Comparison of Marketing Automation Tools and Software

Marketing Automation Software: What possibilities do marketing automation tools offer and what are the advantages of using them?

Marketing Automation software is a central tool for efficient marketing campaigns, especially in online marketing including Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing as well as Lead Generation. These tools increase productivity through automation and contribute to customer retention and the development of long-term customer relationships. The automation software also supports sales processes through efficient lead generation, thus improving the sales cycle. Flexible pricing models enable the scaling of marketing activities, tailored to the needs and size of the company. Many providers offer trial versions to evaluate the software without long-term commitments. In the field of campaign management, the software facilitates the planning, implementation, and analysis of marketing measures. Automated processes and analysis tools help to save time and resources and make data-based decisions to continuously improve the marketing strategy.

These are popular Marketing Automation Softwares:

• HubSpot Marketing Hub

• Brevo

• Emarsys

• ActiveCampaign

• Klaviyo

• Apteco Marketing Suite

• Salesforce Pardot

• Optimizely Campaign

• Marketo Engage

• Selligent Marketing Cloud

Marketing Automation: The Functioning of an Increasingly Popular Software

The functioning of marketing automation is based on the creation of an automation workflow, which is a powerful tool for customer acquisition and customer data maintenance. A workflow is a fully automated path that executes routine tasks in sequence when triggered. A classic example illustrates this: A customer signs up for the newsletter via a company's dynamic landing page. The software automatically sends a welcome email to the email address provided by the customers. Each step in the workflow is automatically triggered from a previous step, based on predefined criteria. This eliminates the manual processing of routine tasks altogether. Companies can thus send thousands of personalized emails every day without the manual deployment of marketing staff. This allows them to adapt the marketing strategy and prioritize new tasks earlier. The functionalities of marketing automation software also include the segmentation of customer data, enabling targeted and personalized marketing measures. The function scope of this automation software also extends to supporting customer support by generating automated answers to frequently asked questions. These and other advantages prove that marketing automation is now one of the standard technologies, which is also underlined by the annual sales growth of the industry since 2009 by about 30%.

The key advantages of Marketing Automation Software at a glance

• Temporal aspect: The management of typical tasks is eliminated, making work faster and more efficient.

• Shortened sales cycles: Faster response times in the automated order process.

• Improved sales closure rates: High-quality leads are automatically forwarded to suitable sales staff.

• Detailed campaign analysis: Evaluation across all channels and collection in a central database.

• Improved handling of demanding customer groups: Through personalized advertising campaigns.

• Increased brand awareness: In social media and through direct communication with customers.

• Individual adjustment: Marketing is adapted to the needs of individual customers.

• Competitiveness: Level the playing field with major competitors.

• Intelligent approach and segmentation: Individual customer approach based on behavior and preferences.

• Focus on existing customers: Strengthening relationships and increasing loyalty.

• Support for beginners: Allows even small companies to carry out professional campaigns.

• Use of Artificial Intelligence: Understanding customer behavior and adapting marketing measures.

Cross-departmental benefits of using Marketing Automation Software

Both small and medium as well as large companies benefit from marketing automation software. From the perspective of small companies, it is extremely important to use the limited number of resources sensibly. Through the implementation of automation tools, the working hours of employees can be optimally used and more effective business strategies can be enabled, which promotes a targeted working method. Marketing teams in particular benefit from the user-friendly user interface of these tools. The organization of workflows captures significantly more customer data than would be possible through conventional means. New time windows can be used for the analysis of gained data, thus giving employees a more comprehensive insight into the impact of individual measures and allowing them to adapt or expand the existing marketing strategy accordingly. Content Managers use content publishing tools to automate posts on social networks and on their own blog. They determine the most effective times of the day for publishing new content, which increases visibility in the long term. Analysis data gained through the use of Marketing Automation Software are not only used by Marketing Managers. Sales staff also use this data for their sales activities. By analyzing customer voices and opinions in detail, they gain a better understanding of their target group's views, allowing sales activities related to direct selling to be more targeted. This increases sales in the long term. Both B2B and B2C companies can benefit from using Marketing Automation Software to send personalized and relevant messages to their customers. However, depending on the company's target group, there are different requirements for the software. B2B companies have longer sales cycles and the decision-making process involves several steps, with purchasing decisions usually made by several decision-makers. B2C consumers, on the other hand, make purchasing decisions quickly and on an individual basis. These differences have an impact on the marketing strategy and the associated tasks that are to be automated. Consequently, B2B and B2C companies view the functions of Marketing Automation Software from different angles.

Marketing Automation Software – the types and their basic functioning

For understanding: Marketing Automation Software is an umbrella term for any software that aims to automate parts of marketing to improve operational efficiency and increase sales. Against this background, many tools that companies use every day contain functions for marketing automation. Depending on the provider, the range of functions of the software varies. The following are some possibilities that Marketing Automation Software providers offer their customers:

• Inbound Marketing Automation: mainly concerns areas related to content management. Marketing analyses, reputation management, social media monitoring, and lead generation are common areas in this context that lend themselves well to automation. This improves the analysis of customer data and leads to informed decisions that positively influence the goals of a marketing strategy.

