Just a few years ago, barely anyone knew what marketing automation was. But, since then, everything has changed.
Today, automation is an inseparable element of every efficient marketing team. Three out of every four companies are already using at least one marketing automation tool.
We’re not saying this to intimidate you into adopting marketing automation (but, just so that you know — every one of your competitors is probably already using it). Instead, we want to show you why marketing automation can help you grow your business.
Here are 19 reasons why you should use marketing automation — and how to adopt it today.
1. Save time… and your time is money
If you were to read just one reason in this list why you need marketing automation in your business, saving your time is #1.
Time is the only resource you can’t get more of (or get back). It’s limited. It’s priceless. And I’m sure there are plenty better ways to use it than to do repetitive tasks you can easily automate, right?
There’s a reason why they say that time is money. Just think about where your business could be if you had the time to focus on things that matter.
2. Reduce your costs
Imagine that you’ve recently implemented a new marketing automation tool.
Thanks to it, you were able to automate several tasks that were previously performed manually by your team members.
Total time saved? 160 hours.
That tool just saved you from paying the salary of one full-time employee.
And if you consider that the average employee is productive for just 3 hours a day, you’re saving time equal to employing almost 3 full-time employees! Now think about the cost of hiring each of those employees.
Even if they were interns or just junior specialists, you’d have to pay them their salary, social security, and taxes. That’s tens of thousands of dollars saved every year!
And if you believe that there’s no way automation could save you this many hours, we got the data and client experiences to back it up! Check out how Landbot saved 320 hours every month.
Now, look at your business and list all the tiny processes that could easily be automated. How much could you save on employee costs if you combined several marketing automation tools?
Most importantly, let’s not forget that the money saved on tasks that get automated can be reinvested into other areas of your business, effectively accelerating your business growth.
3. Become a better marketer
Some might say that automation is the lazy way to do marketing. You get a tool, automate as much as you can, and the software does all the work. But, I have to disagree.
The thing is, using any random marketing automation tool is easy.
But implementing the right tool and applying it in a way that’s aligned with your strategy and business needs? Now, that’s tricky.
To create a successful marketing automation strategy, you need to understand your audience. You need to be able to see the bigger picture. Plus, as you get more data, you need to keep adjusting that setup.
Then, to make some aspects of your automation more effective, you want to A/B test them.
All this makes automation a never-ending process. But in that process, you learn a lot about your audience, business, and the marketing field as a whole.
4. Build an invaluable asset — your data
“Most of the world will make decisions by either guessing or using their gut. They will be either lucky or wrong.”
Suhail Doshi, CEO, Mixpanel
You don’t want to build your business based on luck, do you? The thing is, making your most important decisions based on gut feeling alone will only get you so far.
And it doesn’t matter how well you “feel” you know your industry.
To stay competitive in the 21st century, you need to base your decisions on data.
There’s a reason data is the new oil. Just like oil, it’s precious. However, even if you collect it, you can’t leave it “unrefined.”
Otherwise, there’s little that you can do with it.
However, if you have the right tools to collect, manage, and process the data, it can quickly become your most valuable asset, giving you a significant competitive advantage.
Marketing automation allows you not only to collect that data. Most importantly, it enables you to draw insights from it and make data-driven decisions.
And, if you use machine-learning-powered marketing automation, your automation tools can learn from that data. Then, they can use that knowledge to improve your automation setup further and provide you with better insights from the data you collect.
5. Learn new things about your audience
As discussed earlier, data is the lifeblood of your business. But automation tools don’t just help you get and store data.
First, automation tools allow you to sync data between different channels and tools. This will enable you to get even more accurate data about each particular audience member.
Moreover, many marketing automation solutions provide you with tools that make analyzing that data much easier — like user segmentation, for instance.
This, in turn, can help you better understand the needs and desires of your audience, allowing you to improve both your product and marketing further. 
Your email list is an invaluable asset that can generate income for years to come.
6. Qualify leads, hands-off
How much time do you or your salespeople waste dealing with people who are just not the ones you’re looking for?
5 hours? 10? 20?
Just think about all the work they could get done in that time.
The problem with unqualified leads is that, just like the qualified ones, they require your attention. Dealing with them forces you to spend time on things that have no benefit to your business.
And every minute you waste talking to someone who’s not a good fit is a minute you’re not working on closing someone who is.
Thankfully, qualifying leads is one of the areas where marketing automation shines.
For example, a simple chatbot could ask your site visitors qualifying questions. This could help them see if your offer can help them solve their problem.
And if they go through your tool’s workflow and become qualified as prospects — then, and only then, you’ll ask them for their contact details to reach out to them in person.
You can go further and use a marketing automation platform like Encharge to score leads based on attributes and their activity. That way, you can separate between people you want to spend time on and those that could be left out of your interactions.
7. Reach people when they expect you to
Not all people will buy from you when you ask them to. But it doesn’t mean that those who say no won’t do that in the future.
Often, getting a “yes” from a potential customer comes down to the right timing. And I don’t mean the time of day (although this also impacts customer purchase decisions).
