Marketing Automation

Source Local Media’s Local Marketing Blog explores best practices in marketing automation.

Q: What is marketing automation?

A: Marketing automation is the use of software systems in combination with thoughtful design of the user experience to automate outreach to potential customers, as well as the process of warming up actionable leads you’ve already identified.

Q: How does it work?

A: Marketing automation can be undertaken via any number of platforms. We discuss some of them here in our Local Marketing Blog.

Most commonly, we flow chart the customer acquisition process and visualize it in a CRM platform that supports marketing automation.

Then, we design e-mails, documents, and other interactions (such as chat bots, live chats, webinars, and other elements) that react to IF, THEN situations. Whenever conditions are met, the automation executes on behalf of a human.

Successfully deploying marketing automation concepts requires first thinking in terms of how you want the interaction with the customer to go under ideal circumstances, and then designing as if people are the ones taking the action.

Excellent marketing automation doesn’t seem automated, and certainly doesn’t seem inhuman.