So you’re thinking about implementing marketing automation. Or trying to convince your boss you really need fancy marketing automation software.
Here are a few stats: 91% of marketers say marketing automation helps them achieve their objectives, and the global marketing automation industry is projected to cross $13 billion by 2030.
So, yeah. Now’s a good time to get into marketing automation. But here’s some more information so you can learn precisely how automation can help marketing teams of any size maximise their time.
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Summary
This article presents six key benefits of implementing marketing automation:
- Better nurture leads: Streamlines lead engagement, saving time, increasing success rates, and enhancing profitability.
- Align your team: Bridges the gap between sales and marketing teams, creating a seamless flow of information and shared goals, leading to better alignment and revenue growth.
- Save time and money: Automates repetitive tasks, maximizing output and optimizing marketing budgets.
- Personalize at scale: Creates tailored customer experiences, translating into stronger bonds and increased sales.
- Build and scale processes: Streamlines marketing operations, enabling marketers to focus on strategic planning and creative campaigns.
- Improve data accuracy: Provides a centralized space for data organization, eliminating scattered information and providing valuable insights.
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1. Better nurture leads
💡 Key Takeaway: Marketing automation takes the guesswork out of lead engagement. It saves you time, increases your success rate, and ultimately contributes to a healthier bottom line.
Marketing automation makes nurturing leads a breeze. Platforms like HubSpot transform prospects into customers by seamlessly capturing lead data the moment they express interest.
It kicks off when a potential customer fills out a form on your website. Automation tools immediately swing into action, sending personalized emails that cater to their interests. This builds a connection right from the start.
This personalized approach isn't just about making contacts feel special. Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost (Data Axle).
To take things further, you can segment your audience by any criteria—their needs, industry, or any other relevant factor—and deliver content that truly resonates.
For that extra edge, tools like Relay.app integrate with your marketing and CRM platforms for real-time data sync. Any information a lead shares is instantly updated everywhere, guaranteeing that your follow-up is always informed and relevant.
Did you know? Businesses that use marketing automation see a 451% increase in qualified leads. (Annuitas Group)
2. Align your teams
💡 Key Takeaway: With marketing automation, everyone has the same data, the same goals, and a deeper understanding of both your customers and each other's work. This alignment creates a powerful synergy within your organization.
Misaligned sales and marketing teams are a common pain point. But it’s an important problem to solve—data suggests aligned organizations see a 32% year-over-year revenue growth, while less aligned companies see a 7% decline in growth.
Marketing automation bridges that gap, creating a smooth flow of information and shared goals.
Take lead scoring for example. Marketing software can analyze a lead's interactions (like visiting a specific blog post or engaging with onboarding materials) and assign a score based on their conversion likelihood.
HubSpot offers predictive lead scoring that generates a score based on machine learning that uses thousands of data points to automatically prioritize leads. This empowers sales teams to prioritize hot leads, saving them from chasing low-potential prospects.
It doesn’t have to be such a high-tech solution though. You can achieve a similar result with a DIY spreadsheet, formulas and simple automations. The key is data transparency.
Automation—whether it’s through a tool like HubSpot or simply sharing customer data in a Google Sheet—keeps cross-functional teams informed. Instead of having to wait for a weekly meeting, they can access data in real-time and get insights any time they need.
3. Save time and money
💡 Key Takeaway: Marketing automation unlocks both time and money. This allows you to optimize your team's output and makes your marketing budget stretch even further.
Marketing automation isn't just about maximizing efficiency – it directly impacts your bottom line. Let's consider automated email sequences as a prime example.
Tools like Mailchimp and Klaviyo run like clockwork, delivering emails on schedule without the need for manual intervention. Once a campaign is set up, your team is free to focus on high value strategic tasks.
And with Relay.app you don’t even have to manually add contacts to Mailchimp. You can just set them up to be automatically added from another source—like a Tally form, or an Airtable base, or even from a Cal.com booking.
Imagine the alternative? Manually sending every single email like the stonge age. You'd likely need a dedicated employee just for that. Automation allows email management to be seamlessly integrated within a marketer's broader responsibilities.
The time-saving magic extends to social media. Apps like Buffer schedule posts across platforms at optimal times, maximizing your content's reach.
Without automation, this would be an exhausting grind (though ask any social media manager they’ll tell you it’s still a grind). But thanks to automation, they can batch posts weeks or even months ahead, freeing up their creative energy for strategy (or recording fun Tik Toks).
This principle holds true across all marketing functions. By automating those repetitive tasks, your team saves considerable time and effort. From a business perspective, this translates to cost savings and a wiser allocation of resources – getting more done without employee burnout.
Did you know? Marketing automation, on average, drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity while reducing marketing overhead by 12.2%. (Nucleus Research)
4. Personalize at scale
💡 Key Takeaway: Marketing automation allows you to personalize the customer experience like never before, ultimately translating into stronger bonds and more sales.
80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from companies that provide personalized experiences. This translates directly to your online business—be it a SaaS product, an ecommerce store or anything inbetween,
Imagine a store where the owner remembers each customer, their preferences, and past purchases. Sounds neat right? Marketing automation gives you that power. It gathers customer data (browsing habits, interests, etc.) to create tailored experiences that feel authentic, not pushy.
If a customer frequently browses your running gear? Automation can suggest new shoe releases or highlight upcoming marathon events. It's like having a friend who knows your love for hiking—they wouldn't recommend sandals. Automation helps focus on delivering relevant information when it’s relevant.
The magic lies in the genuineness of these interactions. No generic blasts. Just helpful personalized communications and recommendations that build trust and engagement at scale.
Take this example from Relay.app below, that personalizes emails based on HubSpot data.
And it's not just about external communication. Tools like Relay.app also personalize to your internal interactions, enhancing efficiency and collaboration.
