What is Marketing Automation? The definition for dummies

What is Marketing Automation? The definition for dummies

Marketing automation: definition

Marketing automation refers in a broad sense to the automation of marketing campaigns triggered by a set of predefined conditions and according to the user's behaviour. It is possible to automate the sending of emails, sms, contact segmentation, lead scoring or lead nurturing.

Automation is carried out through preconceived scenarios based on the user's behaviour: for example, sending a welcome email when subscribing to a list or a reminder email when leaving a shopping cart.

Please note: you may have already heard of
autoresponder
Whether it be trigger marketing or automated emails, all these words refer to the automation of marketing tasks, so we will confine ourselves here to the use of the term "marketing automation".

What is the difference with email marketing?

Email marketing consists of sending an email to a list of contacts (one to many). It generally serves a rather broad purpose, such as announcements of promotions, new products, or the sending of news content via a newsletter...
On the contrary, marketing automation sends automatic and targeted emails (one to one), triggered by specific actions of your contacts. These messages are therefore more timely and individually calibrated for each user according to their progress in the customer journey.

Most importantly, automation marketing is not just about sending emails: you can also use it to automatically add your contacts to specific mailing lists based on their actions, assign them a score in your database, and many other ways to refine your relationship with your most engaged users.

Now that we have seen the basic definition of marketing automation, let's try to understand it in more detail.

How does it work?

The first step in automating a task is to set up a scenario, also called a workflow.

Each scenario begins with an entry point, which corresponds to the scenario's trigger condition. For example, the entry point may be the registration of a new contact on your site or the addition of a product to the shopping cart.

Once one of your contacts enters a scenario that you have programmed, it takes place either linearly or according to implication connectors (" if / then ") that separate it into two branches that can themselves branch in turn.

Does that sound abstract to you? Do not take out the aspirin right away....

Each workflow is composed of different scenarios according to a very simple question: does this contact meet condition x? If the answer is yes, the contact takes the corresponding branch of the scenario. If not, the other branch of the scenario is activated.
The conditions that will trigger this or that scenario can be of two types:

Identity: these conditions use the information collected in your user database. For example, using your contacts' birthdates to send them an email on their birthday.
Behavior: corresponding to a certain type of behavior or an action (action on your site, opening an email...). For example, send an invitation to a private sale to customers who have purchased at least x products in the last x months.
Depending on the result of each condition (yes or no), you can trigger different actions for each contact:

Send him an automatic message,
Add it to a new email list,
give him points for your lead scoring....
You can also add timings and deadlines of your choice. For example, if you schedule a series of welcome emails, you can specify that your contact will immediately receive a first email, then a second one a week later, and so on

What is the purpose of marketing automation?

There are many ways to use marketing automation - in fact, the only limit is your imagination. However, here are some examples of scenarios to give you an idea of what is possible.

Send your contacts a promotion for their birthday

Without doubt one of the simplest scenarios to implement. If you have collected the birth dates of your contacts, you can easily send them an automatic email on their birthday.

This allows you to improve your customer relationship over the long term and generate some sales for very little investment.

Send a welcome email

Sending a welcome email to a new subscriber on your site is the best way to establish a good relationship with your users / readers / customers from the beginning.

This message serves both to reinforce your value proposition, but also to give your contacts an idea of what they can expect from you. Feel free to explain to them what kind of emails you will send them and how often.

Create a series of emails to improve your onboarding

Many people register on your site without doing anything afterwards?

A good solution is to set up a scenario that will help your new contacts to take control of your site and discover the benefits you offer.

Onboarding refers to the entire guidance process you can set up to support your users in creating their accounts, exploring the features of your site, and most importantly discovering who you are and what you offer.

This scenario can start with a welcome email with instructions on how to complete your registration. You can then set a condition to send a second email to users who do not complete their profile after a few days.

For those who have finished configuring their profile, you can send them a last email to show them all they can do now on your site.

Create an automatic email to restart abandoned baskets

If you manage an e-commerce site, you probably know how frustrating it is to see most of your potential buyers abandon their shopping cart before completing their purchase.

Despite the multiple causes of basket abandonment, it is possible to reduce it by sending a reminder email to your "deserters". Take advantage of this email to reassure them about your delivery times, return conditions, or to offer them product recommendations based on the ones they left in their shopping cart.

Lead scoring to qualify your business contacts

Lead scoring consists in assigning points to your contacts based on their actions in order to reflect their conversion potential according to their degree of progress in the purchasing process.

You can assign points to a contact who has visited a certain page of your site, opened a certain number of your emails, completed a form....

This type of use of marketing automation is particularly useful if you know the actions that tend to lead to conversion for your business. If you don't know them, start investigating!

You can then automatically assign all contacts with a certain score to a list of qualified customers that you can forward to sales representatives or use to send promotions that encourage people to buy.

Create dynamic contact lists

As we saw in the scenario above, one of the most interesting possibilities offered by marketing automation is to be able to assign your contacts to lists according to their behavior.

In this way, you can continuously refine your mass emailing strategy through better segmentation. By creating dynamic lists, you can send more relevant content and generate greater engagement.

Who can benefit from marketing automation?

Any marketer looking to expand the number and lifespan of their customers can simplify their lives with automation marketing. However, it will be even more profitable if you already have a certain marketing maturity and know your conversion tunnel.

You should adopt marketing automation if:

• You already generate a lot of leads: marketing automation is particularly powerful to transform your leads into customers, thanks to lead nurturing and lead scoring.
• You want to improve your email marketing: thanks to the segmentation and dynamic management of your contact lists, you can significantly improve the engagement generated by your campaigns.
• You want to improve your customer relationship: by triggering the sending of emails on specific actions, automation marketing allows you to address each of your contacts individually when they are most receptive

In summary, the following is a summary

Here's what you need to remember:

• Marketing automation consists in automating repetitive tasks that can be based on predefined conditions: lead qualification, abandoned basket restart, etc.
• These automated tasks are programmed within scenarios or workflows
• Contacts enter a scenario from an entry point
• They are then filtered according to conditions that take into account their identity (gender, age, number of purchases...) or their actions
• The scenarios consist of performing different tasks according to the characteristics of each contact

You should now have a better understanding of what automation marketing is and how it can help you develop your business.

The next question is: which automation marketing software to choose? You will quickly notice that many solutions remain very expensive and only target large companies. Sendinblue offers a more affordable and easy-to-use tool, without sacrificing any functionality.

You can use it for free up to 9,000 emails per month and 2000 contacts: no excuse not to try!


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