Marketing Automation has seen the highest growth rate in the past five years, and it has changed from being a system to automate emails to being a sophisticated system for attracting, nurturing, engaging and retaining customers. In the year 2014, the most noteworthy development is how the focus of Marketing Automation has now drifted from the power and speed of automation to the necessity of personalization and relationship-building.
Here are some of the top trends which are responsible for the massive transformation in the world of Marketing Automation today:
Consolidation
The trend of consolidation of Marketing Automation continues now with the recent acquisition of Silverpop by IBM. Earlier consolidation was marked by companies recognizing the needs for sales and marketing alignment. Now consolidation is a result of companies wanting to personalize their customer experience as seen in the recent acquisition. Silverpop provides customer insights and an intuitive engagement engine that helps reduce the complexity of omnichannel marketing, making it easier to personalize the customer experience regardless of where the customer is at their purchase journey.
Personalization
Marketing Automation is evolving into a system that allows marketers to build one-to-one relationships on a mass scale – mass personalization. In our report on the State of Marketing Automation 2014, it was found that 66% marketers reported the ability for enhanced targeting and personalization as a top benefit of Marketing Automation systems.
Cross Channel Integration
Marketing Automation now allows marketers to track interaction at various touch-points and design campaigns accordingly. A study by Lenskold and Pedowitz found that companies using Marketing Automation are 3X more likely than companies without automation to track and attribute their content-marketing efforts to multiple touchpoints. This allows them to execute a seamless cross-channel experience which is the need of the hour.
Key to Behavioral Data
According to eMarketer reaching the right target at the right time is one of the biggest challenges for B2B marketers. But with sophisticated Marketing Automation systems marketers can now measure the customer’s digital footprints across different channels such as email, social media, video etc. and use this behavioral data to reach the right customers at the right time.
Marketing Automation has changed from being an automation tool to sophisticated systems that provide immense sales and marketing intelligence and are now being used accordingly.
