Running a digital marketing campaign can drain your mental capacity. It is a somewhat excruciating task. You can not handle it without using the proper utilities or tools for it. These tools are usually automation tools that perform ado few complex tasks of the campaign for you.

These tools aim to assist you and take some workload off your hands. But that is the primary function. These tools have innumerable other benefits as well. They improve the effectiveness of your marketing campaign as a whole. 

In the following post, we will share some great tools with you. These are top-of-the-line utilities that will significantly enhance your marketing efforts. Also, we will discuss some essential tips regarding these campaigns as well. 

The Rise of Marketing Automation

Automation and marketing don’t have a history of relationships. The introduction of automation in this field is quite new. In the past, mediums like televisions, posters, newspaper articles, etc., were the main marketing sources. 

This is not the case anymore. Now, online marketing is the main marketing channel. A survey from 2023 shows that the digital spending of chief marketing officers in the USA increased by 8.2 percent. At the same time, traditional marketing spending decreased by 2.6 percent.   

The online marketing industry utilizes automation, unlike traditional methods. This, along with many other factors, is why this industry continues to proliferate. 

Benefits of Marketing Automation

We showed you the origins and rise of automation in marketing. But what is all the hype about? What is so great about automation in marketing? Here is a list of reasons:

• Increased Efficiency: An online marketer needs to keep multiple things in check simultaneously. In such a situation, automating a few tasks makes the marketer more productive and efficient. 
• Data Collection and Analysis: Collecting and manually analyzing data from various competitors is not a good approach. Automation tools can provide you with this information in seconds. 
• Personalization at Scale: The integration of AI in automation tools has given rise to personalization options. Such personalized campaign nurtures more results.
• Cost Saving: Normal marketing takes your time and your effort. But on top of all that, such marketing also requires money. Automation tools, on the other hand, are a cheap marketing solution. 

These are just a few of the benefits. There are numberless others as well.

Top Marketing Automation Tools

An online source reports that on average, 81% of companies use marketing automation.

We have differentiated this section based on tool types. We will explain different types of automation tools and share some examples from each. 

1. Email Marketing Tools

Email Marketing is a huge part of digital marketing. It is both a formal way of contacting someone and an effective promotion medium. Email marketing tools are platforms that automate the distribution and even creation of emails. Especially the tools with AI integration are great automation tools. 

Examples:

MailChimp, HubSpot. Easysendy

2. Social Media Scheduling Tools

Social media is a platform that is accessible to every other internet user nowadays. Marketers now utilize this as a marketing channel. It brings customers to their sites that are interested in their products. But social media marketing is not easy.

That’s why there are social media tools that post content automatically at set times. You have to worry about the creation of content. The tools handle the rest.

Examples:

Buffer, Hoot Suite. Aritic Pinpoint

3. CRM Platforms

CRM platforms are of different types, but their goal is to build better relationships between an online business and its customers. This is common in all these tools. Some of these tools are AI chatbots that attend to customer queries.

Similarly, other tools collect data from customer behavior to provide insights into how a better service can be provided to them. In short, if you use these tools, you can automate many tasks and improve customer experience. 

Examples:

Salesforce, Zoho CRM. Aritic CRM

4. Analytics and Reporting

Some of you might be unaware, but marketing campaigns run continuously. You can never be like this is the end of my campaign. You have to monitor it continuously. For this purpose, analytics and reporting tools are used. 

These tools show you the performance of your marketing campaign. Based on the data collected from these tools, you can make specific changes in your strategy and stay on top of the game. 

Examples:

Google Analytics, SEMRush.

5. AD Campaign Management

Almost every marketer uses advertisements at some point during their campaign. This is because it requires minimal effort and produces maximum results. However, managing these ads, tailoring them, and distributing them are some challenges for this. 

Ad campaign management tools allow you to do all of this using a single platform.  

Examples:

AdRoll, Facebook Ad Manager.

6. Content Optimization

Content is a massive part of marketing. When you are creating content for marketing, it needs to be flawless. To achieve such preciseness, you can use content optimization tools. These tools handle various aspects of your content.

For instance, a grammar checker detects grammatical flaws in your content. Similarly, a paraphrasing tool can be used to elevate the readability of your content. A mixed use of such tools can help make excellent marketing content. 

Examples:

Prepostseo, Hemingway, Grammar Check.

Essential Tips for Successful Marketing Automation

Now that we have briefly explained some of the standard marketing tools, it is time to move on to some essential tips. Here, we will answer questions like how you can implement marketing automation. 

1. Start with Clear Objectives

This tip is not restricted to marketing automation only. It can help you in other fields of life as well. But we will focus on the automation aspect. If you want to utilize this automation, you should set your goals and objectives. Ask yourself what you want from automation. 

Then and only then can you choose the right tool and utilize it effectively. 

2. Segment Your Audience

Once you know your goals, you can use automation for different purposes. To start, audience segmentation is an essential marketing part that requires much research.  This is a process that you should perform in an automated manner. 

Marketing automation solutions can provide you with services that collect data and segment your audience into different categories. 

3. Monitor and Adjust

Like user categorization, you can also use marketing automation to monitor performance. Instead of using general pointers as your analytics, you can use automation. This will collect data from things like user journeys on your site and show you the results in the best manner.

This will give you an idea of what to change and what to preserve.

4. Integrate Tools for Cohesiveness

To use automation, you have to use certain tools and utilities. In reality, these tools are the sole source of automation. That’s why we emphasized this point so that any confusion disappears. Choose a tool according to your requirements and utilize it to its fullest potential. 

5. Prioritize Quality Over Quantity

69% of marketers say that their overall customer journey is partially or mostly automated. This means that you should continuously regulate the level of automation.

In other words, you shouldn’t use automation just to use it. For instance, if you think that some task would be better executed manually and you still use automation to save time, it might be harmful. 

6. Stay Updated with Trends

Automation is not something that you can start using blindly. You first have to know what are the most modern and effective ways of using it. Based on this information, you can automate tasks like they are supposed to be. 

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Marketing automation seems pretty intriguing to new users. Sometimes, this leads to people using it the wrong way. To avoid this from happening, take a look at the following common pitfalls. 

• Don’t over-automate your marketing. If you do that, your campaign might lose the human touch, and customer interactivity might drop considerably. 
• Don’t put all your automation efforts into desktop marketing. You must also keep mobile users under consideration and improve the experience for them. 
• If you have achieved good results, it doesn’t mean that you don’t need to monitor things anymore. Always keep an eye on automatically generated analytics. 
• Don’t stick with one strategy if it is failing repeatedly. Create a fresh strategy and start following that. You can use past experiences to build better strategies. 

Conclusion

Marketing automation is something that is being implemented on a large scale. Every other marketer is utilizing this in one way or another. We encourage you to do the same. Use this amazing strategy to enhance the performance of your online business. With the help of automation, you achieve much more with much less effort. 

In the above article, we have shared some great tools and tips for you. If you are new to this automation stuff, then you can follow those tips and use those tools.