If you're like most of the 31.7 million small business owners, you're always looking for ways to improve your team's productivity. One great way to do this is by using marketing automation tools. If you're just getting started with marketing automation or looking for ways to improve your team's workflow, this article is for you.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation uses software that helps businesses automate their marketing tasks. This can include email marketing, social media campaigns, and lead management.

For example, marketing automation software triggered the email you get when your credit card is about to expire. Marketing automation software also triggers the emails you get from your favorite online store about new arrivals.

There are many different types of marketing automation software, but some of the most popular ones include email marketing software, social media management software, performance monitoring, lead tracking and nurturing, and customer onboarding software.

How does marketing automation help your business?

There are several ways marketing automation can improve your team's workflow. Here are a few examples:

Automated email marketing can help you send more targeted and relevant emails to your customers, which will improve customer engagement.

Automated lead management can help you better track and manage leads, which will help you convert more leads into sales.

You can automate social media campaigns to be more effective and efficient. Automated campaigns can help you reach a larger audience more quickly and easily.

There are many reasons why businesses should use marketing automation. Some of the benefits include:

• Increased productivity - Automated marketing tasks help your team become more efficient and organized, which in turn will help you achieve your business goals faster.

• Improved customer engagement - Marketing automation software helps you better target your customers and create campaigns that are more relevant to them. You can personalize the customer experience, increase customer engagement, and improve the overall customer experience.

• More time to focus on other tasks - Automated marketing tasks free up your team's time so they can focus on other essential tasks. This allows you to grow your business more quickly and effectively.

• Personalize customer experience - Using marketing automation tools, you can streamline your marketing processes and personalize the customer experience, leading to increased customer engagement. You can understand the customer journey across different channels and personalize workflows accordingly. For example, if a customer abandons their shopping cart on your website, you can send them an automated email reminder to finish their purchase. As another example, the team at gaming site Solitaire Bliss uses marketing automation to nudge inactive players into playing their solitaire games again, driving more engagement to their platform. When customers feel that they are being personally catered to, it creates a better customer experience. This can lead to more sales and long-term customer loyalty.

• Consistency across channels - Customers expect a consistent experience when interacting with your brand, regardless of the channel they are using. Marketing automation helps ensure that all customer interactions are aligned and consistent across channels. For example, customers will be confused if you have a social media campaign running on Facebook, but it's not aligned with your website or email marketing campaigns. They may not know which channel to use to get the most accurate information about your brand. Marketing automation software helps ensure that all campaigns are aligned and consistent so customers have a seamless experience when interacting with your brand. This leads to a more effective and professional image for your business.

• Save money - Using marketing automation software can help you save money. When all of your campaigns are automated, it eliminates the need for manual tasks. This allows you to focus on strategic tasks to improve your marketing efforts. Additionally, using automation software can save you money by reducing the staff needed to complete manual tasks.

• Track ROI - Marketing automation software can help you track your marketing budget and measure the return on investment (ROI) of your campaigns. This information is essential for determining the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and allocating future budgets.

How does marketing automation help your team's workflow?

Let's look in-depth at how marketing automation can help your team's workflow.

Improved efficiency and productivity

Marketing automation software helps you streamline your marketing processes. This makes it easier for your team to create and execute campaigns, which leads to increased productivity.

Automated marketing tasks save your team time so they can focus on other essential tasks. This allows you to grow your business more quickly and effectively. 

For example, you can use lead nurturing software to automatically send relevant content to leads based on their interests. This will help you keep track of all your leads, and it will also help you convert more leads into sales.

Improves communication and collaboration

Marketing automation software helps improve communication within your team. This is because all team members can access the same information, which leads to better collaboration.

For example, you can use social media management software to help your team create and publish social media campaigns together. This will help ensure that all campaigns are aligned with your branding and messaging. 

Additionally, using performance monitoring software can help you track the success of your campaigns and share the data with your team. This will help everyone stay on track and ensure that all campaigns are achieving their desired results.

Accurate reporting

Marketing automation software also provides detailed, accurate reports on the results of your marketing campaigns. This allows you to see what campaigns are working and which ones need improvement. This information can help you make better decisions about your marketing strategy. Reports can include email open rates, website visits, and social media engagement.

The data collected by marketing automation tools allow you to see how customers interact with your brand, what campaigns are most effective, and where you need to improve. This information is essential for making informed decisions about your marketing strategy. For example, you can use reports to determine which social media platforms are most effective for your business. If your audience is more engaged on Twitter than on Facebook, you can focus your marketing efforts on Twitter.

Alignment with sales and marketing goals

Marketing automation software is designed to help you achieve your marketing goals. The software is aligned with the sales process, making it easier for sales and marketing teams to work together. This alignment helps improve communication and collaboration between teams, leading to more effective campaigns. It allows marketing teams to focus on conversion rates and assists sales teams with lead qualification.

