Enterprises from ages has been operating in a neo classic mode with mainly two forces involved in revenue generation- marketing and sales. Even today the business world revolves around marketing and sales funnel. However, to withstand the aggressively competitive business environment, enterprises struggle to meet customer demands by replacing the repetitive manual processes with automated solutions. Technological innovations has seen enterprises communicating digitally and operating efficiently with the help of a number of software applications.
Marketing automation refers to the software platform designed to automate repetitive tasks as well as empower the sales funnel as powerful tools. Discord between the sales and marketing teams are always detrimental for the enterprise as it reduces the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and also reduces the efficiency of the sales teams in closing deals. The marketing automation platform thus helps enterprises to streamline the sales and marketing functions in the organizations.
Nevertheless to develop a strategic marketing plan, enterprises need to understand customer demands . The marketing automated tools are so designed to aid marketers in understanding customers, developing, analyzing and management of marketing campaigns, as well as organizing customer data and storage. The marketing automation software platform provides information across all phases of marketing including demand generation, lead management, lead scoring, lead nurturing, lead generation, campaign analysis and sales effectiveness.
The marketing automation software facilitates the enterprises to understand their prospects' position, their interests and readiness to buy the product. In other words, this software focuses on moving the leads from the top of marketing funnel to the bottom of the funnel as a sales-ready lead. The lead scoring feature enables the marketing teams to categorize the prospects according to their activities. Further, these leads are nurtured with drip campaign messages through emails and social networking channels and are used generally for the B2B markets , B2Cmarkets, longer sales cycle based business-to-government . The traditional organizational boundaries limits the scope of existing automation solutions. Although these distinctions were no hindrance to organizational structures in earlier days, the present scenario calls for the need for more integration, transparency and a single point of accountability for a organization's revenue generation activities.
The industry statistics from various sources states that-
- Companies using marketing automation for lead management saw a 451% jump in qualified leads. --Aberdeen Group
- Companies see a 70% faster sales cycle and 54% improvement in quota achievement post a marketing automation solution. -- Bulldog Solutions
Based on these insights , it can be inferred that the use of marketing automation software developed by the leaders in the industry segment facilitates enterprises with more qualified leads, raises the engagement rate and increase revenues, while lowering customer acquisition costs and reducing the time needed to execute marketing campaigns. The marketing automation platforms thus are the de facto sales managers for the enterprises and provide concrete touch points for all participants in the funnel process.
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