August 4, 2014
How marketing automation software can be used to improve DM results
The emergence of marketing automation systems has added a new dimension to companies’ direct marketing campaigns. The evidence suggests that these systems are effective in improving the monitoring of results from campaigns and better targeting precious marketing resources.
According to the 2013 Lenskold Group/Pedowitz Group Lead Generation Marketing Effectiveness Study, companies that use automated marketing tools are more effective than those that do not. This is due to the fact that these companies are taking a more rigorous approach to measuring the results of their campaigns than their less effective peers. The marketing automation software simply helps to make gathering usefully detailed results quicker and easier, which explains the greater take up of such software amongst more effective companies.
Automated systems that are integrated with customer relationship management systems are used by four out of five of the “top tier” marketing firms that responded to the Lenskold/Pedowitz survey. Out of the total respondents to the survey only 13% had automated tools integrated into their systems.
One of the important activities that automation makes easier is testing the effectiveness of direct messaging campaigns. Software can be used to analyse the effectiveness of a campaign in generating leads with a group compared to a control group who were subjected to a different campaign. It also makes it easier to draw out the relative value of customers generated by the respective campaigns.
Another use for automation is to produce reports that show the revenue generated from leads who responded to a particular campaign.
Sophisticated techniques can be employed to gather more reliable data about the effectiveness of marketing spend. These can include setting up control groups that are not exposed to a particular aspect of your marketing activity, so that a comparison can be made with those that are. In this way it is easier to identify which aspects of a campaign are under-performing and need to be modified or dropped altogether.
Ultimately the goal of gathering data regarding the effectiveness of marketing activity is to improve your approach for the future. This requires the data to be presented in an understandable format for managers. Automation tools provide a neat way of presenting data in readily digestible formats so that the information can be acted upon.
By slowing down and taking a good look at how your marketing spend is actually affecting the market segments that you are targeting, you will improve the effectiveness of your direct marketing approach. Automation helps with this, which in turn will help make your business more profitable.
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