What is Marketing Automation (MA)? Explaining the basic functions and how to implement it

Marketing automation (MA) is a powerful tool with a wide range of functions, including streamlining marketing and sales activities, nurturing leads, etc. Introducing and utilizing it can improve the quality of your marketing activities and sales activities, leading to increased sales.

In this article, we will introduce the overview of MA, the benefits of introducing it, and some use cases. Let’s deepen our understanding of MA and use it to acquire potential customers and business opportunities, and increase sales.

What is Marketing Automation (MA)?

In order to use MA to increase sales, it is important to understand MA. Here, we will explain what MA can do and the background to its popularity.

What can you do with MA?

MA can do a variety of things, including managing and nurturing potential customers. The main items are listed below.

• Acquiring potential customers (lead generation)
• Managing potential customers and collecting their behavioral history on your company’s website
• Nurturing potential customers by providing timely and appropriate information ( lead nurturing )
• Handing over hot leads extracted from potential customers to the sales department (lead qualification)
• Integration with other systems such as CRM and SFA

You can correctly select which potential customers you should prioritize among many customers. Another attractive feature is that you can nurture leads with low chances of amazon database becoming customers into leads with high chances of winning.

Manual work has its limitations and is prone to errors, but MA can automate these processes. One of its features is that it can be used to handle even large numbers of potential customers and diverse requests.

If you want to know more about lead generation and lead nurturing, check out the following articles:

Reference: [Saved Edition] What is lead generation? A thorough explanation of its meaning and all methods

Reference: What is lead nurturing? Introducing expert blogs about marketing in telegram practical methods and points to note to avoid failure!

Background of the spread of MA

There are three reasons behind the widespread use of MA:

• The needs of companies and individuals have become more diverse.
• The time it takes to consider signing a contract has become longer, especially for companies.
• “Sowing the seeds” for medium- to long-term sales growth has become important

With the spread of the Internet, customer behavior is changing. Customers now first research online, compare and consider a lot of information, and then take tongliao phonenumber list their time to make a careful selection. To increase sales, it is necessary to provide information that meets the needs of potential customers and conduct sales activities at the timing that potential customers want.

By utilizing MA, even organizations with limited sales personnel can properly select potential customers to prioritize and contribute to increasing sales. By continuing to provide appropriate information to potential customers who cannot immediately be converted into sales negotiations, it is possible to nurture them into customers with a high probability of receiving orders.

It is important to note that utilizing MA can make your company’s products and services more likely to be chosen.

MA tool functions

From here, we will take a look at and explain the following nine functions of MA tools.

• Customer information management function
• Scoring Function
• Email Marketing Automation features
• Campaign Features
• Form creation and LP creation function
• Alert function
• Access analysis function
• CRM/SFA integration function
• API integration function

Customer information management function

This function allows you to manage various information about your customers. In addition to basic information such as company name, name, and phone number, you can also manage the following information:

• Website visit history
• Request history
• Case History
• Past transaction history
• Hobbies and interests
• Age and gender

By managing the above information, you can make sales at the timing that suits your customers, thereby improving sales efficiency.

Scoring Function

This function calculates the likelihood that a potential customer (lead) will close a sale based on the lead’s actions. Typical examples of specific actions include requesting information or clicking on a URL in an email newsletter.

MA tools can automatically calculate the customer’s score based on these actions, greatly reducing the amount of work required. There are also MA tools that automatically notify you when a customer reaches a certain score.

The scoring function allows you to identify potential customers with a high desire to purchase, helping to improve your conversion rate.

If you would like to know more about the scoring function, please refer to the following article.

Reference: What are the effects and benefits of scoring? Explaining the key points and examples for improving sales results

Email mMarketing Automation features

One of the features of MA tools is email Marketing Automation.

These are essential features for effective email delivery, and the following techniques are commonly used:

• Newsletter
• Step email
• Segment Email
• One to One Mail

MA tools also have features that help with effective email delivery, such as click-through rate analysis and A/B testing.

If you want to learn more about email marketing features, check out the following articles:

Reference: What is email Marketing Automation? Introducing the benefits, basic knowledge and practical methods

Campaign Features

This is a function that provides rewards to those who meet certain conditions. For example, “display the campaign details on the screen” or “send coupons by email.”

By specifying conditions in advance using the MA tool, you can provide special offers to everyone. This function can increase the interest of potential customers, leading to the acquisition of leads and conversions.