Tired of guessing games — will this or that marketing activity work out or not, especially when budgets are melting, like snow in March? It’s a common problem even for enterprises, not to mention small businesses. And the more activities companies embrace, the harder it becomes to handle all of them efficiently. This point isn’t one of a kind—at the same time, 42% of marketers don’t personalize emails. As a result, all they get from such mailing campaigns is going to trash without being opened. “Okay, but can anything be done to solve those problems once and for all?” you may wonder. Definitely, applying smart technology to make your marketing activities smarter. In this article, we will provide you with hard evidence of that. But before proceeding with arguments, let’s first get through the definitions, namely, marketing automation. So, What Does Marketing Automation Mean? Here at Platformly, we define marketing automation as a lifesaver which allows to create and implement your strategy faster and more efficiently. In other words, it’s a software which allows to optimize your routine repeated actions and get the most of each message you deliver to your potential or loyal customers. Wait, are we already telling you about the benefits you can derive from it? Then it’s high time to uncover the advantages of adopting an automation solution. 5 Reasons Why You Need Marketing Automation Right Now Yes, “automation” may sound somewhat robot-like, but in marketing, it has quite an opposite effect. The main idea is that it allows you to get to know your customers better and, thus, be on the same page with them. This results in… though, let’s get to the point in due course. Meanwhile, we’ll touch upon the benefits of marketing automation one by one. So, such a solution: #1. Optimizes Your Efforts and Resources Your usual day may look like “Oh, no! I’ve forgotten to publish this post on Facebook!” or “I haven’t sent a request for designing my 5 p.m. mailing campaign!” (when it’s 4:58 p.m.). Or it may look like “Great, now I can think over the USP and refine it,” “Wow, I have a couple of free hours to finalize the product presentation!” (go on, add any activity you like most about your job). Which option will you choose? Seems we even shouldn’t have asked. The greatest thing about a marketing automation platform is that technology gives you some free space for creativity. It streamlines your boring day-to-day tasks and allows to focus on how to improve your strategy in order to drive more sales. #2. Increases Efficiency and Revenue What’s truly important to your boss? Obviously, if it was well worth the effort. Though it’s a topical issue for any company, small businesses need higher sales turnover to stay competitive. In addition, a study by Holger Schulze, a founder of B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn, shows that 38% of companies crave for improving marketing efficiency, while 68% strive to increase lead quality. According to recent research, businesses see saving time (30%), lead generation (22%), and an increase in revenue (17%) as top-three plus points of adopting marketing automation. #3. Empowers You to Respond to Market Needs Instantly Unfortunately, in most cases, you can see the drawbacks of your strategy when it’s too late. And by “too late” we mean the wrong activity can cost you lots of customers if it doesn’t resonate with them. This is where small business marketing automation solutions come in handy. Thanks to in-built advanced reporting, you can immediately see what campaigns your customers liked more, and which ones should be forgotten as a nightmare. This will help you turn data into valuable insights and make better decisions on how to align your strategy with the real customer needs. #4. Allows to Achieve Maximum Personalization Everybody loves to hear his or her name, right? It’s the starting point of nearly any conversation. That’s why it’s so important for brands to create meaningful, human-like dialogues with their customers instead of spamming them with generic ads or emails. 90% of consumers love when they see you are addressing them directly. So, why not to dig deeper and integrate their habits, hobbies, whatsoever into your marketing messages? By the way, personalized emails get higher open rates—18,8%, along with click-through rates improved by 14% and conversions boosted by 10%. But not to look weird or annoying, consider adding no more than 2 or 3 personalizations in a single email. With a marketing automation solution, you can better understand your target audience and easily find out those tiny details about them. Your next step will be just making the right conclusions and taking action. For instance, if you’ve found out your customer is browsing social media and looking through emails on their mobile during a lunch—why not schedule a post or drop a message at that time? Add relevant details to it, based on what you already know about this person, and be sure to grab his or her attention (which is most likely to result in them buying from you). At least, try not to include links to Google Play for your Apple users and vice versa. If you are afraid that you’ll need to send a custom message to each of your prospects or clients, we are here to dispel your doubts. Email marketing automation isn’t about micro-segmentation when sending your campaigns. It’s about taking advantage of the data you’ve captured from your customers and using dynamic fields in your email to target a specific person. Practical insight: On the contrary to the most popular social media management platforms (like Buffer or Hootsuite), with a marketing automation solution you will be not only able to schedule your posts ahead but also to create them, using data from your CRM system. As a result, you’ll publish tailored posts for diverse categories of your target audience. This applies to your mailing campaigns as well. #5. Streamlines Lead Nurturing Like a newborn baby needs special care from his or her parents, your leads need to be nourished and cherished as well. Unfortunately, some businesses approach lead nurturing the wrong way, considering it’s an annoying reminder to your customers that your company is still alive. While in fact, it’s treating them like sand in your hand, with maximum caution and attention to never let it trickle through your fingers. And that’s impossible to do without a well-thought lead nurturing sequences, made easy with a marketing automation platform. It will help to structure and guide your activities on each stage of interacting with your customers and be at the right place, with the right message, in the right time. Here’s an example of such lead nurturing funnel: To Sum It Up As you can see, marketing automation for small businesses proves to be a win-win strategy, which provides tangible results both in the short and long run. It helps to optimize processes and activities, align marketing and sales in acquiring more qualified leads (along with their nurturing), and create an exceptionally personalized customer experience. Thus, you will be able to track your ROI and grow profits without heavy lifting. Want to join the successful companies on their road to customer love? Then check out how a marketing automation solution can assist you with your journey to success.