Businesses of all sizes have to adapt to new ways of doing things all the time, like having smaller budgets and using digital tools more. In this context, marketing automation tools have stepped up, helping businesses transform and adapt their marketing processes and boost efficiency. In many cases, marketing automation is key to keeping businesses alive and even helping them grow. As a result, we are beginning to observe 2023 marketing automation trends.
Below, we’ll look at 10 invaluable marketing automation trends and illustrate how they, with support from Wrk’s Marketing Automation Wrkflows, can lead your business to sustained success.
1. Most marketing professionals are using marketing automation today
It is exciting to think about marketing automation in terms of its future potential. Still, it is just as important to recognize the real effects it is already having on how businesses run. Today, 80% of the top-performing companies use marketing automation in their day-to-day operations. Whether it is to streamline customer interactions with chatbots, personalize email campaigns, or generate entire ad sets.
2. More screen time leads to an increased focus on digital marketing
Did you know that the average person spends 6 hours and 55 minutes looking at a screen every day? This leads to challenges for marketers, who need to work extra hard to attract attention in a digital world full of noise. The average adult is exposed to 247 marketing messages daily. Despite this, the increased use of screens has also opened up some new opportunities in digital marketing.
So, some businesses may have had a more challenging time switching to digital marketing than they would have liked. However, it is now clear, due to these marketing automation trends, that digital marketing strategies are becoming an essential part of larger marketing efforts, and marketing automation tools can help make this happen.
3. Tailored marketing content drives engagement
This marketing automation trend should be no surprise: the best customer engagement results come from a personalized approach. This is because each customer is different and likes to be treated as such.
"In many cases, marketing automation is playing a pivotal role not only in keeping businesses afloat but in allowing them to thrive."
While conventional marketing channels have prevented creating truly customized content, marketing automation tools have made it achievable. Marketing automation tools can collect and analyze data about customers, which can then be used to make customized content that can be shared with the right groups or individuals of customers.
Marketers have said that using segmented campaigns has led to a 760% increase in revenue from email campaigns. To sum up, one of the best ways to connect with your customer or potential customer is to give them tailored content.
4. Upskilling teams to optimize marketing automation
No matter how helpful marketing automation tools may be, they are only as good as what users make of them. Because of this, companies that want to get the most out of marketing automation technologies should give their marketing teams the tools they need by giving them training and upskilling opportunities. Fortunately, this learning curve does not have to be steep: Wrk’s Hybrid Automation platform is highly intuitive and user friendly, meaning you don’t need a background in coding to start automating your processes today.
5. Lead nurturing boosts revenue growth
Lead nurturing is integral to generating revenue, not necessarily by securing an immediate sale, but by building customer loyalty, which, as we know, pays off in the long run. And though lead nurturing strategies will vary from business to business—the main point is to connect to customers on a human level—marketing automation can help these efforts across the board.
Using Wrk’s Lead Nurturing Wrkflow as a starting point, you can adapt it to test various lead nurturing strategies to understand what works best for your particular audience. Our Wrkflows can also automate other tasks critical to lead nurturing, like lead scoring, customer behaviour tracking, and tailoring email marketing campaigns. After all, a nurtured lead is far more valuable than a non-nurtured lead, making on average 47% more purchases.
6. Email campaigns are key for lead generation
Email is just as important to getting leads as marketing automation is to digital marketing strategies. In fact, 67% of marketers name email as the primary channel for lead generation. This is mostly because email is a reliable way to connect with your customers and build a personal relationship with them through product information, newsletters, and triggered emails, which have better open and click-through rates. Wrk’s Automation Platform streamlines email organization and execution to ensure that your customer base is only receiving content that is relevant to them and that they receive it at the optimal time.
7. No more wasted time on repetitive tasks
One of the more immediate benefits of marketing automation is that it reduces the amount of time spent on repetitive tasks. Whether it's sending an email to confirm that an order has been placed, gathering information about potential clients, or answering simple customer questions, Wrk's marketing automation solution takes care of many of the more tedious daily marketing tasks, so your team can focus on big-picture strategies or more creative work.
8. Chatbots handling increasing customer relations
A growing trend across B2B and B2C companies is chatbot technology. Today, roughly 58% of B2B businesses and 42% of B2C companies are using chatbots to augment customer support and relations.
Chatbots can help with a lot of different parts of customer service. They can help right away and answer questions by getting information from your site automatically. This gives your employees more time to work on more important tasks and have more meaningful interactions with customers.
Getting people to use chatbots has been challenging because there wasn't enough structured and labeled data to train the bot. This whole process of collecting data can now be automated. This brings businesses closer to giving customers a great experience with little work.
9. Flexible work-style models are thriving
There are long-lasting impacts from recent years on how we work and how businesses operate. Work-from-home (WFH) policies were implemented quickly across many sectors in response to social distancing measures. Many employers let their employees keep working from home and use a hybrid work arrangement. A McKinsey survey revealed that 9 in 10 executives expect hybrid work models to be permanent. The quick transition from working in an office to working from home has its challenges. New technologies have helped make the change as easy as possible, given the situation.
Marketing automation has made flexible work styles possible in an important way by making it easier and faster to manage marketing tasks. Even if employees are working from different buildings or even cities. Marketing automation can ensure everyone is on the same page and that everyone can deliver work consistently.
10. Accelerating digital transformation
We expect digital transformation spending worldwide to continue to accelerate year-over-year. Marketing automation technology, which simplifies digital workflow and gives customers a consistent, high-quality experience, has helped a lot with this sudden push into the future.
"After all, a nurtured lead is far more valuable than a non-nurtured lead, making on average 47% more purchases."
The clear benefits of the technology are leading to a significant increase in marketing automation adoption, across the board. This creates an interesting dynamic. While many companies have slashed budgets, marketing automation spending will continue to grow. More and more people realize how integral it is to remain productive and profitable.
Marketing Automation trends that speak to your daily issues
As we continue to see, marketing automation solutions have been vital to organizations. It has helped them to streamline operations and, most importantly, to stay engaged with customers. It is no surprise that more and more businesses are recognizing the benefits of automation platforms like Wrk’s. Automation can help marketing teams adapt to and overcome many challenges. While also being able to scale their efforts without spending all of their budget.
Want to learn more about how Wrk can help Marketing teams? Check out our Marketing Hub.
