8 Ways Marketing Automation Can Improve Your ROI

Marketing automation is definitely having its moment in the sun right now. Everybody seems to have an opinion on it – even people who aren’t using it yet. And you should too.

Why? Because a marketing automation system can massively improve your ROI if you implement it correctly.

Let’s forget about the hype for a few minutes and focus on the facts. Did you know that marketing automation results in a 53% increase in lead generation and sales conversions? Or, that 79% of companies who have used marketing automation for 2+ years are top performers in their industries?

In fact, in a study by the Lenskold Group, 78% of successful marketers cited marketing automation systems as most responsible for improving revenue contribution.

So, in this post, I’m going to run through the 8 ways you can improve ROI in your own business with the aid of marketing automation practices.

1. Collect More Customer Information With Smart Lead Forms

No-one likes filling in forms and your website visitors won’t like it either. This is where the smart lead form comes into play. Smart lead forms allow you to gradually build contact records for your customers and use this information to improve your marketing campaigns.

How this works, is that a customer will visit your site and fill in the form with information – such as their name and email address. Then, when they return a second time, they’ll be directed to a new form that has removed the information fields already acquired. This allows you to ask for additional information without bombarding them with an essay questionnaire.

By introducing smart lead forms, you’ll make life much easier for both you and your customer. You’ll also acquire valuable intel that you can use to improve your targeted campaigns and increase your overall ROI.

2. Target High Value Leads With Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is a marketing automation process that allows you to identify a lead as either warm or cold, before passing it on to the sales team. It does this by assigning points to each lead based on characteristics of each contact and/or the actions they’ve taken on the site.

By using a lead scoring system, you’ll ensure that your sales team receive qualified leads only – which means that conversions will increase and they’ll be seriously happy campers as a result. It’s a win for both parties.

3. Use Lead Nurturing To Warm Up Cold Leads

Lead nurturing is an essential process used to progress your cold/tepid leads further down the sales funnel.

Your marketing team can take control of this by using marketing automation to set up targeted, lead nurturing email campaigns and convert your cold leads into the ‘ready to buy’ variety.

4. Reduce Funnel Leakage And Retain Solid Prospects

Once your marketing automation system is set up and integrated with your CRM, you’ll find it much easier to keep track of, nurture, and develop any warm leads.

Most marketing automation softwares are design to integrate well with existing CRMs and CMS anyway, and so this should be something which comes quite naturally.

5. Remove Low-Potential Leads

Sometimes you can nurture a lead ‘till you’re blue in the face, but it just never gets warm. By keeping your database clean and removing any tyre kickers, you’ll see a definite increase in conversion rates. You can use the lead scoring system to do this.

6. Create Targeted and Personalized Content

Following what I just mentioned about lead nurturing, targeted content creation is definitely worth its own mention. A recent study by Campaign Monitor revealed that sending emails with a personalized subject line can actually increase your open rates by 26%.

By using the behavioural information collected via your marketing automation tool, you can send emails that are personalized to the interests of each customer and specific to whichever stage they are at in the buying cycle.

7. Monitor Campaign Performance

Marketing automation creates a potential haven of intel for those of you who are prone to a bit of data mining. And if you’re not already a closet data geek, you should be.

By using marketing automation, you can gather all of your marketing information in the one place – which makes it much easier to monitor marketing campaigns and make strategic decisions going forward.

8. Increase Your Marketing Campaign Capacity

Marketing automation will allow you to run more campaigns than before, reach more prospects, and produce more qualified leads without having to hire another staff member to cover the workload.

Sure, you still need a human at the helm, but having the process automated means that they can dedicate their time to other activities that require their attention also.

Is Your Business Seeing Results?

It’s pretty clear that marketing automation can have a significant impact on your business's ROI, once it's done correctly, so why not take some time to evaluate your own system and see how it's doing?

If you have any of your own tips for increasing ROI via marketing automation practice, share your thoughts with us in comment section below.