Introduction
Now days “marketing automation” is a term that is most useful and widely used. Marketing automation software is use to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation, campaign management and customer data integration (CDI). By using marketing automation software’s we can make processes more automatic as compare to before where the same processes will be performed manually. The use of marketing automation software’s will make your work more efficient and will allow you to perform some new processes as well. Marketing automation is an important part of customer relationship management (CRM).
History
Marketing automation technology leaves a direct impact on cost reduction and cost growth. It helps in automating marketing management and customer engagement. Marketing automation software can automate manual, repetitive and time consuming tasks in the marketing function. This software’s will provide the source of automating the marketing management tasks. They will provide automation of internal marketing processes. This marketing automation software’s will include budgeting and planning of work-flow and approvals for marketing calendar. As well as internal collaboration, creation and management of digital assets are also the part of marketing automation software’s. In fact everything that will support the operational efficiency of the internal marketing functions.
Features
Area between marketing management and customer engagement is a still considered as a gray area, and technology providers for marketing automation are automating elements for both. Likewise an automated email marketing solution with email automation will be the part of "customer engagement," which is technically related to marketing automation. So, now we can broadly say that "marketing automation" provides some set of technologies that will help in automating internal processes and customer engagement. The key reason behind this that why people invest in marketing automation is that it will impact the top and bottom lines of an organization. Marketing management automation software’s capabilities focus on operational efficiency, productivity and cost savings. Companies who are utilizing marketing management software’s are companies that achieved the highest performance in key metrics like revenue, conversion and return on investments are more likely to use marketing automation technology.
Tips and comments
General inability to holistically tie together performance and marketing is becoming the source of frustration for many CMO’s. It is common observation that marketing automation will be a critical component for every organization to grow market because of the fact that it is a new technology and they have to implement it because companies that achieved the highest performance in key metrics like revenue, conversion and return on investments are more likely to use marketing automation technology. Research analysis shows that 89 percent of organizations are working for automating the marketing function. According to survey conducted in April 2009 only 23 percent of organizations used an "integrated marketing platform" that is helping them in centralizing the marketing management and customer engagement capabilities under one platform. After all the notified benefits and challenges in automating marketing activities the April survey shows that out of 130 respondents organizations only 67 percent of organizations illustrates that they are using multiple niche solutions for automating marketing activities while rest are still using manual systems.
