Marketing automation: the way to generate more leads

2 July 2020 | ContentXperience

More leads, more conversions and more margin. Who doesn’t want that? A proven effective method to achieve this is the use of marketing automation. An instrument that has matured rapidly. More and more organizations are therefore using it or exploring the possibilities to get started.

But what exactly is marketing automation? A definition from Capgemini: “Marketing Automation stands for helping prospects in the purchasing process by automating relevant content with the aim of increasing lead conversion.” It is determined that they have three main activities: building digital customer profiles, setting up relevant content and campaigns, converting and prioritizing leads.

Automation saves time

There are all kinds of marketing automation tools on the market. A few known are HubSpot, Marketo, Oracle Eloqua, SalesForce Pardot, Act-On and Mautic. These are designed to maintain leads (digital profiles) in a more consistent manner.

If you want to use a marketing automation solution, it is important that you generate leads based on inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a form of pull marketing, in which you gain interest from customers by offering interesting information at the right time. Blogs, e-books, white papers, reference cases, videos and infographics are tractors for which people like to exchange contact information.

Progressive profiling contributes to balance

Balance is what marketing automation is all about. You don’t want people to leave frustrated and overwhelmed by email with content they don’t find interesting. For the same reason, it is wise not to immediately ask people the shirt of the body. You better try step by step to complete someone’s file. This technique is called progressive profiling. At the first contact you only ask for personal details such as name and e-mail address, later also for company details. This way you go a little further in questioning a new customer.

Marketing automation provides insights

Profiling can provide you with a wealth of information. Which page on my website does someone visit? How much time does he spend there? How did he get there? Did he actually open that e-book for reading? There are valuable insights that you can take action on. For example, you can now make recommendations. “You have downloaded this e-book, also read our whitepaper. “This way you can improve customer experiences and build a bond.

Discover the hottest leads

n addition to time savings, a marketing automation tool offers many more benefits. For example, it can assign scores to lead actions. Ten points for a download, five for reading a blog, two for clicking a button. You will quickly see the difference between “regular” leads, marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads. This way you always transfer the most promising leads to sales.

You can find all kinds of data in marketing automation tools. If you want to present them in one overview and don’t get any deeper insights yet, then it is worth looking for an app that integrates the different tools you use. An example of this is the IKUU dashboard. That brings data together and creates a 360-degree customer view, which helps you analyze and draw the right conclusions.

Optimize your campaign

Statistics can also be used to make adjustments. If you see a content piece being clicked on but not downloaded, the content might not be as interesting as you thought. Or maybe too much data has to be entered in the download form.

ContentXperience can help you in various ways with marketing automation. We give advice, draw in, create content and optimize campaigns. You can read more about it here.

So marketing automation is a way to send targeted content, significantly improve your conversation and deliver better customer experiences. Recent research has added other advantages: more leads, better quality of leads, more possibilities to combine data from different sources, more website visitors and, not unimportant: more margin.