Marketing automation provides B2B marketers a one-stop solution to manage a plethora of tasks – email marketing, campaign development, landing page creation, as well as the capturing, scoring and nurturing of leads, among other automated tasks.
Marketing automation depicts the buyer journey starting from a trigger – such as sign up for a newsletter, purchasing something or as simple as forwarding an email. These journeys are designed to be more relevant to the recipient than just a mass email blast. These are cohesive for marketers to execute once the emails are setup.
Every marketing platform offers the following services as part of their standard features:
• Email marketing
• Analytics for tracking visitors to websites
• Capturing, scoring, and nurturing leads
• Centralized marketing database
• CRM integration
• Data reporting and analysis
Marketing automation first came into existence in the early 90s but took off in complete form after 1999 when some bigwigs owned major platforms as automation vendors. The growing success of these first vendors and the increasing popularity of cloud-based tools gave rise to a swerve of new vendors in early 2000.
Next, a noteworthy episodic turnaround in marketing automation took place between 2010-2014 when more than $5.5 billion worth of acquisitions were made in the marketing sector which led to marketing automation platforms being controlled by a few giant names, leading to technology being accessible mostly only to big brands with mega budgets and efficient teams to match.
Today the marketing technology scenario has grown more than ever and will not stop growing in near future for sure.
Here are some of the widely used automation platforms in B2B marketing:
Eloqua
Eloqua helps B2B marketers and marketing managers develop a wide range of landing pages, email marketing and submit forms through their editor. The platform is quite easy to navigate and contains drag and drop placement option that is amazingly easy and user friendly. Their email subscription manager contains features that enable users to effortlessly manage their email recipients list, as well as set up new email campaigns.
InfusionSoft
A favorite among B2B marketing companies, InfusionSoft sells through both websites, on ground retailing or through office locations. Their platform is web based and they offer live online training to help users learn how to navigate their feature rich system. They offer a visual Campaign Builder that helps simplify the campaign building process.
One of the most striking features of the automated platform is helping users real-time through online chat options that is easy to navigate, walking them through the system in case they experience any technical problems.
Marketo
Marketo marketing automation software provides a robust and user-friendly solution, building a single pipeline for marketing and sales. Their lead management capabilities automate demand generations while capturing leads via targeted landing pages and even smart forms.
Users can then nurture those leads with triggered and automatic drip email marketing campaigns. One of the finer traits is that Marketo platform is available to user on-demand which means user does not need a contract or to pay any fees in advance.
Hubspot
HubSpot proficiency helps businesses get discovered online. Their platform seeks to convert your business website traffic into leads and eventually customers. They allow you to optimize your campaigns based on analytics and results.
Among other things, HubSpot gives users an easy way to fine tune their search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and promote their efforts at curating and writing blogs and creating other types of web content (CMS). They integrate ways to leverage your social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Pardot
Pardot is the B2B marketing automation platform that seeks to hasten your pipeline while driving your revenue. They collaborate marketing and sales and allow you to track each of their interactions with your prospects — from site downloads, to page views, they let you score those prospects according to your own customized set of parameters. Sales reps can leverage the platform’s lead nurturing capabilities and real time sales alerts. They will easily be able to set priorities for their time. Marketing managers will be able to measure ROI with their closed loop reporting.
Conclusion
More than 80% of B2Bmarketing firms resort to best of marketing automation tool that helps them not stick to a specific vendor or cloud-based solution for their marketing efforts. Marketers can find best resources through automated emailers, landing page or social media.
Once they find the tool that fulfils their needs, they are getting their automated processes set up so that they can frequently stay in touch with their prospects and keep them updated with company news, events and educational resources that help them get the most out of all they have to offer.
Automated emailers are significant as they establish an ongoing conversation with the subscribers and customers, building a brand loyalty in the process. Yet the bottom line is marketing automation generates ROI, revenue and results.
Recent Comments