Marketing automation is an effective tool for engaging customers and increasing the efficiency of your marketing by improving both marketing execution and personalization by delivering tailored content to the customer. It also enhances lead generation and nurturing through personalized journeys and lead scoring, provides valuable customer data for informed decisions, improves customer acquisition and retention, and delivers an improved return on investment.
Marketing automation uses software to automate repetitive marketing tasks such as email campaigns, social media posts, and lead nurturing, to improve efficiency and personalize customer experiences across multiple channels. By streamlining these processes, local businesses can save time, generate more qualified leads, and drive revenue by delivering the right content to the right customer at the right time.
Marketing automation delivers tangible results with companies reporting higher ROI, increased sales productivity, significant time and cost savings, and improved lead generation and conversion rates. Specific data points include 76% of companies seeing ROI from automation within one year and a 14.5% increase in sales productivity for businesses using the tools.
Some of the more popular marketing automation platforms include HubSpot, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adobe Marketo Engage.
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Some of the key factors leading to marketing automation effectiveness include:
Boosts Efficiency and Productivity: Automation handles repetitive tasks like email follow-up and social media posting, freeing up marketing teams to concentrate on strategic marketing and creative content development, among other tasks.
Enhances Personalization: Automation allows for the delivery of personalized content and experiences to large customer bases, a task that would be virtually impossible for a local business to manage manually across various channels.
Improves Lead Nurturing: It automates lead nurturing campaigns, guides prospects through the customer journey, and uses lead scoring to identify and pass qualified leads to sales teams at the optimal moment.
Provides Data for Informed Choices: Marketing automation platforms collect detailed data on customer interactions across all touchpoints, providing valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and purchase patterns. This data-driven approach helps in refining campaigns and strategies.
Increases Conversion and ROI: By providing personalized experiences and efficiently moving leads through the funnel, marketing automation leads to higher conversions rates and a greater marketing return on investment.
Improves Customer Retention: Automation facilitates strategies for customer loyalty, including personalized retention campaigns and upsell/cross-sell opportunities, which builds stronger customer relationships.
The best way to convey the value in marketing automation might be from an example.
Let’s review a hypothetical example from an independent local bookstore here in Keene called “Chapter & Verse”. Chapter & Verse uses marketing automation to unify customer data across online and in-store channels to provide a personalized, omni-channel experience. Chapter & Verse creates a seamless customer journey from browsing online to purchasing in-store.
Step 1: A Welcome Campaign for New Customers:
- When a new customer subscribes to the bookstore’s email list via the website or provides their email address at point-of-sale, they are automatically entered into a welcome campaign automation.
- An initial email is sent immediately welcoming the user to “Chapter & Verse” including a personal message from the owner, a brief origin history of the store, and a link to the website’s top-selling books.
- A second email is sent three days later highlighting the bookstore’s loyalty program, explaining how customers earn points for every dollar spent online or in-store.
- A third email is sent seven days later featuring a special one-time-use offer such as a 10% discount to encourage the customer to make their first purchase.
Step 2: Personalized Product Recommendations:
- The bookstore uses data collected from a customer’s online browsing history and past in-store purchases to send personalized emails with relevant product recommendations.
- The trigger might be that a customer browses the “science fiction” section of the website for more than two minutes.
- The follow-up action might be an automated email to the customer showcasing new arrivals and bestsellers in the science fiction genre.
- Another trigger might be the customer purchasing a biography of a historical figure.
- The next action is a follow-up email automatically sent recommending other biographies or historical non-fiction books based on their past purchase.
Step 3: Abandoned Cart Recovery:
- If a customer adds items to their online Chapter & Verse shopping cart but does not complete the purchase, the system automatically triggers an email series to remind them.
- A friendly reminder is sent an hour later including images of the items left in their cart and a call-to-action to “complete your purchase”.
- If no action is taken, a second reminder is sent 24 hours later, often including a special incentive like free shipping or a small discount to close the sale.
Step 4: Event Promotion:
- Chapter & Verse frequently hosts author readings and book club meetings. The marketing automation platform helps promote these local events.
- An event is announced on the website. The system automatically sends an email invitation to segmented customer lists such as book club members or customers who have purchased from that author’s genre before.
- From there, an automated text message is sent as a reminder 24 hours before the event to customers who opted into SMS alerts.
Step 5 Loyalty Program Notifications:
- The bookstore’s point-of-sale system is integrated with its marketing automation platform so customer rewards can be tracked automatically.
- When a customer is approaching a new loyalty tier the system sends an email or text message informing them that they are close to unlocking a new reward, which encourages them to return to the store.
- When the customer earns the reward, an automated notification is sent, detailing the reward and how it can be redeemed.
Step 6 Geo-Targeted Marketing:
- The bookstore can use geo-targeting to market to customers in its local area.
- A customer with the store’s app is within one-mile radius of the physical location of the store.
- The system automatically sends a push notification reminding them of the day’s special promotion.
Step 7 Post Purchase Follow-Up and Feedback:
- After a customer completes a purchase, the retailer can automate communication to enhance the customer relationship and gather valuable feedback.
- Seven days after a purchase, the system automatically sends an email asking for a product review and a review of the overall shopping experience. A special incentive can be offered for completing a review.
- For highly engaged and loyal customers (identified by the system) who leave positive feedback, the system automatically tags them in the CRM as potential brand ambassadors and adds them to a different, more exclusive, email automation.
This comprehensive approach helps a small business like our example Chapter & Verse to foster customer relationships, increase repeat purchases, and gather valuable data without a large marketing team.
Another key strength of marketing automation is lead nurturing. Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with potential customers by delivering personalized, valuable content and timely follow-ups through the automated technology to guide them through the customer journey until they are ready to purchase. Within the nurturing campaign, automation handles tasks like sending personalized emails, sharing relevant resources, and responding to a lead’s actions, ensuring consistent engagement and building trust without constant human intervention. The nurturing campaign can be supplemented with lead scoring technology that tracks customer engagement and identifies when that customer becomes a qualified sales lead, ensuring promotional offers are delivered at the optimal time within the customer journey. This strategy helps convert unqualified leads into sales prospects and loyal customers.
Marketing automation is a powerful tool available to local marketers. By streamlining workflows and freeing up marketing teams for more creative and strategic work, automation helps local businesses deliver relevant content at the right time across multiple channels, leading to higher conversion rates and a better ROI.
To learn more about marketing automation systems and how they can be used to improve the effectiveness of your marketing, give us a call at 603-352-5896 or email to Advertising@SentinelDigitalSolutions.com.
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Disclosure: This post was curated with AI assistance.
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