• Lead Management Automation: Concerns the automated process of capturing and qualifying leads. Therefore, these tools support a company's sales teams. Salespeople save valuable time by being able to focus their attention on qualified leads.

• Price Automation: Particularly interesting for online shop operators. With the help of price automation tools, shops can introduce automated price scales for their products, which, for example, vary depending on the season or demand. This results in higher sales for the shop. Additionally, time is saved as the current booking volume or product sale is automatically monitored and thus adjusted to the demand on a daily basis. When demand increases, prices rise. When demand falls, prices fall. Cheaper prices tempt new customer groups to purchase. The best-known practical examples concern the booking platforms of rail, airlines, or hotels.

• CRM Automation: The maintenance and expansion of customer relationships is of great importance for every company. CRM automation supports work by collecting and preparing customer data. This involves not only the everyday customer information such as name, address, and details of the order but also marketing information is collected and prepared. This results in new marketing and sales strategies. In addition to closing new contracts, marketing automation can also arouse the buying interest of regular customers, through the sending of advertising emails.

Functions of Marketing Automation Software

Now let's get to the functions of Marketing Automation Software that relate to individual task areas.

• Email Marketing: The automation of email marketing is one of the most used tools in marketing automation. As soon as a customer signs up for a company's newsletter, the marketing automation takes over and can send email campaigns based on events, online activities, and lead scores. Email Marketing Tools also automate the personalization and branding of emails. In this way, each email is to be regarded as a personally addressed letter. In addition, mail automation offers functions for managing deliverability. This guarantees delivery and includes the management of Opt-Ins, the processing of bounces and cancellations, blacklists, email preview, spam checking, link validation, and delivery monitoring.

• Social Media Marketing: With the tools of marketing automation that concern social media management, companies can let the process of a social media campaign be managed automatically, thereby significantly increasing customer loyalty and brand visibility. With automation tools, posts such as surveys, sweepstakes, or referral programs can be planned in advance and then automatically go live. Afterward, the marketing automation software can evaluate the customer sentiment of your posts by measuring likes, comments, replies, and retweets. This not only increases brand awareness but also allows companies to analyze the brand in terms of the degree of perception.

• Lead Management: The automated management of leads is one of the most effective ways to acquire new customers. The practical scoring tools enable automatic classification of website visitors into specific target groups. Behavior is evaluated according to demographic data. In addition, companies can automate drip marketing campaigns that send relevant messages over time, based on the behavior of potential customers and predefined campaign steps. The automatic behavior tracking informs which emails interested parties open and what they click on, which websites they visit, and which keywords they use in search engines. With all these lead management tools, companies can collect and analyze prospect data without having to manually evaluate each customer lead.

• Advertising Automation Tools: When customers visit a product page multiple times, the marketing automation software is activated to present the customer with product advertising. If customers view products on a competitor's site, they subsequently receive automated advertising about the company's own product with a link to the website or online shop. These tools help companies promote products and services to a relevant customer base, online.

• Workflow Management: The tools of workflow management automate business processes, which would typically require the intervention of several different users if processed manually. Administrators can write rules to determine when a user needs to perform a step. This also includes notifying users when they need to take action.

• Mobile Marketing: In addition to email and social media marketing, marketing automation tools can also bring mobile marketing into a workflow. Users can communicate with customers by sending automated push notifications to mobile devices. In this way, notifications from customers can also be received when they are not currently using the company app on their mobile devices, but have allowed the receipt of notifications. In this way, interested parties receive current information about the status of the order, new product announcements, or the notification of certain special offers.

Trends in connection with Marketing Automation Software

Current trends concern email marketing tools. Customers want personalized content that offers them real added value. Therefore, software providers are constantly improving their range in this area. The personalization of content will advance even further in the coming years. In addition, more and more providers are combining machine learning with the automation tools of the software to improve algorithms and further refine the lead scoring process. This allows for deeper insights to be gained from the raw data.

Challenges that can arise during the use of Marketing Automation Software

One of the most common challenges associated with marketing automation tools is over-automation. It arises whenever companies view the software components of a provider as a complete solution for marketing. However, an innovative software that understands how to automate tasks is ultimately only as good as the knowledge and usage behavior of the users. The greatest advantages are offered only in the combination of the functions. Therefore, long-term success depends on human control of marketing automation tools. Only if the workflows are consistently monitored will a coherent overall concept succeed. The pitfalls, as so often, lie in the detail of application.

Our conclusion: Marketing Automation promotes efficiency in marketing

Marketing Automation software offers companies cross-departmental benefits in use. By automating tasks, campaigns can be better analyzed, new time windows offer the possibility for work on other projects, brand awareness increases, costs decrease while increasing sales. However, a key component of marketing automation involves the automated provision of analysis data to determine campaign successes across all channels. The collected data is stored in a central database for marketing and processed cross-departmentally. The gained information helps Marketing Managers to provide their customers with highly relevant online advertising across various channels.