Marketing Automation is a buzzword in the marketing technology space today. We often talk about automation in the context of making our mundane marketing operations easier and automating the repetitive processes.
However, the key contributor that has given shape to the current state of marketing automation is the fact that automation has its roots in email marketing. The workflows are inspired by traditional rules like – “If a user clicks this link in the email, then after two days, send this email…”
According to the industry expert David Raab, almost 70 percent of marketers are either unhappy or only marginally happy with their marketing automation software.
Bluewolf’s new “State of Salesforce” study says that only 7 percent are seeing good, measurable ROI from the investments made in marketing automation solutions.
The reason for the not-so-good returns is rightly answered by the research reports of Ardent Marketers, which says that the current marketing automation space suffers from myopic vision – short sightedness.
In other words, the biggest problem is that the current marketing automation solutions are based on rules, which are hard-coded for specific user actions, and are based on an aspirational understanding of what constitutes a good lead, versus based on what the data says. The current automation flows are not self-evolving and are less agnostic in nature.
Well, that’s the face of marketing automation today. The question is, how do we want our marketing automation platforms to look like, in the near future?
It is about time to reinvent marketing automation. Platforms must provide scalable, incredibly fast, and responsive solutions. They must be thinner and optimised for tracking all the data about leads and customers.
Being “jack of all trades, master of none” is an absolute no-no. Instead of striving to have everything under one monolithic marketing automation system, the platforms of future should be designed in such a manner that they can plug in/integrate with smaller but specialised and smarter devices. This customisation can provide useful data which can be synchronised under one mega platform to generate intelligent segments, insights, and rich customer behaviour data.
Another major game-changer can be Predictive Intelligence which is everybody’s “go to system” now. New platforms in combination with niche apps, and powered by predictive intelligence will make the data more accessible and actionable end-to-end. Predictive systems can learn, adapt and improve on their own with every customer action.
Unified view of the customer and full circle recommendations are two other most inevitable features which will be dominating the space in future. These features will provide complete visibility across the sales and marketing funnel to determine the next best action. Based on the historical behavioural data of the customer, the system will apply intelligence to the top of the funnel, which will flow through the marketing programs and plumb back down to sales to continue to track the customer journeys.
By embracing open platforms, the next generation of marketing automation platforms will offer open and powerful API’s which can be integrated with very focused and insightful best-of-breed tools. For example, if you are running a lead nurture campaign now, you can run an app which is specialised for lead nurture campaigns.
The app can identify the database that was nurtured but is neglected due to low response, and leverage its predictive insights to provide a high or low lead score based on the recent website visits.
Automation platforms of the future will help us reimagine our workflows, programs, and actions in the context of increasingly powerful predictive insights. They will bridge the gap between the effort spent and rewards achieved. For example, lead generation and sales can be bound together by bringing CRM and marketing automation closer and tightly glued with a layer of predictive analysis.
A classic example would be this –Today, when anonymous users are tracked on the website, you can start targeting them through browser push notifications, thus bringing them back to your website. Once they come to the website, you can streamline your targeting further through behaviour-based and tailor-made onsite messaging. With the use of spruced up targeting, it would be easier to convert a user from just a visitor to a customer.
In a nutshell, it’s time to move towards the Marketing Automation of tomorrow! Our very own marketing automation solution Netcore Smartech is designed to be the Marketing Automation of tomorrow.
Feel absolutely free to get in touch with our marketing technology experts today for a better and result-driven tomorrow!
