-to-government, B2B (Business-to-Business), and B2C (Business-to-Consumer). Marketers use these platforms to mix the traditional email retailing with a structured process of business. They do not have to chase customers that are not interested in a product, but keep in contact to those who are warming up to the products.

Finally, workflow automation is concerned with the internal bit of the sales cycle. When worked manually, this component tends to delay the whole buying process. Such activities as formulating a marketing calendar, internal collaboration, planning and budgeting can be automated with much ease.

The rules that these programs follow are set by a CRM administrator. On their part, the platforms trigger other process to be implemented by other programs or by the sales team. These may be sending newsletter, emails, and uploading some marketing files. Marketing automation makes retailing faster and is less prone to human error.




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