Optimize the entire marketing process, from campaign planning to execution to analysis, with marketing automation

What is marketing automation? In the most basic sense, marketing automation refers to automating the process of sending your marketing communications. Instead of a manual process that's time-consuming and subject to human error, marketing automation solutions such as Silverpop Engage B2B enable you to create sophisticated and engaging campaigns that automatically respond to customer/prospect behaviors, lifecycle segments and other criteria.

Marketing automation is the supporting technology that helps B2B marketers perform all of the complex and time-consuming aspects of lead management, including lead scoring, lead nurturing and CRM integration. At its essence, marketing automation is the optimization of the entire marketing process, from campaign planning to execution to analysis.

One of the beauties of marketing automation is that companies can use it in myriad ways to meet their specific needs. But in general, companies employ it to do some combination of creating, executing, managing and measuring online marketing programs.

• Create: Using today's powerful marketing automation tools, you can build emails, microsites, surveys, etc. and incorporate personalization and customization to better engage customers. It's also key to the often-overlooked "capture" side of lead management, allowing you to design Web forms and determine what questions should be asked and in what order, based on Web-site visitors' actions.
• Execute: Send thousands of automated mailings via coordinated drip-marketing email campaigns. This allows you to reap the benefits of reaching large numbers of people with engaging, relevant one-to-one messaging.
• Manage: Marketers use automation to apply lead scoring, monitor leads through the sales cycle and tweak campaigns to keep leads flowing. You can communicate with sales through integration with CRM applications and juggle multichannel campaigns to ensure you're connecting with customers as effectively as possible.
• Measure: Where and how wisely is your money being spent? With marketing automation, you can run a variety of reports that measure numerous metrics. Need to know what a lead's first touch point was? Compare different campaigns to one another? How much revenue is attributable to a certain lead or campaign? Marketing automation platforms can help you access this information.

Learn more about marketing automation solutions from Silverpop Engage B2B.