Automation is changing the world. But the average human has always been skeptical about AI since he saw Model 101 in the Terminator franchise.
Robots will take over the world. We’ve all thought of that at some point. But before that happens, there’s a different battle to fight.
AI-based tools are getting inside our workplaces and changing the way we work. Today, all major SaaS startups are busy enjoying the benefits of marketing automation.
But while they’re busy building massive empires using marketing automation, what does it mean for marketers? Is marketing automation replacing human marketers?
Let’s look at how marketing automation is being used and is it capable of replacing human marketers in 2024.
How big is the marketing automation market right now?
Marketing automation isn’t something new. It has been there for a long time. Unica, the first marketing automation tool, was launched even before most of us had access to the internet.
Innovation in marketing automation hasn’t stopped ever since. Today, marketing automation is a $3.6 bn industry and will cross $11bn by 2027.
According to a Forrester study, marketing teams will increase investments in marketing automation.
Everyone wants cost reduction and efficiency after COVID-19. And what’s better than automation for improving productivity?
Marketers are in love with the potential of marketing automation tools. How else, we’ll be able to run demanding campaigns and deal with an endless stream of data daily?
69% of marketers trust that automation, MarTech tools, and marketing technologies help them get better at their job. But 42% of the marketers even believe that such tools are powerful enough to threaten their jobs someday.
How does marketing automation add value to marketing?
If you’re into marketing, imagining your day without your favorite marketing automation suite is a nightmare. 75% of marketers use marketing automation tools.
Marketing automation removes monotonous and boring tasks from the daily routine and allows marketers to spend more time making strategic decisions.
As the benefits of marketing automation outweigh the possible limitations, there’s great demand for marketing automation.
There’s a lot you can achieve with automation when you’re responsible for your startup’s growth. Today, marketing automation typically assists marketers with:
1. Personalization — what content should be delivered?
Humans are not genetically fit to create and maintain more than 150 relationships at a time — a theory validated by the British anthropologist Dunbar and cited strongly in Yuval Harari’s Sapiens.
Still, successful marketers manage email lists of thousands of subscribers. If they build a successful relationship with their audience, their subscribers will wait for their emails like letters from a close friend.
So, how are marketers able to “beat” the fundamental theory of human relationships?
Well, it’s all about personalized content delivery. People have been building empires since the beginning of time by telling people what they want to hear.
Marketing automation adds the magic sauce of personalization and relevance to any campaign or email. A personalized campaign performs far better than a mass-market email. Simply because no one loves a generic email trying to spam the inbox or feed.
Today, marketing automation powers almost every email, digital marketing, and paid ad campaign. Delivering personalized content based on behavior, preferences, and needs is easier with a modern marketing automation tool.
Companies are using automation to deliver relevant content, engage the target audience, and delight users. They can:
- Deliver relevant email marketing campaigns
- Automatically onboard users after they sign up or fill a form on the website
- Test marketing message based on user’s journey
- Trigger automated email based on user’s behavior
Encharge comes with powerful marketing automation workflow templates to drive personalization right off the bat. For example, you can use Encharge to target customers on a monthly plan with a personalized offer.
Such an offer would tempt the subscriber to switch. With automated flows, you can supercharge your email marketing efforts and enjoy the benefits of personalization easily.
Along with user segmentation, personalization allows marketers to create deep, humane relationships essential for driving conversions and sales.
2. Segmentation — who to target?
Segmenting your audience for personalized targeting improves marketing efforts.
Since the beginning of advertising, marketers, and copywriters have been trying to master the art of segmentation. They have been evolving tactics to reach out to the right audience ready to buy their products.
Today, marketers spend hundreds of hours sifting through email lists, analytics data, and dashboards to find the ideal customer.
Marketing automation simplifies discovery, segmentation, and targeted message delivery. All modern marketing suites are designed to support user segmentation.
For example, Landbot uses Encharge for qualifying leads and automating customer onboarding through segmentation. The company segments users based on where they are in their customer journey and retarget them via email campaigns.
Once a user turns into a customer, an automated flow onboards them with a series of emails without any human intervention.
Xavier, Ribas, Marketing Operations Analyst at Landbot, says that having a marketing automation tool like Encharge is like having two full-time interns. It saves 320 man-hours every month.
User segmentation in marketing automation saves time that is otherwise wasted on discovering insights and segmenting users manually. The result: efficiency in operations, engaged audience, and a higher conversion rate.
3. Automating triggered campaigns — when to reach out?
Automation allows companies to reach out at the perfect time. No longer is a marketer is required to keep an eye on user activity and manually plan campaign timings.
Marketing automation has made it easier to time the campaign and completely automate customer communication in many cases.
Today, marketers can tie email outreach campaigns to a user’s action. For example, you receive an abandoned cart email whenever you leave something behind without checking out.
Such email campaigns can be created in advance and linked to outcomes based on conditions. Every time all the conditions are met, an automated flow would trigger an email.
You can use an automated trigger to:
- Offer upsells to trial users who log in daily and spend hours on your platform
- Provide special offers and rewards to users who activate a feature.
- Offer proactive support to help users who are stuck on a particular step
- Increase customer lifetime value by identifying long-term customers and providing discounted annual subscription offers
- Discover leads and interested prospects based on the website activity, like them visiting your pricing page multiple times during the day
Encharge allows you to build campaigns based on specific triggers across several touchpoints.