Visibility across projects

Marketing automation software also provides a centralized view of all your marketing projects. This allows you to see what's happening with each campaign and how they affect your overall marketing efforts. It also makes it easier to track progress and identify any potential problems. For example, if you notice that the projects are not meeting your goals, you can investigate why.

The centralized view provided by marketing automation software makes it easier to track progress and identify potential problems. This allows you to make changes quickly and adjust your campaigns as needed.

Increased accountability

Marketing automation software also helps to increase accountability within your team. Automated tasks create a paper trail of all the work done, which can help you track who is responsible for each task. This helps ensure that tasks are completed on time and that everyone is meeting their obligations.

For example, you can use marketing automation software to create an automated email campaign. This will help you track who is responsible for creating the content, designing the template, sending the emails, and analyzing the results.

Minimizes micromanagement

Using marketing automation software also helps to minimize micromanagement. Automated tasks take the guesswork out of marketing so that team members can work independently without constant supervision. This allows managers to focus on other essential duties and improves team productivity.

For example, you can use marketing automation software to create a social media campaign. This will allow team members to post content without waiting for approval.

Limits roadblocks

Automated tasks also help to limit roadblocks within your team. If someone is unavailable or doesn't know how to do a task, automation can take care of it. This eliminates the need for someone else to stop what they're doing and help out with the task. It also ensures that tasks are completed on time, regardless of who is available. Thanks to marketing automation, what used to take days or weeks can now be done in a few hours.

Improving marketing automation with a Headless CMS

With a Headless CMS, editors no longer have to rely heavily on developers to build pages.

This promotes an agile way of working, which, for projects, can mean finishing a lot faster.

1. Enhanced Efficiency

When marketing automation and CMS are combined, you can efficiently move your leads through each stage of the buying funnel at the appropriate time, finding unique ways to imbue the relationship with value along the way.

2. Improved Lead Nurturing 

When your forms are integrated between your CMS and your email marketing you have an opportunity to respond and adapt even more quickly. The new data that is collected can quickly be updated across all platforms for consistency.

3. Personalize your messaging with powerful data from your CMS

One reason to use a CMS is to collect high-quality data about the kinds of content that are effective and use it to continually refine your content generation program. 

How to make the best use of marketing automation?

Now that you understand the benefits of marketing automation, how do you make the most of it? Here are a few tips:

• Start by creating a plan. Decide what goals you want to achieve with marketing automation and create a strategy to reach them. Marketing automation cannot replace marketing strategy; it can only help you achieve it.
• Start small. Don't try to automate everything at once. It's essential to take things slowly and test different methods until you find what works best for your team.
• Educate your team. Make sure everyone on your team understands how marketing automation works and how they can use it to improve their workflow. Leverage a video maker to create instructional how-tos and ensure that all of your team members are familiar with the software and how to use it. This will ensure that everyone is on the same page and that tasks are completed correctly. Training your team on marketing automation will help them be more effective with their marketing efforts.
• Identify the tasks that you can automate. You can automate many tasks with marketing automation software, such as email marketing, social media campaigns, etc. Identify the functions that can be automated and create templates for them. This will save time and ensure consistency across all your campaigns.
• Create templates for everyday tasks so that you can easily repeat them. This will save time and ensure that the branding is consistent across your campaigns. For example, you could create a template for an email newsletter or a social media post.
• Make changes as needed. Automation is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Make changes to your campaigns as necessary to ensure that they meet your goals.
• Take advantage of the reporting features to track the results of your campaigns. Use this information to make decisions about your marketing strategy and improve your campaigns. Marketing automation is a dynamic tool and should be adapted to fit your needs. For example, if a campaign is not performing well, make changes to the template and test it again.
• Experiment with the different features of the software to find what works best for you. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, so you need to find what works best for your team and business. For example, if you find that email campaigns are more successful than social media campaigns, you should focus on your email marketing.
• Test, test, test. Always test your automation campaigns before launching them to ensure they are working correctly. Automation can be customized to fit your specific needs, so take advantage of this flexibility.
• Keep track of the time savings you achieve with marketing automation and use it to justify the cost of the software. This will help you get approval for using it in your business.
• Stay up to date with the latest features and updates. Marketing automation is constantly evolving, so make sure that you are taking advantage of all it offers.

Key Takeaways

In conclusion, marketing automation has many benefits that can help improve your team's workflow. The software can help you save time, track results, and improve communication. Additionally, marketing automation can improve customer engagement and help align your marketing goals with those of your sales team.

Marketing automation can help you to improve your team's workflow and achieve better results. Using marketing automation software can create a consistent brand experience, increase accountability, minimize micromanagement, and limit roadblocks. So what are you waiting for?