If you are doing business in 2020, it means you have great tenacity. This year has been an unprecedented one thanks to the pandemic and the subsequent lock down which led to the crash and tumble of any markets as well as the businesses operating within these markets. Yet, all is not lost. Here’s why.
The simple reason we still have hope relates to a single yet powerful word: Technology. While the Internet set the pace for the digital way of doing things about three or so decades ago, we found our real digital mojo when players like HubSpot burst onto the scene with CRM and marketing automation tools. Very soon, names like EngageBay filtered onto the scene with more varied and evolved features. This led to a slew of other players in the same market. Today, players like EngageBay have serviced over 12,000 business owners the world over with many awards under its belt as well.
So what exactly is CRM and marketing automation? Let us take this one step at a time. While CRM or customer relationship management refers to the tool or system that aligns all your data with the various campaigns for reach, engagement and conversion; marketing automation refers to the functions that stand tall on the basis of CRM. The right marketing automation software can have a number of positive effects on the growth trajectory of your business and it is essential for you to now automate these functions in order to business in 2020, since all business activities have moved online and if you haven’t already moved online – then there is much catching up to do.
Here are the 7 benefits of using a marketing automation software and why your business needs it right away!
1. Organization:
When you are online, you are faced with a slew of information, day after day. This information is also known as big data. While it is impossible to sift through all this data and use the relevant nuggets, in a manual way, you can use marketing automation to do the same. Once you have set the parameters and the basic framework for your business goals and CRM, you will be able to define the elements that are to be picked from the big data in order to create engaging and data driven campaigns for your customers. This would ensure that your marketing automation efforts would organize your business and even align it with your goals for some serious growth to happen.
2. Do More with Less:
To generate more leads, more revenue and even more output from your team members, you would do well to embrace marketing automation. With the right marketing automation software on your side, you will be able to outperform your competition in a number of ways. The very first thing is that you would need less resources to do the same task since much of it is now automated and hence, you would not have to manually use your time, energy or even a large chunk of your budget. Further, you would need less people for the same job since most of the monotonous tasks would be automated. This will also lead to happier employees. All in all, you would be saying a major chunk of your resources when you turn to marketing automation.
3. Collaborations:
This is one of the most important benefits of marketing automation. When you use a marketing automation software, a number of things happen. The foremost thing that is each activity is calibrated and set in a schedule so that there is a notification that goes out to the correct team member for the next task, along with all the information that is required for that task to be fulfilled. This information would also include all the previous interactions that have happened with that lead, prospect or customer so that there is a seamless delivery and transition process for better customer servicing and conversion rates as well. Further, due to the automated nature of the entire process, the marketing and sales teams would not have to communicate too much and thus a lot of unnecessary chaos and confusion can be avoided along with perils like duplication of tasks and efforts. Plus, there is a sense and culture of accountability naturally built into the business environment.
4. Analysis:
This is another important tool that you can get from the right marketing automation software. The process of marketing automation also requires you to fill in a period for which you would receive crucial insights and analysis. Accordingly, you would receive a complete and detailed report of how you have performed and what you can do better in the face of the analysis provided. This would make room for improvement and fine tuning so that you can reach your business goals that much faster.
5. Higher Revenues:
In keeping with the above benefit, your business will see increased revenues when it embraces marketing automation. This is due to the fact that the sales and marketing team would have the bandwidth to engage the customers in a far better manner. Further, they will be able to render support and after sales service right when an issue is raised. This would spread positive word of mouth for more and more customers and some much needed brand loyalty as well. With this, you will be able to cross sell, up sell and resell products and services from your new line and your existing line.
6. Understand your markets:
The analysis tool and the data driven approach in general will help you understand your markets and the audiences within those markets in a much better way so that you are able to create relevant campaigns to reach out and engage them.
7. ROI and Efficiency:
All in all, the major benefit of turning to marketing automation is that your resources would be more efficient and thus give you a much higher ROI than ever before!