Ten things you need to know about marketing automation

As new communication channels become available and expand, B2B marketers’ attention is increasingly divided between maintaining existing messaging strategies and exploring the viability of new communication channels. Marketing automation can help organizations gain efficiency that frees marketing experts to focus on monetizing new channels.

What is the impact of inefficient B2B marketing practices?

1. While 89% of B2B companies use content marketing, only 6% have reached a level of maturing that can cleanly correlate content performance to desired business outcomes - while 28% don't measure the ROI of their content marketing efforts at all.
2. Generating traffic and leads continues to be a top challenge for 63% of marketing organizations. Even after leads are captured, the majority of marketing teams struggle to properly qualify, nurture, and route leads in a timely enough manner to maximize ROI.
3. The likelihood of closing a lead diminishes with every minute that passes between their interaction with your brand and your follow-up. In fact, “the odds of contacting a lead if they are called within 5 minutes are 100 times higher versus one called in 30 minutes.”
4. Although 96% of marketers and executives believe "personalization advances customer relationships, only 45% feel their organizations get personalization right.
5. Many marketing organizations are so siloed and overwhelmed with work that the customer experience suffers. Forrester found increasing the quality of customer experience by a single point drove revenue potential that “ranged from $5M for credit card providers to $873M for mass market auto manufacturers.”

How can marketing automation improve business outcomes?

1. Qualify leads faster. Solutions that help map out and automate pre-defined buyer journeys can increase conversions and reduce churn by immediately connecting the prospect or customer to the next step in their journey.
2. Measure ROI. A marketing automation solution can analyze and report on the performance of viewed activities across channels and personas, increasing visibility into which activities and channels generate the greatest results.
3. Contact hot leads quickly. Marketing automation empowers organizations to funnel hot leads to sales reps faster, increasing the chance to convert prospects.
4. Get personal. Marketing automation software helps B2B organizations streamline campaign creation efforts, so more time can be invested in crafting personalized messages that resonate with each buyer persona
5. Build a delightful customer experience. With an automation platform, marketers can create a self-service library of easy-to-customize templates the entire organization can use to encourage a more consistent experience across all interactions throughout the  customer life-cycle.

Thanks to our partners at Infor for supplying this combined research summary for business improvement success with CRM.

Additional resources:

Making the case to improve - marketing automation

Improving the bottom line through marketing automation

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