Marketing automation is a software that allows organizations to optimize their marketing staff, efficiency and customer relationships.  For small businesses, it is a game-changer.  

A good customer relationship management (CRM) software will have a marketing automation feature included with it.  CRM is often the lifeblood of a sales and marketing team. It’s where all the information goes regarding all customers and leads.  That, in conjunction with a marketing automation feature, is a very effective sales tool.

There are many reasons some organizations don’t fully embrace marketing automation nor understand the potential behind it when coupled with their CRM.  For instance, some don’t realize how to automate their marketing processes and tend to continue doing some of them manually. Others fail to provide the appropriate training so, even though they have attempted to automate their processes, they don’t know how to use them. 

When it comes down to it, all organizations are in the business of sales, in one way or another. When your organization is product or service-based, nurturing leads is essential in order to turn them into sales.  Marketing automation can help you achieve this much easier. 

According to VB Insight, 80% of marketing automation users experienced an increase in leads and 77% saw conversion rates increase.  These are results you can experience within your organization if you are able to implement marketing automation successfully.  The below list includes ways for you to take your marketing automation to a new level.

5 tips to take marketing automation to a new level

1. Automate repetitive tasks
   

   One of the main reasons organizations implements marketing automation is to increase productivity by automating repetitive tasks.  Automatic contact segmentation, marketing workflows, autoresponders, newsletters, social media marketing are all able to be automated.

   Automating these tasks saves considerable time and frustration and has consistently positive results for marketing and sales teams.

2. Insightful reports
   

   A CRM with effective report generation can make a huge difference in determining the progress…or lack thereof…of your marketing and sales teams.  It will help you track your engagements and plan your sales pipeline.

   Your reports should give you insight into lead conversions and sales activity by the department, team member, product, etc. allowing you to flag issues and determine strengths.

   You can also generate reports for each of your marketing campaigns to see which of your contacts are in what campaign and all the ways you intend to reach out to them.

3. Customized email drip campaigns
   

   Speaking of marketing campaigns, utilizing your CRM for email drip campaigns will help you target those prospects more likely to respond and have a plan for when they do.

   More enhanced CRMs will give you the ability to create your whole drip campaign from email creation through lead scoring and qualification to send automated email sequences to prospects in your campaign.  It will also tell you who is opening the emails and what actions they are taking when they do so.

4. Tagging

   Tagging your contacts within your CRM will help you group them any way you choose in order to market to them effectively.  Categorize your contacts by location, job title, interests, social media channels, age, gender, etc.

   You’ll be able to personalize your marketing when you tag your contacts, categorizing them in ways that will be useful to your organization.

5. Effectively nurturing leads
   

   By utilizing your marketing automation within your CRM, you should be able to effectively nurture leads, without even having to put too much thought into it.  Utilizing all of the previous tips and making sure to continue working with leads to keep them warm will help you do so.

   Taking the time that you need to in order to nurture your leads will greatly increase your chance of a sale.  Automating your lead nurturing will allow your modest sales team to nurture many different leads at once.

Integrating your marketing automation into your CRM will allow you to streamline many sales processes and increase the productivity of your entire team.  For instance, instead of exporting contacts from your CRM to your marketing automation software in order to create campaigns and send email sequences, you’ll be able to do so directly from the same tool.

Agile CRM is an advanced CRM with extensive marketing automation capabilities.  It allows you to create marketing campaigns in minutes and start capturing leads immediately.  It features autoresponders, personalized campaigns, lead scoring, and automatic contact segmentation.  Agile CRM also has a powerful drip email marketing feature that will bring your sales and marketing teams to the next level. 

Marketing automation and CRMs go hand-in-hand.  If you have the ability to combine the two without spending an arm and a leg, your sales will be sure to increase considerably.  If you would like to see if Agile CRM is a good fit for your organization, give it a try for free for 30 days.