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From analytics and CRM to email marketing and social media, automation has seeped into virtually every step of the digital marketing process.
Despite how far it’s come, automated marketing will continue to scale, with global spending on marketing automation software slated to grow to reach $25 billion, a sevenfold jump from where it stands now at $3.6 billion.
To produce tangible results in an increasingly automated marketing landscape, digital marketers must learn to embrace automation by cashing in on the latest trends.
Before taking a deep dive into some of the top-of-mind trends that are gearing up to dominate the industry this year, let’s quickly brush over how automation became the hub of modern-day digital marketing teams.
The numbers pretty much speak for themselves.
Sixty-three percent of companies that have adopted marketing automation tools report higher ROI than their competitors, and nearly nine out of ten industry leaders leverage programmatic marketing strategies to scale marketing campaigns and tap into new audiences.
The majority of Internet users are now consuming content across channels and across devices on a daily basis. Marketing automation tools support this trend by taking customers out of separate silos and consolidating their behaviors into detailed profiles.
In addition, the marketing automation landscape has moved towards simpler workflows, more user-friendly interfaces, easier software integration, and faster data interpretation to support timely responses.
The marketing automation landscape is large, and will only get larger from here on out. Spending on marketing automation tools is expected to reach at least 17.36 billion by 2032.
Marketing automation allows digital advertisers, agency owners, and CMOs to conserve their resources and launch more effective ad campaigns, streamlining marketing efforts so teams run in a more efficient manner.
When implemented across all your marketing activities, automation can produce some pretty impressive benefits. Here are some benefits of marketing automation that advertisers can utilize for powerful, practical marketing campaigns:
With marketing automation tools, customers can enter the sales funnel and move through it without manual effort from your team. You can target your persona on multiple ad channels, whether it be social media, search ads, or email marketing campaigns.
Automation leads to a more efficient digital marketing team. For instance, instead of manually posting on social media daily, marketing automation software can automate this process. This saves time and lets your team focus on more creative aspects, like planning for upcoming marketing campaigns.
Marketing automation tools combine ad campaigns, live chat, SMS marketing, emails, CRM, and other features in an all-in-one platform. This makes it easy for you to build custom cross-channel marketing workflows to reach your target audience segmentation.
Companies using marketing automation have seen more success and better results with their ad campaigns. To put this in perspective, those that implement automation in their marketing strategy generate 53% higher conversion rates than those who do not.
A significant 76% of companies also reported receiving a return on investment within the first year of implementing marketing automation software.
About 63% of companies using marketing automation outperform their competitors, indicating a strong correlation between automation and competitive advantage in sales and ROI.
The implementation of marketing automation has led to a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead, demonstrating both efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
A remarkable 80% of marketing automation users saw an increase in the number of leads, and 77% observed an increase in the number of conversions. This suggests that marketing automation not only helps in generating more leads but also effectively converts these leads into customers.
When implementing marketing automation tools, there is no one size fits all approach. From lead nurturing to market research and analytics, there are many ways you can utilize automation tools within your content marketing strategy.
With Adriel’s marketing dashboard, for example, you can automate routine manual work to spend less time chasing data and more time growing your business. Digital marketers will then be able to streamline creative development, strategic planning, and campaign execution.
For instance, instead of having to wait hours or days, marketers can quickly connect to disparate data sources on Adriel in a matter of minutes. Once this is done, the software automatically streams data in real-time and populates key insights on the dashboard without any manual maintenance or scheduled refreshes.
Another important example of a marketing automation tool are welcome and onboarding email campaigns, which are vital in initiating conversations with new customers. These automated emails can be sent to your newly subscribed customers within 24 hours of their first purchase.
In today’s modern marketing world, many companies and small businesses are using onboarding welcome emails as part of their marketing automation process to ensure that new customers are well-connected with their brand.
Other platforms such as Salesforce or HubSpot, which typically include tools for CRM integration, email marketing, inbound marketing, lead nurturing, and lead scoring, are great tools to boost revenue and get familiar with marketing technology.
Read more: Automation as a New Finance Essential for Businesses
Automation has the capacity to elevate marketing teams to rockstar status. But simply throwing marketing automation tools into the mix isn’t enough. To realize its full potential, digital marketers must stay ahead of the following trends driving the future.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the marketing automation trends shaping the advertising industry today:
Once a buzzword, AI is now the backbone of modern B2B marketing automation. 77% of marketers in the 2023 State of Marketing AI Report say that they are now using AI primarily to reduce time spent on repetitive tasks.
With its ability to analyze vast amounts of data and execute tasks in a matter of seconds, AI is saving marketers massive amounts of time. It’s not just about chatbots and automated responses anymore, AI is automating marketing tasks in real-time, such as ad creation, data analysis, and ad optimization.
Prompting was all the rage last year, but in 2024, AI tools that do not require intricate prompts will take the prize.
Marketers are looking for AI marketing automation solutions that are easy to get started with and easy to use. Prompting adds another layer of technical difficulty when AI is already a new realm for most marketers.
As companies increasingly recognize the need for simplicity and efficiency, we're likely to see a significant rise in the development and adoption of these user-friendly, prompt-free AI solutions. The future of marketing automation is not just about leveraging AI, but doing so in the most time-efficient and accessible way possible.
In an era where consumer privacy is paramount, marketing automation faces a pivotal change. The impending phase-out of third-party cookies by major browsers like Google Chrome is reshaping the marketing automation landscape.
Marketers are now compelled to adopt more transparent, privacy-forward strategies – not just to comply with regulations but also to build trust and foster deeper customer relationships through respectful data practices.
The ability to aggregate, analyze, and act on customer data is what sets successful marketers apart. From understanding buying patterns to predicting future trends, marketing automation platforms that can leverage data are crucial for crafting strategies that resonate with target audiences and drive business growth.
Personalization is no longer a mere option – it's a necessity. Customers expect marketing messages to resonate with their unique preferences and needs.
With martech tools powered by AI and machine learning, personalization can be achieved at scale. From crafting individualized email content to delivering targeted ads, automation enables brands to make every customer feel uniquely valued.
Humans make choices based on information and intuition. The same, however, cannot be said about marketing automation. It has to be grounded in conditional logic to function with what can be called informed intuition.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re emailing cold prospects to have them book a demo. Some might oblige on the first go, but many won’t. In a perfect world, a real-time marketing automation tool would chime in and send out targeted follow-ups to engage unresponsive prospects. With conditional logic in place, automated systems will do precisely that.
Having the right message delivered to the right person on the right channel at the right time has long been the holy grail of marketing success. But the ever-growing number of touchpoints is complicating the task of harnessing a consistent, personalized customer experience.
That’s precisely why investing in multichannel marketing automation has become a must. Without the 360-degree view of cross-channel metrics automation tools provide, marketers are doomed to be left in the dust under a stack of dataflows and siloed systems.
There are no limits to the wonders of automation tools. At this point in our collective marketing automation landscape, every brand should be able to enjoy the fruits automation can provide. It’ll be up to how well you act on the latest trends to improve your marketing campaign performance and bottom lines.
While marketing attribution is not as straightforward as looking at numbers, dashboards can make your life easier by consolidating all your disparate data in one place. Look for marketing software like Adriel that not only streams real-time data but also automatically tracks all the data and alerts you whenever campaign metrics go above or below certain KPIs.
Book a 1-on-1 demo call with our product specialist. Never miss any critical insights again.
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