Marketing automation can free tech companies from many of their manual and repetitive tasks. Automation has come a long way. Computers, with the assistance of machine learning and artificial intelligence, perform these menial tasks or sequences of tasks automatically, completing marketing duties faster, more efficiently and sometimes with greater accuracy.
Explore how to use marketing automation in your tech company to improve marketing productivity.
Key Takeaways:
- Marketing automation improves productivity by speeding up tasks and making jobs easier to perform
- Marketers that use automation generate more leads and enjoy higher conversion rates
- Automation platforms collect and analyze data that helps optimize marketing strategies for better results
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Examples of Marketing Automation for Tech Companies
Marketing automation is marketing tasks computers perform without human interference. Currently, 75% of business owners use marketing automation.
Some examples of digital marketing automation include:
- Requesting feedback after an interaction
- Sending automated emails
- Sharing product updates
- Performing audience segmentation
- Performing data analytics
- Lead scoring
- Managing your website content creation and publication
5 Benefits of IT Marketing Automation
Here are five reasons to use tech marketing automation in your IT company.
1. Increased Productivity
Through marketing automation, companies can see a 12.2% decrease in marketing overhead and a 14.5% increase in sales productivity. In addition, because of streamlined processes through automation, employees can accomplish more during their work hours since they aren't tied up in small tasks.
2. Faster Processes
By replacing repetitive tasks with computer automation, marketing automation saves your company hours weekly. For example, according to one study—companies can save over six hours by automating social media posts and ads.
The top reason businesses adopt marketing automation is for streamlined processes by cutting out small manual tasks so employees can focus on high-value jobs instead.
3. Improved Customer Service
66% of consumers say fast service is the most crucial characteristic of good customer service. Automation can improve your customer service by allowing you to respond faster to potential leads submitting questions through your website, as an example.
For example, when they fill out a form, you can automate an email response that triggers an automated email drip campaign for nurturing that lead and building a positive impression.
4. Higher Conversion Rate
80%t of marketers who use automation said they saw an increase in lead acquisition.
Automation allows you to respond faster and identify quality leads more efficiently. By performing those tasks automatically, you can increase your marketing-qualified leads, and conversions to sales-qualified leads. For example, an automation platform can assign scores to your leads according to behaviors and characteristics. These scores tell a customer relationship management (CRM) system when to route that lead to sales for closing.
5. Improved Analytic Reports
The foundation of marketing automation is data. Data drives automated processes and dictates how to perform tasks by analyzing patterns and predicting needs.
These data points aren't just for your computer systems and software to function correctly. Data points are also helpful for marketers to improve all their processes, both manual and automated.
For example, if you’re using a lead scoring system and it collects customer data, the lead scoring system looks for behaviors and characteristics that indicate that a B2B buyer has all the necessary qualifications and is actively expressing interest in your brand. When it identifies this behavior, the lead scoring system knows that this visitor is, in fact, a sales-qualified lead.
Your marketing team can analyze that report and recognize common behaviors of sales-qualified leads to help them target more leads effectively, such as targeting specific titles of decision makers or creating more effective content based on which digital assets had the most qualified leads interacting with it.
How To Use Marketing Automation in Tech Companies
Here are the primary ways that marketers use automation in their departments.
Email Marketing
Email marketing can become very time-consuming if done manually. That's why tech marketers have been quick to adopt the use of automation to send out emails. These emails are often scheduled or sent in response to a visitor's behavior.
Some examples of automated emails include:
- Welcome emails
- Responses to forms
- Email drip campaigns after capturing a new lead
- Email newsletters
- Recognizing anniversaries, birthdays, and special occasions
- Reengagement emails after a period of inactivity (reminding leads about their account, offering special promotions, updating them on company improvements)
- Cart abandonment
Personalized Marketing
Automation can allow you to personalize your content at scale. For example, instead of going through every communication and changing names manually, you can establish rules for adjusting phrases or names in your emails and other interactions, so it's personal for each decision maker's title and needs. Additionally, there are tools that will connect a visitor's IP with the likely referrer's business name, and this information can be used to automatically include content such as a business name and logo into your web content, further personalizing their marketing experience.
Another example is that you can personalize your recommendations to ensure you're always offering the most relevant products. For instance, if a buyer is already a subscriber to your software, your website algorithm might automatically adjust product recommendations to add-ons for that software versus still selling a product they already have. You may already be familiar with this type of web experience as it’s clearly visible on some of the biggest shopping websites, such as Amazon.com.
Lead Generation and Conversion
Automated lead generation and conversion strategies streamline the journey from the first touchpoint until conversion by automatically filtering, identifying, and qualifying leads based on behavior.
Social Media Automation
Social media is a large part of many marketing strategies, even among B2B businesses, because of how many buyers have social accounts. However, adding a social media strategy also adds to your workload. Automating social media limits the amount of work you need to perform by automatically posting content, scheduling posts for later, and managing your social ads.
Data Collection and Tracking
Using a CRM platform can help you keep track of all your marketing efforts in one convenient online location. Many CRM software solutions allow you to gather data from various marketing campaigns and strategies, organize that information, and review it to improve your marketing processes.
This data can later be used to personalize interactions, create customized strategies, and optimize your marketing efforts based on the data.
Automate More of Your Marketing Processes
Marketing automation isn't just a valuable tool to add to your toolset. Instead, it's an essential part of a modern marketing strategy as it allows you to respond faster, personalize your interactions, and identify the strongest marketing strategies at scale.
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