Sales and Marketing Automation is a global market that is expected to grow currently at a CAGR of 27.25% between the period 2016-2020. Sales and Marketing Automation includes the products that help automate marketing through automation software and sales through process automation software
Sales and Marketing Automation: If you are in the market for sales automation software, there are many factors that you should consider before jumping into it.
In the rush to automate, the marketing and sales function is the next frontier. As everybody knows, over the past decade information systems have been making great inroads in engineering and manufacturing. Automation has cut direct labor to a small fraction of production costs—an average of 8% to 12% in manufacturing companies. Therefore, wringing yet more cost reductions from production labor is increasingly difficult. In such technically advanced industries as computers, semiconductors, airframes, metalworking, and autos, incremental investments are now garnering diminishing returns.
On the other hand, investments in marketing and sales automation systems hold tremendous potential for productivity improvements. Marketing and sales costs average 15% to 35% of total corporate costs (not just production costs). So a focus on marketing and sales provides a welcome lever for boosting productivity. Moreover, the importance of marketing and sales services is growing. According to the U.S. trade representative and the National Association of Accountants, manufacturers’ service activities account for 75% to 85% of all value added.1 This means that the price a product can command is less a reflection of raw materials and labor than of marketing-related services like selecting appropriate product features, determining the product mix, and ensuring product availability and delivery.
In cases we have reviewed, sales increases arising from advanced marketing and sales information technology have ranged from 10% to more than 30%, and investment returns have often exceeded 100%. These returns may sound like the proverbial free lunch, but they are real.
Because of the complexity of their marketing organizations, large companies are good prospects for what we call marketing and sales productivity (MSP) systems. Tangles of national account management, direct sales, telemarketing, direct mail, literature fulfillment, advertising, customer service, dealers, and distributors all offer opportunities for efficiency improvements. But even small companies that adopt MSP systems can expect impressive results.
Marketing automation investments by a $7 billion electronics manufacturer and an $8 million custom printing company each produced a first-year return of more than 100%. The electronics concern installed a sales support system for more than 500 salespeople. Sales rose 33%, sales force productivity rose 31%, and sales force attrition dropped 40%. The reduced attrition alone produced savings in recruiting and training costs that paid for the company’s $2.5 million investment in less than 12 months. At the custom printer, an $80,000 investment in a minicomputer and telemarketing software returned a 25% increase in sales and attained payback in less than 6 months.
Increasing marketing productivity even a small amount can have a great impact on the bottom line. MSP systems have a double punch because they can reduce fixed costs and variable costs. Lower fixed costs mean lower breakeven points. So a given percentage increase in sales produces a correspondingly larger increase in operating profits, as the chart on the next page shows. Meanwhile, lower variable costs mean that every sale contributes more to the bottom line. Indeed, because lower variable costs make the slope of the new contribution curve steeper, the absolute size of the financial advantage continues to grow as sales rise.
What is Marketing Automation?
Professionals generally consider marketing automation to be an app, locally installed or web-based, that plays a pivotal role in a variety of marketing-related activities. These can include valuable marketing tactics like automated email marketing, lead nurturing/scoring, return on investment analysis, expanded CRM capabilities and more. Whether sales are being conducted online or offline, marketing automation can take on truckloads of work with just a little pre-planning and foresight. It won’t put your marketing team out of business — it’ll help lighten their load.
For example, one of the most common and fundamental parts of marketing automation is email marketing automation tools. Email marketing automation can isolate and define sets of customers who may be receptive to a certain message. Companies can use A/B testing or analytics to figure out how to craft marketing emails and make them more effective.
Let’s say you’ve got a diverse pool of customers, and you’re selling pet food. You’d want to send out a coupon to all of your customers to entice them to buy, and encourage them to subscribe to your pet food delivery service. This is where A/B testing comes in.
You’ll select a small segment of your market and test out an ‘A’ email. ‘A’ is focused on cats. Then you’ll send out a ‘B’ email, focused on dogs. Depending on the responses you get back from your A/B test, you’ll know which segment to target for greatest effect. A/B testing is also useful for sales, in that it assists your team in knowing how to communicate with their qualified leads.
Email marketing is just one part of what marketing automation software programs offer to companies. Other common areas of marketing automation involve:
- Social marketing tools (post schedulers and brand watchers)
- Landing page resources (like landing page generators)
- Direct mail marketing software (such as customer databases)
- Lead generation tools (blogging and SEO tools)
- Postcard marketing tools (visual software for designing)
- Web analytics programs (visual software for measuring results)
- Customer tracking tools (viewing customer journeys across your page)
Several of the best marketing automation platforms deliver many of these features and more. Including social media, email and other channels into a single automation platform can decrease labor for a marketing department, and also provide key business intelligence concerning certain marketing campaigns.
Sales & Marketing Automation Benefits Backed by Statistics
1. Reduced costs
In Keap’s 2020 Customer Survey, small business respondents expressed that finding time and resources for marketing was their greatest challenge. For instance, 22.9% of respondents stated that they collect contact information manually over the phone or in-person rather than automating the process.
Software not only saves time, but provides much needed resources to get more done.
If you’re using the right software for marketing automation, such as Keap, it’s like one employee accomplishing what 50 employees can perform manually.
All you have to do is create a process for generating and nurturing leads along with marketing campaigns, which are spontaneously activated based on certain benchmarks. Within several months of implementing automated campaigns, you can send out thousands of customized emails daily using simple autopilot software.
For example, after starting to use Keap as their sales and marketing automation software, a small bed and breakfast in France saw their workload reduced by 25%. The small business established automated follow-up email campaigns that allowed it to generate repeat business and attract new guests, resulting in doubled revenue—while saving time.
2. Additional revenues
While bringing down expenditures, a further benefit of using marketing automation software is more revenue. Combining lead management with prioritization can result in increased ROI from your sales activities.
Several small businesses have reported an 800% growth in revenue, $100k in additional revenue, and even growing revenue to goals of over $1 million annually after adopting automation software.
3. Generate and nurture leads
Did you know that over 30% of sales activities can be automated, according to McKinsey & Company? Tasks include pipeline management, following up, scheduling appointments, and other general administrative duties—all time-consuming yet critical lead nurturing activities.
If you are a small business owner, you know that generating leads is crucial to your business development. Through automation of procedures between marketing and sales, you can concentrate more on formulating strategies that can generate and nurture promising leads. In other words, you can land more customers because of more prospects.
And the data from sales and marketing automation statistics agrees. Those who have adopted sales automation early on consistently report sales uplift potential of up to 10 percent.
4. Better data for smarter decisions
Big Data is one of the buzzwords in IT these days. Unfortunately, not all businesses are efficient in collecting and using this data in their marketing and sales efforts. Marketing automation facilitates understanding of Big Data, and gathering the required intelligence makes things work for you.
A sales and marketing automation platform like Keap is one of the more complete solutions to gauge marketing campaigns and forecast consumer attitude or reaction. It can put together a full profile of your prospects.
5. Refined marketing process
Software used for marketing automation allows you to map out your customer journey. At the same time, your marketing strategy will allow you to build processes centered on the experience of your potential customers. Through the creation of processes around this customer journey, it becomes easier to process targets and nurture leads.
Something as simple as understanding that 44% of clients move on to another company if you don’t respond fast enough can help you rethink your follow-up process and the advantages of using marketing automation for better customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
Sales automation lets sales teams leverage technology and gain insight into activities once considered impossible or expensive. Salesforce helps sales leaders connect every aspect of their sales pipeline – from leads to opportunities to accounts – view the complete picture in real-time, and make better decisions faster to boost performance and outcomes.