Marketing Automation Software

Marketing Automation Software Buyer's Guide

One of the most active segments of the CRM software market is marketing automation. New and existing market leaders deliver and innovate new updates for their products all the time. Most of these solutions can be divided into two different kinds of solutions: business to consumer (aka B2C) and business to business (aka B2B). The groupings, as well as their functional needs, are both vastly different.

Businesses selling to other businesses, or B2B’s, are more engaged in relationship building activities and also have longer cycles of sales. Businesses selling to other customers, or B2C’s, are more heavily reliant on their high-volume and brand direct outreach efforts. The following article will demonstrate marketing software applications and how they work as well as provide updates on trends that buyers need to know about.

Marketing Automation Software – What Is It?

Marketing automation software answers the most important question many businesses often ask – which half of my advertising dollars are actually being wasted? This kind of software does more than that, though. It helps firms develop, execute, and track their campaigns. In addition, both buying and media planning applications assist with planning advertising campaigns that involve both digital and traditional media. Managers then use these systems to manage collateral, keep workflows automated, and track qualified leads and prospect behavior before they’re distributed to sales.

B2B systems have the best capabilities in lead management and lead generation. As an example, functional lead scoring scores leads based on responses to campaigns, website activity, size, behavior, industry, geography, and demographics.

As a result, the scores that are generated guarantee that only qualified leads which are close to making a purchase are received by the sales department. Marketing tracking software manages a campaign for your business for leads who may not be ready to make a purchase. This helps marketers nurture the relationship through “stay in touch” and “drip” campaigns.

Large databases full of consumer data are managed by B2C systems, which often contain millions of records. The systems use some of the most sophisticated tools available to segment and analyze customers into many categories of buyers. Markets then implement precise treatments for every segment. Campaigns usually attempt to stimulate direct responses such as returning to a website to complete a purchase. Sometimes, campaigns will use call centers to feed their target prospective lists into telesales outreach purposes.

Marketing automation software also includes analytics and advanced reporting tools to measure how their initiatives are performing, which is very beneficial to companies. Managers can see which channels and campaigns are driving their leads while measuring the revenue and costs of these initiatives. Organizations will be able to better decide how to distribute their assets.

What Kind of Buyer Are You?

There are four different categories buyers segment into:

• The CRM suite buyer has less stringent requirements, but they do value integration with other customer relationship management programs. They will generally trade feature depth for native integration with an SFA, CRM, or other applications.
• Email emphasis buyers work well in small businesses who wish to engage in email outreaches that are more sophisticated but might not be ready to utilize an enterprise-class MA. They are focused primarily on managing databases with contracts and fulfilling regular email campaigns.
• B2B enterprise buyers work for firms that engage in longer sales cycles and market to other businesses. They are focused on looking for capabilities that will help them foster relationships with prospects. The tools that are critical for optimal performance include sales coordination and enablement tools, sales force automation (aka SFA), lead nurturing, and lead scoring.
• B2C enterprise buyers work for firms who market to consumers. Huge volumes of data, as well as millions of prospects, use segmentation and analytics tools to reach members, select, and define members of their target markets.

Potential Issues and Benefits

There are many different benefits to buyers who successfully implement a marketing automation system.

First, marketing automation systems will be able to qualify and identify more leads, which will allow firms to qualify leads quickly, target potential customers better, and send them to the sales rep who will be able to help them more efficiently.

Next, sales coordination will be greatly improved. Marketing automation (MA) systems will be able to help firms coordinate inter-team activity better. As an example, a firm can track the effectiveness of a product and even promote the product by looking at how many qualified leads are generated and comparing those leads to the number of leads that are converted into sales. Campaigns will be more effective. Marketing automation systems will allow firms to measure and adjust their campaigns based on what they have learned.

Finally, costs will decrease. Money will be saved based on the number of employees in the department along with the dollars spent on additional outside support.

Issues with MA software can sometimes happen as a result of poor implementation or unrealistic expectations. The software won’t be able to take a bad product or service and turn it into a good product or service. If the collateral misses the point or is bad overall, the marketing automation system will be more efficient at delivering a bad message. And effective delivery of the wrong target market won’t help the company’s overall bottom line.

Market Trends You Should Understand

Buyers need to understand a variety of market trends including the following:

Marketing automation vendor consolidation is the first market trend to consider because while CRM and ERP vendors will obtain some firms, other niche providers will combine in order to remain competitive. Teradata and IBM acquired Aprimo and Unica. The assets of Market2Lead were purchased by Oracle. Going forward, buyers should anticipate seeing more M&A activity.

The use of two-dimensional (2D) barcodes will be seen more often on bus stop benches, billboards, print ads, and as tattoos. Smartphones can be used to read codes in order to get information about a service or product on their mobile browser. Newer versions will have built-in support for 2D barcodes. Currently, 2D barcodes can be used with third-party solutions.

The next trend buyers should understand is social media. This gives managers a new channel to do business. Companies can tweet coupons to customers as well as share special offers with friends on Facebook. They can use advertising videos on YouTube, especially if they are successful enough to go viral. MA systems are able to embrace all of this because social networking integration will be the driving force for the next generation.

Finally, Software as a Service (SaaS) is the last trend buyers need to understand because in the marketing automation market, SaaS may not be much of a trend, but it is one of the most dominant models for deploying software. With the exception of some high-end B2C solutions, buyers will be able to find most of their solutions through an online marketing software model. The system will be hosted by a software vendor and a user will be able to access it over the Internet. Web-based email marketing is easy to access too. You can access this kind of software from any operating system (Mac or PC) or across multiple devices.