What is Marketing Automation?

Today’s business world is incredibly competitive and many companies look for ways to make their marketing campaigns more effective. Often, advertising dollars are limited and companies seek to avoid investing in marketing strategies that may not produce satisfactory results. As such, many companies find it advantageous to develop methods for managing and tracking marketing campaigns in order to provide greater understanding of customer profiles and profitability. Marketing automation can be effective for keeping track of the campaign strategies that work versus those that fail to produce good results. At the same time, marketing automation can make it easier to use campaign results in developing improved campaigns for the future.

To many, marketing automation involves the use of specially designed software. Marketing automation software allows businesses to automate important marketing processes. This type of software can help businesses in accomplishing varied tasks such as defining, scheduling, and tracking campaign goals and creating and implementing marketing campaigns. Marketing automation software can also help businesses in market segmentation and identifying target markets, as well as the collection of pertinent market information and response. Collected response information is fed back into the system.

Some types of marketing automation software make it possible to manage campaigns that encompass many different marketing methods. For example, such software may be used with print, Internet, radio, television, and e-mail marketing campaigns. However, the capabilities of marketing automation software may vary widely depending on the particular software.

For some, marketing automation doesn’t mean a particular program or group of applications at all. Instead, it means varied tools used for analysis and profiling. Such tools can include everything from web measurement to those intended for personalizing campaign strategies. These tools are used to improve communications with customers and obtain valuable insight into a company’s marketing target.

For other companies, marketing automation is not simply software. Instead, it is an entire system focused on the management of high-volume marketing campaigns. Often, such high-volume campaigns focus on offline marketing strategies, such as those that are direct mail or telephone-based.

Regardless of the type of marketing automation a company chooses to implement, there is always a common denominator. That common denominator is the use of technology to ensure better communication with customers and more targeted and effective marketing campaigns. Frequently, the type of marketing automation path chosen is directly linked to company size and sales volume.