Marketing Automation and Digital Marketing are methods to engage with customers through digital channels. While companies use them interchangeably, the two practices have some distinct differences. Find out these differences and how the two work together to grow your business.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation is the process of sending personalized, targeted messages to potential customers. It can deliver messages in various ways, such as email, text, or push notifications.
Marketing Automation relies on hundreds of customer touchpoints and customer data points to identify a person's buying preferences and intent.
What are the Benefits of Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation is a process where marketing software automatically triggers a series of tasks based on customer behavior and interactions.
This automation frees marketers to work on more strategically valuable projects instead of routine ones.
Marketing Automation can also be integrated into CRM systems so that marketers can know everything about their customers at any time.
How Does Marketing Automation Differ From Digital Marketing?
Marketing Automation uses software to send emails and targeted messages to subscribers or customers automatically. It can also be used for data mining, lead nurturing, and automated responses.
Digital Marketing is a process that uses digital channels such as social media, search engines, and online ads to reach customers.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing helps customer acquisition, while Marketing Automation helps maintain relationships with existing customers.
The main difference between Marketing Automation and Digital Marketing is the medium.
Marketing Automation works best with email, while Digital Marketing works best with ads on social media platforms.
Digital Marketing also involves designing a website to attract customers and keep them coming back, including content specific to each customer's needs.
If you have some knowledge of Digital Marketing, you may know what a blog is or why a website needs optimization for social search. But figuring out how these concepts work together to build an effective digital marketing strategy can be challenging.
Through Marketing Automation, you can streamline the process of creating and implementing these strategies and making them successful.
Marketing Tool or Process?
Digital Marketing promotes products or services using online channels such as search engine optimization, social media, display advertising, and e-commerce.
Marketing Automation is a tool that automates digital marketing tasks. Marketing automation software can help automate email marketing, social media posts, and newsletters.
Marketing Automation focuses on turning Outbound Digital Marketing techniques, such as email marketing and analytics, into automated processes that can be set up once and scaled quickly.
Types of Digital Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation differs from Digital Marketing because it focuses on creating rules that automate your marketing efforts.
There are three types:
- Outbound Marketing Automation
- Inbound Marketing Automation
- Lead Management
Outbound Marketing Automation
What is Outbound Marketing?
Outbound Marketing increases contact with potential customers. Mainly, it's a way to reach out to your customers and potential customers via email, phone, or other channels. It's like traditional marketing.
You can use Outbound Digital Marketing to promote the same things you would in traditional marketing, such as sales or services.
For example, you can use automation on the Digital Marketing side to send targeted messages to your customers and potential customers.
Let's say your company ran a digital marketing campaign and now has a list of people who have bought products from you in the past.
Now you can send a message to them about a new product line you are introducing.
If they buy, they likely are interested in that product, so this is just reaching out to them and providing more information.
You may be in the real estate business using Digital Marketing to attract home buyers.
An automated email can go out to everyone who searches for a property in a specific area. The email might contain information about properties in that area or provide access to a teleconference webinar about homes there.
In any case, it's an email with information targeted at people likely interested in that type of property.
Inbound Marketing Automation
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing is the digital marketing approach of attracting customers to your website through content and interactions that are relevant and helpful. It's content in blogging, social media, video, email marketing, and more.
Inbound Marketing is about creating engaging content, facilitating conversations directly with your target audience, and building trust in your brand. The results of this lead to more traffic to your website, which leads to more opportunities for conversion.
Inbound Marketing Automation might involve chatbots to help customers reply to their queries.
This process reduces the time a customer takes to resolve their issue with the business, which will provide better service to more customers.
The use of chatbots has helped businesses reduce digital marketing costs as well. Chatbots are now replacing call centers, powering 80% of all conversations on Facebook messenger.
Lead Management
What is Lead Management?
Lead Management tracks whom you've contacted and helps you follow up with people who have yet to respond.
It is acquiring, retaining, and nurturing leads (potential customers) until they make a purchase decision. Lead Management is a more complex process than traditional advertising, and it is best used by online shops that create connections with their customers.
Lead Management automation uses software and tools to gather, manage, and enhance lead data. In this case, 'lead' may refer to a customer or a prospective customer for your company.
Experts tout Marketing Automation as a cost-effective way to identify, drive, and nurture leads into the sales funnel.
It differs from Digital Marketing in that it focuses on something other than building awareness among consumers but on generating leads for your sales team.
Lead Management software helps to manage and enhance your lead data. Businesses use Lead Management automation as an alternative to a CRM system.
Lead management software aims to increase the number of qualified leads and prospects for your organization.
Email Marketing Automation
Email marketing is a form of digital marketing. But effective email marketing relies on automation. So, while many people view email marketing as one of the fundamental elements of digital marketing, we prefer to refer to it as Email Marketing Automation.
What is Email Marketing Automation?
Email Marketing Automation is software that monitors website activity and triggers an email automatically when someone performs a specific action.
For example, if someone visits your pricing page and does not convert, you should email them immediately with a special offer.
You can use the same software to track prospects and leads and then, when they convert into customers, automatically send them a series of emails as they become a customer.
For example, you could set up an automated sequence of emails that sends out a special offer after someone purchases their first product or service from you.
You could also segment these subscribers or create sequences for different products or services.
Autosponse is an email marketing automation tool for small businesses. It helps to automate the lead generation, outreach, and nurturing process.
Autosponse is a lead management platform to set up sequential email journeys, transactional emails, and integrations with third-party platforms to enhance Marketing Automation further.
Autosponse allows you to improve your Outbound Marketing strategy through beautifully branded emails built to convert leads to customers.
Takeaway
Marketing Automation is a process that involves the automated execution of marketing processes.
This type of marketing aims to nurture leads and generate high-value customers.
Digital marketing focuses on creating content to attract and engage prospective customers.
While Digital Marketing requires creativity, Marketing Automation involves understanding logistics to succeed.
However, they are complementary processes that a business uses to improve its sales.
Combine Digital Marketing with Marketing Automation for Success
Binary Glyph Media can create and deploy effective digital marketing campaigns. Our content creators are experts at implementing and monitoring the right marketing automation tools to promote your business successfully.
Are you interested in automating your online marketing efforts?
Creating an engaging email campaign can be a fast way to reach a targeted audience.
The best-performing email campaigns entice and entertain your customers.
We create email marketing campaigns with in-depth content around a particular topic to build your subscriber list.
Please learn more about our email marketing and lead management services and start today!