Email marketing services and automated email has grown to be a very popular and important aspect of online marketing. With over 80 percent of all companies using an email marketing technology of some sort, it is easy to see how important this channel is to marketing as a whole.
However, there is a misconception that email marketing technology is all there is. This is reflected by the fact that just over 40 percent of companies use a marketing automation solution. Although, email marketing technologies are helpful for improving your email marketing efforts, what about the other channels you use?
Although not as popular as email marketing services and automated email technology, social media marketing technologies are gaining traction with over 65 percent of companies saying they use this technology to help in their marketing efforts. Another 54 percent say they use a CRM or sales automation tool.
It appears that most companies are using several different tools to accomplish what one marketing automation platform could do. This may be the biggest benefit of using a marketing automation platform: all your tools are in one place.
If we take the SimplyCast platform, for example, we can see that there are over 20 marketing and communication tools that are located in one place and they work well together to accomplish many marketing goals – not just email.
With a marketing automation platform, you are not limited by channel as to what campaigns you can run. Yes, you can have an email campaign, but you can also use fax, SMS, voice, or social media automation as well. This helps you appeal to a wider audience and expand your marketing reach.
Better yet, since all these tools are located in the same place, they are designed to work together. As we saw earlier, many companies are using several tools to run different campaigns. They have one platform for email marketing services, another for social media management, and another still for their CRM. Making these platforms talk to each other can be a tricky task whereas a marketing automation platform is an integrated solution that doesn't require outside platforms to accomplish various campaigns.
For example, let's say that you have an email newsletter that you want to send to your contact list. As soon as the newsletter is sent to your list, you want to post on Facebook telling your followers about the newsletter and remind them to check their inboxes. If they're not subscribed, you want to give them your newsletter signup form so they can sign up for the next one. From there, you want to follow-up with everyone who opened the newsletter with an SMS message thanking them and offering them a special coupon. How would you do that with three separate platforms: one for email marketing, one for social media, and one for SMS marketing?
Separate platforms are not designed to speak to each other and exchange detailed information that can trigger other campaigns. Even through extensive integrations, separate platforms cannot work as well together as an all-in-one marketing automation platform can.
Instead, with a marketing automation platform, you can create one campaign that cohesively uses all these channels to engage your audience on many levels. With a larger platform, you're not limited to one communication channel.
On top of that, marketing automation platforms allow for personalization, which is not feasible in single-channel platforms.
With a built-in CRM, SimplyCast, for example, can store information about all of your contacts and their preferences no matter what channel they come through. Information gathered from SMS messages can be used to personalized emails and vice versa. A signup form from the form tool can offer even more information to be used for personalizing your communications.
Being able to offer this amount of personalization goes a long way to building brand loyalty and trust among your customer base.
Now, if you're ready to try a marketing automation platform that offers you more channels to communicate through, built-in marketing tools, and many ways to add personalization to your messages, sign up for a free 14-day trial of SimplyCast.
