What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is software and other technology that lets companies effectively market across multiple online channels and automate repetitive tasks, such as emails and social media outreach.
The aim of automation is to help brands prioritise, manage and streamline tasks and ensure content is optimised to reach the right people, at the right time, in the right place.

When automation is deployed and managed effectively, it allows brands to nurture and cultivate prospects with highly relevant and personalised content that converts possibly ambivalent consumers into loyal customers.

For example, instead of firing generic emails to a broad contact list, it enables brands to segment consumers into groups and tailor content accordingly.

What are the benefits?
Marketing automation allows brands to gain deeper insights into and forge stronger connections with consumers.

For example, automation software can monitor which pages a customer has viewed, what emails they have opened, which links they have clicked and what forms they have filled out. This helps paint a picture of the type of material that resonates with your audience.

Automating repetitive tasks saves time and money, by enabling the creation of multiple marketing campaigns that target customers at different points along the buying journey. Automation lets brands focus efforts on the leads that are most likely to convert, rather than wasting too much time on uncommitted browsers.

A raft of research highlights the effectiveness of automation in the marketing toolkit.

• Personalised emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates, 29 per cent higher unique open rates and 41 per cent higher unique click rates
• 80 per cent of businesses using automation have seen an increase in leads
• 75 per cent of companies using marketing automation see a return on investment in a year
• 78 per cent of successful marketers say marketing automation is most responsible for improving revenue contribution

Keeping it real
When adopting marketing automation tools avoid the temptation to let the technology do all the work for you. To get the full potential of these platforms you need a human touch too. You need to listen to customers and tailor content. In other words, don’t be a robot. Mix human with machine and you’ll be on the right path to growing a base of happy, engaged customers.

In the next in our series of articles on marketing automation we’ll look at some simple but effective techniques to get the most out of the technology.