Technology
Marketing Automation Trends To Pay Attention To
It’s honestly quite impressive how far marketing automation has progressed in the last decade. It seems like only yesterday that digital avenues entered and severely disrupted the marketing scene. Now, not only are all the digital channels being actively utilized by the majority of brands that are adopting new-age marketing…
It’s honestly quite impressive how far marketing automation has progressed in the last decade. It seems like only yesterday that digital avenues entered and severely disrupted the marketing scene. Now, not only are all the digital channels being actively utilized by the majority of brands that are adopting new-age marketing trends, but these efforts are also being automated quite extensively. There was a time when resources were hired for the sole purpose of sending emails, posting social media updates, and following up through other channels. Now, all these tasks can be accomplished by a single entity that utilizes marketing automation tools to schedule and automate all of these actions.
With the dawn of a new year, marketing automation is only bound to improve with a whole host of new and improved processes that will permeate this particular vertical of marketing. Here are some of the major marketing automation trends that should be adopted by marketers.
1. Advanced applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence has always been at the forefront of marketing automation, and 2020 is no different. Social media tracking and lead nurturing will reach new heights in the coming year as this technology continues to reach new heights. On top of these developments, AI technology is also becoming more accessible to masses, which implies that a higher proportion of brands will have the option to utilize AI technology to improve their marketing efforts. AI is also rising in the Programmatic advertising space. It helps marketers in buying ads efficiently and targeting the audience in a more specific way. Hence, the overall cost is reduced leading to higher ROI.
2. Personalized content offerings
Content marketing has turned into one of the most effective and prevalent marketing strategies of the 21st century. Brands all over the world are utilizing this strategy by nailing down appropriate content distribution channels that will help them target the proper audience. Keeping this in mind, marketing automation can help companies identify customers who are interested in or have purchased a particular product or service. By doing so, relevant content can be provided to these consumers basis their buying behavior to improve conversion rates and hence sales.
3. Predictive lead scoring
Leads are a dime-a-dozen in the marketing world, which makes it essential to nail down a particular system that can help brands differentiate the legitimate leads from the fancy ones. There are many metrics that’ll help a person identify this scoring system, and the latest innovations in marketing automation will aid these companies in analyzing all the different factors such as consumer behavior, target demographics, and social media interactions – to name a few. Lead scoring will help in qualifying the leads throughout the sales funnel i.e if it’s an MQL or a SQL and hence, the right marketing or sales actions can be taken on those leads basis the scores defined. This laser-sharp marketing will help businesses to target leads in the most efficient manner.
4. Prominence of chatbots
We’ve already talked about the importance that Artificial Intelligence will hold in 2019, and the best way to illustrate this is by talking about one such application of this technology that has taken over the marketing world by storm – chatbots. Smart chatbot usage has increased interactivity by leaps and bounds, as seen in the fact that over 60% of users who were pinged by a chatbot on Facebook Messenger have replied back! It’s a great statistic that goes to show that chatbots are here to stay.
5. Cross-channel marketing becoming the norm
In a nutshell, cross-channel marketing refers to the integration of different forms of marketing and making their respective teams work together, as opposed to working in a silo. This is imperative for content marketing to succeed, since – as discussed before – the term itself is incredibly varied and covers various elements such as social media marketing, mobile marketing, email marketing, and everything else along the same lines. To make sure that all these forms of marketing work together in harmony in 2020, it’s important to ensure that cross-channel marketing takes precedence.
2020 is poised to bring about many new and improved trends in the realm of marketing automation. The trends discussed above are just skimming the waters when one talks about the sheer possibilities enabled by marketing automation, which will play a dominant role in augmenting marketing strategies and ROI across all industries and markets.