Aito, an AI startup, uses Encharge to automate behavior-based trigger email campaigns. They use the marketing automation suite to send beautiful emails based on user activity.
With Encharge, Aito managed to completely automate their user onboarding process. They also send an automated email showing the platform’s use cases to users who get stuck while using the platform.
Such automation improves conversion rates and is a great example of marketing automation success. In Aito’s case, the team reduced the manual work involved in creating and sending emails within minutes instead of hours.
Trigger emails are known to have a 152% higher open rate than general marketing campaigns. Automated flows help marketing teams improve their results and increase their campaign ROI.
Automated triggers, user segmentation, and personalization make marketing more fruitful. Marketing automation fuels the growth engine without increasing the workload of a marketer.
Another example of an Ai-powered marketing automation tool is Encharge’s Magic Writer. It’s the first AI content creation tool built right inside of a marketing automation platform. Based on the GPT3 technology (developed by OpenAI — the company co-founded by Elon Musk), the Magic Writer can create unique subject lines, email outline ideas, and even write whole emails for you in a matter of clicks.
Give the Magic Writer a go by signing up for a 14-day free trial for Encharge. Or, if you are not ready to try the Magic Writer yet, make sure to check out our Free AI Email Subject Line Generator, which is based on the same technology. It doesn’t require email signup!
How effective is marketing automation?
AI-based marketing automation suites are getting better and better with each day. But can they replace humans in marketing?
Before discussing the possibility of a complete takeover of human reins by marketing automation, let’s see the impact of marketing automation.
According to Moosend, 63% of the brands and businesses using marketing automation beat competition easily. They have higher sales revenues and ROIs owing to marketing automation. Here are some more insights that clearly show the value of marketing automation:
- 80% of the marketers report an increase in the number of leads after implementing marketing automation.
- 77% of business owners see an increase in conversion rates after using a marketing automation software.
- 78% of marketers believe that marketing automation has the maximum impact on increasing revenue for their company.
Marketing automation is a powerful force capable of changing a growing business or a startup. It reduces the cost of marketing, empowers sales teams, and directly improves the bottom line.
How much?
Well, sources say that the adoption of marketing automation leads to a 451% increase in the number of qualified leads, 14.5% increase in productivity, and 12% reduction in sales/marketing overhead.
But is actually marketing automation able to completely replace human input and manual efforts?
Will marketing automation replace marketers completely?
If you are looking for a short answer, understand this: for all the benefits, marketing automation is still far from replacing humans. And there are no reasons to believe it will ever replace humans altogether.
Startups use marketing automation suites to send better emails, segment audiences and create automated campaigns. They’re not trying to replace marketers but save time doing menial tasks and help teams be more efficient at understanding the audience in order to deliver better results.
Automation enhances a team’s marketing capabilities. But marketing teams need human insight and talent to run the show.
Marketing is a lot about building a connection and no amount of automation will be able to replicate human foresight. Strategic human talent will always have a place within marketing teams.
You might have to tweak the formal roles and responsibilities of marketers, contributors, and other team members, but they’ll still be needed.
CMOs will focus more on syncing growth plans and strategies with marketing automation data. Marketers will use resources to implement marketing automation for efficient marketing operations.
As marketing automation evolves, more strategic roles might evolve in the modern marketing landscape. The nature of work for marketers and their everyday routine would change, too. But a marketing department will never be fully autonomous.
Humans would be working in sync with automation tools and utilize AI and machine learning capabilities. And as business scales and grows, marketers will have to leverage automation to stay competitive.
Further reading: Top 7 Marketing Automation Trends in 2022 According to 103 Experts
FAQs
How does marketing automation make marketers more productive?
Marketing automation platforms are designed to automate repetitive tasks like launching a campaign, sending an onboarding email, or segmenting incoming leads based on the acquisition channel. When marketers save time on completing mundane tasks, they spend more time creating growth strategies. Also, their energy, talent, and resources are spent on things that can increase conversions and bring better results.
How many companies are actually using marketing automation?
As of 2021, about 51% of all companies use some form of marketing automation in their everyday campaigns. Generally, marketing automation helps run campaigns, personalize content delivery, and segment users.
How to choose the right marketing automation platform?
Before you plan to use marketing automation technology, you must be clear about your goals from automation. Do you want to reduce customer acquisition costs, or do you want to increase engagement? Are you planning to increase your conversions via automated emails? Based on your goal, choose a marketing automation platform that helps you scale faster.
What is the future of marketing automation?
More companies will adopt marketing automation platforms in the future. Consumers need personalized content and brands have unlimited data to handle. Digital marketers will use marketing automation to improve the human connection with the audience. In the future, we’ll see automation more involved in lead nurturing and demand generation campaigns. Empowered with AI, marketers would be able to uncover deep insights about user behavior. Marketing automation will help improve the profitability of marketing activities. This will grow the demand for intelligent marketing automation suites.
Will marketing automation save me money in the short term?
Marketing automation will bring structure and system to your marketing campaigns. While it may not reduce marketing costs instantly, marketing automation reduces marketing overheads by up to 12%.
Final words
Marketing automation shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for a marketing team. Rather, it’s an enabler that would help your product marketer get better at bringing tangible results. With a marketing automation strategy, you can keep your customers engaged and climb the growth curve.
