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Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Clear Understanding Of The Marketing Automation Systems

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 good example of tracking is recording when one clicks a link in the email, capturing what search terms visitors use when accessing the website, detecting what forum thread is attracting many visitors and getting to know what social media group is attracting many visitors. The retailing team uses this feedback to develop plans that match the prospects interest.

There are marketing automation platforms whose main aim is to move prospects down a retailing funnel. This turns prospects to hot prospects that are ready for sales proposals. The platforms score clients as they interact with the brand online and slowly create interest in the products until prospects become clients.

Commonly used sales cycles include (B2B) Business-to-business, B2C (Business-to consumer and B2G (Business-to-government). In essence, this is a mix of typical email marketing enjoined with structured business processes. This helps avoid following clients that have no intention to buy from the company and follow those that have shown interest in the products and services that the company is promoting.

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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