{"id":48626,"date":"2015-05-13T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/?p=48626"},"modified":"2015-05-13T08:00:41","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T07:00:41","slug":"marketing-automation-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/lead-generation\/marketing-automation\/marketing-automation-2\/","title":{"rendered":"7 ways to grow your business with your Marketing Automation Tools"},"content":{"rendered":"

Research showing how Marketing Automation can\u00a0support the lead-sales pipeline<\/h2>\n

Marketing automation has received a lot of attention over the past year. But you may still be sceptical, asking\u00a0how can it actually grow my business\u2019?<\/p>\n

In this post, I want to dig into some of these benefits to explain precisely how marketing automation can help you grow your business.<\/p>\n

In March 2014, Regalix conducted a study<\/a> to identify the most common benefits of marketing automation, as told by marketers who had implemented the software.<\/p>\n

\"benefits<\/h4>\n

1. Improve your lead nurturing<\/h4>\n

According to the Regalix study above, the number one benefit of marketing automation software is the ability to manage and nurture leads.<\/p>\n

In every business, you will have a mixture of hot and cold leads. It\u2019s common sense to have your sales team focus their efforts on the hottest leads, as they have the highest probability of closing. But, what about those colder leads who aren\u2019t quite ready to purchase yet? This is where lead nurturing comes in.<\/p>\n

Below is an example of a simple lead nurturing campaign that sends a time-activated sequence of educational emails after someone downloads a free report. In each email, the lead is encouraged to request an appointment, which would indicate that they are now a qualified lead and may be ready to buy.<\/p>\n

\"lead<\/p>\n

What\u2019s valuable about this is that it provides a completely automated<\/em> system for converting your cold leads into hot leads. With no ongoing time or effort required from your sales team, they end up with more hot leads\u00a0 on their plate to work with.<\/p>\n

2. Improve your lead response times<\/h4>\n

A study from Harvard<\/a> found that you\u2019re seven times more likely to qualify a lead if you respond to an enquiry within an hour, compared to responding even an hour later and more than 60 times likelier than if you waited 24 hours or longer.<\/p>\n

Yet, the same study found that, on average, the majority of companies take at least 12 hours to respond to an enquiry.<\/p>\n

With marketing automation software, you can create automated email responses to ensure that every lead is responded to within the hour.<\/p>\n

Skeptical that you can do this without it sounding robotic? As was I, until I heard about \u2018Barry\u2019, the automated salesperson. In this case study<\/a>, a company replaced their manual lead qualification with an automation sequence that leads would talk to for months on end - completely unaware that they were speaking to an automated set of emails.<\/p>\n

\"infusionsoft<\/a>3. Improve your lead qualification process<\/h4>\n

Research from the Annuitas Group<\/a> found that businesses that had implemented marketing automation software had seen, on average, a 451% increase in qualified leads.<\/p>\n

This is partly as a result of better targeting and personalisation of marketing, but also largely due to the fact that marketing automation software provides a framework to improve your lead qualification process.<\/p>\n

With lead scoring that automatically updates when a lead completes certain actions (such as viewing your pricing page, or scheduling a call), you\u2019re able to qualify leads more accurately, ensuring that you\u2019re always focusing on those that are hottest and most valuable.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4. Reduce your sales and marketing overhead<\/h4>\n

One of the less obvious benefits of marketing automation is that it allows you to scale your marketing and sales efforts without needing lots of extra staff. One person can create an automation sequence that communicates with ten leads over the year, or ten thousand.<\/p>\n

This has two important consequences.<\/p>\n