Instead, what matters is whether the customer is at the right stage in their buyer’s journey. If they aren’t ready, you can’t expect them to open their wallets.
But that’s where marketing automation comes in.
By segmenting, warming up, and nurturing your audience, you can prepare your audience to make a purchase.
Without automation, you’d only sell to those who were ready to buy from you — a small minority. This shows that the proper marketing automation setup can effectively multiply your sales.
8. Educate trial users and encourage them to stay
How many of your trial visitors convert into paid customers after their trial expires?
The average conversion rate for a free trial with no credit card info required is 25%. It goes up to 60% for trial periods that require credit card input.
Of course, those averages will vary depending on plenty of other factors such as trial length, available features, and the product itself.
The good news is, marketing automation is one of the most effective things you can implement to drive those numbers up.
For example, you could create an email sequence to educate trial users and help them get the most out of your tool.
By showing them how your tool can benefit their business, you increase the chance they’ll stay with you when the trial ends.
And, considering all the money you’ve spent to get them to sign up for that trial, good user onboarding automation can be a huge ROI booster.
9. Build long-term relationships with your audience
Acquiring new clients is expensive. Whether you’re in SaaS, eCommerce, or B2B, the total cost of acquiring a new customer is made up of the below (divided by the number of customers acquired):
- Marketing and sales team salaries
- Content, copywriting, and creatives costs
- Advertising costs: print, Facebook Ads, Google Ads
- Time spent on closing, onboarding, and educating that customer
- Any additional technical costs
Of course, the more customers you acquire while keeping your costs fixed, the better.
Still, no matter how well you optimize your marketing and sales processes, attracting new customers to your business is expensive.
Data shows that the cost of acquiring a new customer is up to 5 times higher than the cost of keeping an existing one.
Yet, increasing your customer retention by just 5% could lead to a profit increase of anywhere between 25% – 95%! It is estimated that US companies lose around $136.8 billion every year due to avoidable customer switching!
10. Recover disengaged customers
The average churn rate in the SaaS industry is 4.79%. This means that, for every 1000 customers that you have, you’re bound to lose 48 of them.
That number is even higher for almost all other industries out there.
But what if you could reduce that number by just 1 or 2 percentage points? How would keeping extra 10 or 20 customers change your business?
If your monthly package is priced at $150, that’s $18,000 – $30,000 every year! For a business 10,000 customers strong, those numbers go up to $18,0000 – $300,000 respectively.
Of course, you can’t save them all. There’ll always be people who’ll stop doing business with you, whatever the reason may be.
But, with the right marketing automation setup, you can find those who’re disengaging and save them. For example, with Encharge, you could do the following:
- Use lead scoring to score the activity of your audience
- Create a workflow to find and tag those whose lead score drops below a certain level.
- Send those people a drip campaign aimed at re-engaging them. Ask them what’s going on. See if they’re experiencing any problems with the tool or need help.
- Offer to help them, educate them and consider giving them a discount for the next 1-3 months to encourage them to give your tool one more try.
Of course, there are other ways you could try to re-engage your audience.
But most importantly, with the right automation strategy, you can build a relationship with your customers that’ll prevent most of them from thinking about disengaging in the first place.
11. Speak to your audience on multiple channels
Every day, your customers get bombarded with sales messages. If you want to grab their attention, you need to talk to them across different channels that they frequent.
The thing is that scheduling, sending messages, collecting data, and syncing it between different channels and tools is super time-consuming.
Luckily, multi-channel communication is another thing you can easily automate.
For example, many businesses build email lists and use those emails to target engaged prospects with better ads on Google or Facebook.
If that’s the case for you, it’d be great if you could somehow move data between the two automatically, right?
A great example of a solution to this problem is Encharge’s Facebook ads integration. It allows you to automatically sync audiences from your Encharge account to your Facebook ads account.
This, in turn, speeds up your advertising efforts and allows you to target people who’ve already made the first point of contact (giving you their email address, signing up for a trial), incredibly easy.
12. Get people to tell you things they otherwise wouldn’t
Let me ask you something — how often do you talk to your customers?
Most brands make the mistake of treating communication with their audience as a one-way street.
They talk. Often a lot. They send emails, share content on their blog, post on socials. But they don’t listen. Sometimes, they don’t even let their customers speak at all!
Sure, some customers will try to reach you on social media or via email. But they’re a tiny majority. Plus, most of the time, they’ll do so to tell you that things already went south.
Yet, customer feedback is extremely valuable. Who if not your customers know best what works and what doesn’t for them.
Not to mention that the voice of your customers is just way more trustworthy for your audience. Research shows that 82% of people trust the voice of customers more than they trust that of the brand.
Thankfully, with the right tools, you can automate the whole process. And there’s plenty of tools you can connect to get as much feedback as possible, including:
- Chatbots
- Automated post-purchase emails
- Automated customer surveys
- Automated customer feedback tools (text, video)
- NPS (Net Promoter Score) tools
Keep in mind that even the best setup won’t benefit your business if you don’t take action on your collected feedback. But if you listen, automation can bring you a massive ROI.
