Marketing Automation Definition

Marketing automation is something of a blanket term denoting any process, tool, or service used to remove the necessity of human intervention within a marketing endeavor.

A basic but illustrative example of a marketing automation tool most online marketers will be familiar with are the tools provided by email marketing platforms; a business may wish to send out an email to all fifty thousand of their subscribers.

Rather than the absurdity of a human person sending each email individually, the software sends the email out to all intended recipients in a matter of seconds—and furthermore tracks the open rates, click through rates, and overall performance data of the marketing email, which can then be reviewed by an administrator in an easy-to-read automatically generated report.

Marketing Automation Example

A business decides to build their email marketing list by offering website visitors access to a free ebook in exchange for their email address. Once potential customers fill out the form, they need to have the ebook delivered to them. Since it would be far too cumbersome for the business to distribute each file themselves, not to mention keeping track of all the email addresses and additional data collected like phone numbers, they decide to employ a marketing automation tool.

In this case, the tool is email marketing automation software. The software will automatically capture all information placed into the form on the website, deliver the ebook, and even send out a predetermined series of emails to the lead over a set amount of time.

Why is Marketing Automation Important for Strategic Marketing?

Lead Generation

As shown in the example above, marketing automation can be very helpful in lead generation by capturing user data and sending out the appropriate marketing correspondence; emails in that case.

Continuous Improvement

Marketing automation is hugely important for the continued improvement of any business. As marketing demands increase, automation becomes more important so that staff members can focus on more important elements of the business that need more individual attention.