What is Marketing Automation?

The role of marketing in
modern businesses

Every business relies on a number of different marketing activities during a customer's journey from a lead through to when they become a paying customer. Marketing plays an important role in bringing in these leads, educating them through targeted nurturing, qualifying them, and getting them ready to make a purchase. This continues into post-purchase with cross-selling and upselling campaigns to grow revenue, NPS surveys to measure and improve customer satisfaction, re-engagement campaigns to connect with dormant customers, and more.

Marketing at scale

It is possible to run marketing activities without dedicated software at a very small scale, but as your company grows and has more leads and your marketers use more channels to engage with your customers, managing these interactions manually becomes increasingly difficult. Capturing, nurturing, and qualifying thousands of leads, running campaigns for different customer segments, and your other post-purchase marketing activities need to be automated in order to keep your engagements consistent and meaningful.

What does marketing automation bring
to your business?

The key function of every marketing automation tool is to streamline and automate activities performed by your sales and marketing teams. Plan and execute your lead generation and nurturing campaigns and launch a wide range of digital ad campaigns from a central hub without having to manually hit "send" or "launch" on every one of your emails, messages, and ads.

Businesses using marketing automation can see a range of benefits across their operation. A significant increase in the number of qualified leads that reach their sales team, a higher conversion rate, and improved productivity across your sales and marketing teams are some of the ways a good marketing automation tool can help your business.

14.5%

increase in sales productivity as a result of marketing automation.

76%

of marketers see a positive ROI within a year.

77%

of marketers report an increase in conversions due to automation.

What to look for in your
marketing automation tool

There is a wide range of marketing automation tools offered by a range of vendors. So, how do you choose the right one for you? If you are a small to mid-sized business, your best bet is a CRM that has various marketing automation features built into it. This will allow you to handle your marketing and sales in a single application without having to pay for two separate subscriptions. If you have a larger budget or a larger organization, then investing a dedicated marketing automation tool is a good idea. For now, let's explore the features you need to look for.

Lead scoring

How your leads engage with your business can often indicate their level of interest in what your business has to offer. Lead scoring is a great tool that helps your team prioritize more interested leads by assigning pre-defined positive and negative scores to your leads based on the type of engagements they have with your business.

Email marketing

Email is one of the most commonly used channels to reach your customers. The ability to create custom email templates, trigger different emails based on pre-defined conditions or the actions of your leads, schedule your emails and analytics to help you reduce bounce rates and improve the success of your email campaigns are some of the email marketing functionalities you should be on the look out for when choosing a CRM.

Integration with social media platforms

Social media is an important channel for any modern business to reach its customers. You need to track mentions on social media and understand what your audience is talking about, schedule posts on multiple platforms, engage and respond to your customers, plan and execute social campaigns, and more. All of these activities must be monitored and executed from a single screen, allowing businesses to get a complete picture of their social media presence.

Segmenting your audience

Being able to plan your campaigns based on specific criteria of your leads and customers is vital to the success of your marketing strategies. A marketing automation tool must be able to segment your database on a combination of behavioral, demographic, location data, and other factors.

Delight your customers at every point in their journey

Everyone that engages with your business begins a journey, which starts with them as a lead and takes them all the way to a paying customer and beyond. Marketing automation helps you connect with them at every step of their journey by delivering personalized experiences based on customer data. Personalization is one of the most important factors that differentiate successful businesses from the rest.

Marketing automation with Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM helps your marketing teams efficiently run campaigns and pass on quality leads to Sales. Zoho CRM comes with a wide range of built-in marketing automation features like lead scoring, segmentation, and Google Ads integration to help you streamline and automate your marketing efforts.

Meaningful lead engagement with
scoring rules

Assign scores based on the various criteria you judge your leads on and ensure your sales reps aren't wasting their time on junk leads which won't convert to sales. Assign positive and negative scores to your leads based on their demographic data, behavior, and levels of engagement with your business. Lead scoring helps you rank your leads and determine which ones are most likely to close and which ones aren't worth passing on to your sales reps.

Learn More Lead scoring in Zoho CRM

Everything you need to convert
leads to deals

Your leads are rarely ready to buy immediately—it’s up to a sales rep to build a lead’s interest so that they can make a purchase. You have to stick with your lead at every stage of their journey and provide the right information to nurture them towards making an informed decision. Zoho CRM makes sure you stay up-to-date with every lead interaction, and automates your sales process so you can build lasting relationships.

Learn More Nurture your leads effectively with Zoho CRM

Divide and conquer with
targeted marketing

Every customer has different needs, so you'll need a unique approach when selling. Zoho CRM lets you segment customers based on their region, requirements, lead source, and even their level of responsiveness towards you. With segmentation, you can send campaigns that are tailor-made to fit your audience and assign sales reps with the right specializations for the job.

Learn More Segment your audience for personalized engagements

Associate multiple campaigns together

There are multiple campaigns behind a deal's closure and it's crucial to have visibility of all of them. Hierarchies in Zoho CRM help you do just that. Associate sub-campaigns with your main campaigns and see how each is performing. Send out a survey campaign to your trade show leads and schedule a webinar invite to be sent to people who filled it out. Follow up contextually and track the campaign journey of your deals.

Measure the performance of your
digital campaigns

Zoho CRM combines your Google Ads spending with your sales data so you can figure out which campaigns, ads, or keywords are helping you convert leads into customers. Spend your dollars where they count and get a better return on your investment by targeting advertisements toward your most profitable campaigns. CRM even marks which particular Google Ad or keyword brought in each lead.

Learn More Measure the ROI for your google ad campaigns

Measure the real ROI of your campaigns

As a business, you run different campaigns for your prospects at different points in their journey. When you invest a lot of time, money, and effort in these campaigns, it's important to know what works and what doesn't work with your prospects. Zoho CRM's marketing attribution helps you measure ROI and understand which campaigns are most effective in pushing prospects towards making purchasing decisions.

Learn More Measure the ROI of your campaigns

Journey orchestration

As a business, it is important for you to offer a memorable and personalized journey for your customers. CommandCenter allows you to seamlessly connect and co-ordinate the actions of different departments and third-party apps that act as part of your customer journey. Personalize your engagements with your customers at every step of their journey and nurture customers for life.

Learn More

Integrate with your favorite products

If you're already using different specialized marketing automation tools, you can easily integrate Zoho CRM with the third-party applications you are using. This allows you to ensure your sales and marketing teams are aligned and that they have a complete picture of their leads and customers when planning any campaigns. You can also connect your sales and marketing information so you can get a better understanding of the ROI of your efforts.