7 Ways Marketing Automation Can Boost Productivity

More than 80% of marketers report positive effects of using automation software for their marketing efforts.

Automation can be used in every stage of a marketing campaign and in more ways than we can presently guess. In this article, you will learn how marketing automation can make a business more productive and profitable.

Like any technology, the early adopters have already figured out the challenges and problems of automation. At present, automation is at a limited yet versatile stage where the risks are low or non-existent. Now is the perfect time for small to medium businesses to embrace automation.

The increasing popularity of SaaS tools has changed how small entities see automation. What was previously reserved for large corporations is now accessible to everyone at a very affordable cost.

As SaaS tools grow further, the future of marketing will be dominated by automation.

7 Ways marketing automation can boost productivity

Marketing automation has some straightforward benefits and several indirect benefits. We’ll discuss both and look at how automation at different stages can boost productivity.

From simple automated messages to complex customer segmentation, automation boosts productivity for businesses in several ways.

Here are 7 ways marketing automation can boost productivity.

1. Automated welcome messages and auto-responses

One of the simplest ways to use automation is to set up auto responses. Setting up auto responses and welcome messages not only saves time but also helps create a connection with the customer or visitor.

Auto welcome messages land in your inbox as soon as you sign up for a service, product, newsletter, course, etc. While seemingly simple, these messages ensure the visitor/customer knows what to do to follow up. It gives them a call to action which takes them further into the products or services you offer.

While automated welcome messages are fairly common nowadays, many small and medium businesses still don’t use this feature. It is one of the most straightforward ways of using automation to boost productivity and sales.

For entrepreneurs and marketers, setting up auto-responses is a good way of understanding how automation works. Most of us have lofty or wrong conceptions about automation, and this simple use of this technology can make automation more widespread.

2. Chatbots

Did you know that more than 1 billion people now use chatbots in some form or the other?

Chatbots have revolutionized the way we approach customer support. If you run a website (commercial or non-commercial), adding a chatbot will make a huge difference.

The first advantage of chatbots is that they help you save money. You no longer need customer support executives to handle customer complaints and queries. More importantly, chatbots can work 24/7 with no breaks or downtime. The overall customer experience is much better when a website has a chatbot.

Chatbots do not invalidate the requirement of a customer support executive, at least not yet. That gives you the freedom to take over a ticket from the chatbot and resolve it manually. This makes chatbots perfect for small businesses with limited employees. Once the chatbot registers the core issues, a customer support executive can take over from there.

If you are not using a chatbot in 2022, you are staying behind one of the most important developments of our times. Chatbots have a place in every business that wants to improve its customer experience.

3. Multi-channel marketing

Tools like HubSpot let you control all your marketing channels from one place. They also let you automate content publishing and responses to keep your social media marketing consistent. Now we also have several alternatives to Hubspot that do the same job, if not better.

In the present competitive landscape, multi-channel marketing is no longer an option. You must be present on multiple social media platforms and publish content regularly. You also need to track how your handle is performing on each of these platforms. Doing this without automation software is impossible.

Multi-channel marketing can be very challenging. Each platform has its own requirements and rules. For instance, the same post may work amazingly on LinkedIn and terribly on Facebook. With automation software, you can customize and auto-publish content for different platforms from the same place.

Multi-channel marketing does not involve any advanced automation technology. It uses a simple principle that is very efficient and effective. The number of SaaS tools that let you do this has also increased exponentially. When choosing a marketing automation tool, make sure it fulfills all your needs and is affordable for the long run.

4. Scalability

Scalability is a key concern for a business whenever it is adopting new technology or method. This is especially true for small and medium enterprises. Automation solves a lot of problems when it comes to scalability.

At present, the most common way for businesses to adopt automation is through SaaS tools. Most SaaS tools offer different pricing plans depending on your requirement. That means when you are a small business, you can choose the features that you need and not pay for the rest. As and when your needs increase, you can choose a higher plan.

Automation does not automatically solve the problem of scalability. However, the use of automation ensures that a business can scale up and down whenever it wants. This is one of the biggest advantages of automation in SaaS tools specifically.

If you are concerned about the scalability of your present infrastructure, automation may have the answer. Several small businesses have scaled to unprecedented heights primarily due to automation.

5. Cost-efficiency

The goal of every business is to maximize profits. There are two ways of doing it – increase profit margins and sales, or decrease the cost of production. Automation can significantly reduce the cost of production, enabling businesses to increase profits.

The relationship between cost-cutting and automation is not new. Factories can drastically increase profits by automating manufacturing units. What would have taken a couple of hours now takes a couple of seconds. As a result, you have more products in a fraction of the time.

However, manufacturing units are not the only area where automation can lead to cost-efficiency. Even when you use chatbots, you cut the costs of hiring and maintaining a customer support team. When you use a social media marketing tool, for example, you no longer need a team of social media managers. One person is enough to manage multiple channels if you have the right technology in place.

Cost-efficiency is the primary reason businesses go for automation. Even if the initial setup cost is high, it pays itself off in a very short time. Cost-efficiency indirectly plays a big role in improving productivity.

6. Dynamic and personalized content

Content marketing in itself is a great way of generating leads and increasing sales. But when you add automation to content creation and marketing, it becomes even more useful.

Dynamic content refers to content that changes continuously. Personalized content, on the other hand, targets specific people and their preferences. Automation helps us get the best of both dynamic and personalized content.

When you open YouTube, your feed reflects what you like to watch. Similarly, your feed would be different from all the other users of YouTube. This is possible because YouTube has tonnes of data on the content you spend time watching. The YouTube algorithm can then suggest videos that you are more likely to appreciate.

You can use the same technology for your website, albeit on a toned-down scale. The future of content marketing is personalized content. The earlier you get on the trend, the better it is for you.

Showing customers the products they prefer is a common strategy used by eCommerce websites. It would not be possible without automation in both collecting and analyzing user data.

7. Segment your customer base

It is possible to manually segment your customer base, but it takes a very long time. A much smarter approach is to let automation handle it. Tools and software can now segment a user base on multiple metrics.

While it’s easy to segment customers on simple metrics like location, doing so for complex metrics like food preferences is much more difficult. Automation plays an important role in simplifying this process.

For any business to be successful, it should know who the customers are. You can now use AI to create accurate customer personas, apart from segmenting customers under different categories.

For example, a business may have a separate line of products for kids and adults. Within the categories, it has separate products for active kids and more introverted kids. If you use automation to promote relevant products or services to relevant customer groups, sales will be much higher.

Segmenting customers rely on data. Automation not only helps you collect relevant data but also categorizes the users based on user-generated data. When used correctly, this can be a huge boost for a business.

Conclusion

Automation is everywhere in today’s business. No matter what the size and scale of your business are, there is surely some room for automation.

We hope this guide helps you better understand and implement automation for increased productivity.