13. Strengthen brand loyalty (and boost Customer Lifetime Value)
Automation doesn’t just allow you to find and save inactive customers.
It helps prevent disengagement from happening in the first place.
With the right setup, you can stay in touch with your customers, give them value, and keep them happy. This, in turn, makes them:
- Stay longer with your brand, strengthening brand loyalty.
- Spend more money with you, boosting their lifetime value.
- Become brand advocates, bringing in even more business your way.
14. Slash your ad costs
Marketing automation is not just about emails or surveys.
If you’re advertising online, leveraging the right set of marketing automation tools can decrease your advertising costs quite significantly. And there are a few reasons why:
- You can automate your bids, minimizing losses on poorly performing campaigns and maximizing the profits on those that show potential.
- As we’ve already discussed, marketing automation tools give you better audience insights. This, in turn, allows you to target your ads more effectively, lowering your bids and boosting your click-through and conversion rates.
- You work with cleaner data. Automating the cleanup of your database ensures that you’re always working on the best data possible. This helps reduce the money spent on poorly targeted ads.
- You can focus on what matters most. Advertising is not just about creating an ad and letting it run. Often, it involves creating audiences, testing multiple ad variants, or sending data between different sources (email databases, Facebook audiences). All these processes are extremely time-consuming. Thankfully, with the right tools, the majority of them can be automated. This gives you more time to focus on coming up with new creatives and angles.
- You can use automation to send data from different sources into one place, giving you a birds-eye view of all your campaigns. This, in turn, helps you make better, data-driven decisions.
Revealbot is an automation builder for Facebook ads
15. Improve team collaboration
Business growth happens when both your sales and marketing teams are in sync.
By automating lead management, cleanup, re-engagement, and nurturing, your marketing team can ensure they’re sending warm, activated leads to your salespeople.
Of course, this works the other way around. The sales team can then provide feedback to the marketing team on the quality of leads, helping them improve their nurturing process.
This, in turn, makes collaboration between the two teams much smoother. It reduces the number of lost opportunities, improves team productivity, and boosts people’s morale.
16. Increase your Average Order Value
What’s better than making a sale?
Making a bigger sale. If a customer has decided to spend money with you, why not upsell them something?
By using marketing automation, you can pitch people who already got their credit cards out of their wallets.
The only question is, how much are they going to spend with you. And the best is, you don’t have to limit upselling to the moment people are buying your product for the first time.
Tools like Encharge allow you to track customer engagement and send targeted email campaigns to those who’re actively using your product or service but, for some reason, have not yet decided to upgrade.
And, if you’re selling multiple products, you can use automation to identify the type or category of products that a particular customer might be most interested in. This further increases the chance that they’ll convert.
17. Keep your messaging consistent
“You have to create a consistent brand experience however and wherever a customer touches your brand, online or offline. The lines are forever blurred.”
Angela Ahrendts, Senior Vice President of Apple
Consistency is often called the key to successful branding.
People love your brand for a reason. And they expect to get more of what they love every time they interact with you.
Marketing automation makes it easier to keep your communication consistent. First, it allows you to keep a consistent schedule of when you email people or publish content.
Plus, when you build and refine your automation workflows, you can better control the creatives or tone of voice. This, in turn, helps you prevent any deviations from your marketing guidelines.
18. Personalize your communication
It doesn’t matter how big your audience is.
Each of your potential and current customers want to feel like you were talking just to them.
Of course, if you have a database of hundreds or thousands of potential and current customers, personalizing communication for each person manually would be impossible.
Thankfully, marketing automation allows you to take your personalization to a whole new level.
The right setup allows you to base your communication on all the information that you have about each prospect.
For example, you can personalize the communication based on who they are or how they act, increasing the chance of engaging with the message.
And there are plenty of good reasons to invest in advanced personalization strategies. Data shows that retail businesses that invest in advanced personalization get up to $20 for every $1 spent.
19. See the big picture
Marketing automation allows you to deliver ultra-targeted communication.
But, at the same time, it allows you to see the big picture of what’s going on in your company. How?
Creating a marketing automation strategy and implementing the tools requires you to take a deep dive into your processes.
This helps you better understand what’s going on in your marketing and see all the interdependencies. But, not only that.
Once you create those processes and start measuring them, you get a good view of what’s working smoothly and what creates bottlenecks.
This, in turn, helps you refine processes, improve management, and build a more effective organization.
Read next: When Do You (Exactly) Need Marketing Automation?
Your turn — start automating your marketing today
The above list is not a definitive one of why you should use marketing automation — but every single item on it can have a tremendous impact on your business.
And if you’re still not encouraged to give automation a try…
Remember that every day you hesitate is the day your competitors are automating and refining their marketing.
If you wait for too long, it may soon be too late to catch up.
Not sure how to get started?
Reach out to find out how a tool like Encharge can help you skyrocket ROI and boost growth. Schedule a quick call with one of our experts, and let’s talk about your business.
Read next: 9 Customer Retention Strategies to Try in 2024 (+ Real Examples)