One of our favorite Relay.app use cases is using it to streamline meeting follow-ups by summarizing key discussion points and sending them to Slack.
Not only does this save time, but it also helps ensure everyone, regardless of their meeting attendance, is on the same page.
5. Build and scale processes
💡 Key Takeaway: Marketing automation empowers you to streamline and supercharge your marketing operations without sacrificing efficiency or stretching your team thin.
Every marketer knows the feeling of juggling too many plates at once. With marketing automation, tasks that previously drained your team’s time—sending onboading emails, scheduling social posts, nurturing leads, building dashboards—can be set on autopilot.
This allows you and your team to reclaim precious hours to dedicate towards strategic planning and creative work rather than getting stuck in the weeds of mundane busywork.
Take content marketing for example. Creative writing should be the focus, but so often teams are bogged down by all the boring stuff around it—copying links between project management apps, filling in briefs in Google Docs and otherwise doing things other than writing.
We use Google Sheets to manage our content calendar and library, and we use a Relay.app playbook that runs automatically every time someone adds a new idea.
There are a few things going on in this workflow. Relay.app:
- Automatically generates a new Google Doc based on a template
- Saves the Doc into the relevant Google Drive folder for access
- Updates the Google Sheet with the relevant Drive link
- Creates a task in Todoist with relevant information (e.g. keyword data and context)
- Sends approval request to our fractional content manager
- Once approved, generates and sends an email to our founder for his insights
That’s just one use case—there are dozens more for every marketing function. By automating these dull, repetitive (yet crucial!) processes, you can scale your marketing without overwhelming your team or compromising on quality.
6. Improve data accuracy
💡Key Takeaway: Marketing automation platforms like HubSpot provide a strong foundation for data organization. Tools like Relay.app supercharge your efforts by making Airtable or Google Sheets your central data hub, sharing accurate, actionable information from across your marketing ecosystem.
Sick of scattered information? All-in-one platforms like Brevo provide a central space for a wide range of marketing data—web traffic, social engagement, campaign performance and more.
No more spreadsheet management or jumping between tools. You can instantly see which campaigns are working, and optimize strategy based on real-time visualizations. Most tools even let you build out custom reports based on whatever metrics matter to you.
The above dashboard from Brevo shows revenue and sales. But you can easily adjust it to show other data from campaigns and leads.
But automation doesn’t just help collate external data—it helps with internal data too. For example, with ClickUp you can use dashboards to show the project management side of your campaigns at a glance.
You can set goals, establish core metrics and KPIs, and identify resources—then monitor it in the one spot. And with Relay.app you can integrate with the rest of your stack to share data from other tools.
Whether that’s adding lead data from HubSpot or sharing insights from a Typeform, Relay.app ensures that your centralized data hub is updated with the most accurate information.
Marketing Teams Automate More with Relay.app
Relay.app empowers marketing teams to streamline operations and unlock the full potential of their campaigns.
Automate tasks across campaign management, lead tracking, content publishing, and more—all while integrating essential human judgment for key decisions and data accuracy.
What makes Relay.app different from other workflow automation tools? Relay.app goes beyond traditional automation.
With Relay.app you can incorporate strategic approvals, critical decision points, manual data enrichment, and custom task creation directly within your workflows.
This blend of AI-powered automation and human insights ensures precision and personalization. Here are a few ways Relay.app can help your marketing team:
🚗 Campaign acceleration: Seamlessly connect customer interactions across your favorite tools (Typeform, Calendly, Salesforce, etc.). Relay.app aligns your marketing stack, automating strategic actions based on real-time triggers, so you can execute campaigns faster than ever.
🎯 Project efficiency: Eliminate manual task creation and updates. Relay.app bridges the gap between your project management tools (like ClickUp or Asana), ensuring every task stays on track across teams and platforms.
💁 Optimized lead management: Keep deals moving with Relay.app running in the background. Sync lead status updates, trigger follow-ups, generate transcripts, and personalize communication based on CRM data – all automatically.
✍️ Streamlined content production: Remove bottlenecks and empower your content team. Relay.app facilitates seamless creation of briefs, drafts, and automated approval workflows, enabling you to ramp up production without sacrificing quality.
📊 Centralized data: Capture, organize, and channel marketing data across sources. Update lead scores, consolidate campaign metrics, and pipe feedback directly into your preferred tools – ensuring your team makes data-driven decisions.
Relay.app connects with your go-to marketing tools (HubSpot, Mailchimp, Calendly, etc.) and leading CRMs, email marketing platforms, scheduling tools, project management solutions.
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Marketing Automation FAQs
How effective is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is highly effective as it streamlines marketing processes, increases efficiency, and enhances the personalization of customer interactions. By automating repetitive tasks such as email marketing, social media posting, and ad campaigns, businesses can focus on strategy and creative efforts. This results in higher conversion rates and improved customer retention, showcasing significant benefits of marketing automation in achieving business goals.
What is the main goal of marketing automation?
The main goal of marketing automation is to increase operational efficiency and improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. By automating routine tasks and leveraging data for personalized marketing strategies, businesses aim to engage customers more effectively, enhance lead generation, and boost sales. Ultimately, marketing automation seeks to drive revenue growth while reducing marketing overhead, aligning with the broader business objectives.
Is marketing automation the future?
Yes, yes and yes. 76% of companies use some sort of marketing automation already. It's widely regarded as the future of digital marketing. As technology advances, the capabilities of marketing automation tools are expanding, allowing for more sophisticated and targeted marketing strategies. This trend is essential for businesses looking to scale efficiently and maintain a competitive edge in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. The increasing reliance on data-driven decisions and personalized customer experiences further solidifies the role of marketing automation as a key component of modern marketing strategies.
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