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Graduate your Email Marketing to Marketing Automation

Graduate your Email Marketing to Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation’s Source of Confusion

I understand it can be confusing to try and differentiate between marketing automation and email marketing. And be assured, you’re not the only one who might be a little discombobulated aboutemail marketing it. This confusion mostly comes from the fact that both of these technologies primary means of communication is email. But asking what the difference between email marketing and marketing automation is like asking the difference between a flip phone and a smart phone.

While both types of phones perform the same basic text and call functions, smart phones give you direct access to loads of information in an instant. Information like knowing if someone has read your last text and when they are responding.

Few people who have upgraded to a smart phone would look back at their flip phone and say “I sure do miss the simple days of just calls and texts.” And if you asked around I know you’ll find the same can be said about the upgrade from simple email marketing to marketing automation.

5 Key Differences of Automated Marketing vs. Email Marketing

Marketing automation intelligently upgrades your business with features that go beyond email marketing, like:

  • Integrated marketing
  • Provable and connectable ROI
  • Optimized A/B testing
  • Lead scoring
  • “Walks” a lead through the entire buying cycle

1. Integrated Marketing Initiatives:

Email marketing stays true to its name. It can do nothing more or less than send out emails. Marketing automation on the other hand can integrate your website, email campaigns, social media, and much more to work together. Through integration, your initiatives bounce off one another to increase leads and optimize your marketing efforts. This saves your marketing team time by eliminating the task of crafting each individual email when in the same time, they could have crafted a multi-level campaign.

2. Provable and Connectable ROI:

While email marketing analytics include a regular set of data like CTR and open rates, email marketing is too low tech to be able to connect it back to the one thing businesses care about about seeing, revenue. Marketing automation on the other hand, allows you to integrate your CRM to track and understand leads through the entire buying cycle. This allows you to see which marketing initiatives are truly working to provide desired ROI and drop the efforts that fall short.

3. Optimized A/B Testing:

Although some email marketing software can conduct A/B testing to pin point which emails perform best based on open rates and clicks, that’s all it can do. With marketing automation, A/B testing is taken to a whole new level. Once marketing automation integrates marketing initiatives, you can create landing pages as to not even need IT assistance. Once this is done, you can connect multiple landing pages to different emails and see which combination convert best in order to maximize your campaign performance.

4. Lead Scoring:

Honestly, email marketing doesn’t have anything similar to marketing automation’s lead scoring. And that is one of the key reasons email marketing will never measure up. From the point after an anonymous visitor is identified, a lead is scored based on their continued interaction with your business, whether through email, your website, or social media. As their score increases they automatically get entered into different workflows that triggers specific emails or actions. This keeps your sales department from wasting time and money on leads that would never convert and instead allows them to focus on leads that show potential for completing the sales cycle.

5. Takes a Lead through the whole Buying Cycle:

Again, email marketing is one thing…email. But marketing automation’s lead scoring tool and its ability to integrate initiatives allows your marketing and sales teams to follow and direct a lead through the whole purchasing cycle. The power of tracking a lead through the buying cycle is demonstrated in its ability to identify anonymous visitors through your site and collects their information. This essentially allows you to make an invisible lead, visible. Overall, you will have the power and insight to send the right message, to the right people, at the right time.

Now is the Time to Adopt Automated Marketing!

The opportunity marketing automation offers you over traditional email marketing is tremendous. Marketing automation enables small and medium sized businesses with smaller staff to compete at the same level as big businesses. And the benefits of marketing automation extend far beyond just email by integrating CRM, social media, and other initiatives to save time and increase effectiveness.

At Biznet, we are provable ROI fanatics. And that is why we are so enthusiastic about helping you replace your email marketing with marketing automation. Our marketing automation experts work with you to help you better understand and adopt marketing automation. The age of guessing where your ROI is coming from is over. To put it in perspective ask yourself, would you encourage someone to keep their flip phone when there is the option of upgrading to better technology? If the answer is no, I think it’s time to see how ready your business is for marketing automation by taking our free “marketing automation health check” today.