Why Marketing Automation Matters: 10 Ways to Lift Conversions

Contents

What is marketing automation?
How to get more out of marketing automation
Marketing automation in practice
What the brand did:

Traditional marketing has long relied on advertising across many channels: direct mail, billboards, email newsletters, LINE push messages, social media posts and sales calls. Today, though, consumers come across brands through a huge variety of channels. A single channel is no longer enough, and marketing budgets can easily go to waste. That is why more and more companies are rolling out marketing automation systems that connect their channels, reach potential customers and improve campaign results.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is technology that follows predefined sales or marketing processes to streamline repetitive marketing activities and remove unnecessary tasks. These activities include, but are not limited to, social media posts, email marketing and even advertising.

For example, marketing automation software can collect data about a prospect while they visit your website. When they leave, the system automatically places them in a marketing flow, and they receive personalized emails, LINE messages, text messages and other communications. Through these tools, automation can track click-through rates, page views, add-to-cart actions and conversions. When the sales team needs to follow up, automation can screen most leads first, cutting wasted effort and making outreach more effective and impactful.

Marketing automation uses software to run both routine and complex tasks automatically, so teams can simplify processes, work more efficiently and deliver personalized experiences to their target audiences. With marketing automation, teams can focus on strategy, creativity and building meaningful relationships with their audiences.

Marketing automation does involve new tools, but it also takes strategic thinking and a commitment to aligning technology with business goals. That is how teams that adopt it get the best results.

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How to get more out of marketing automation

In today’s digital age, marketing automation has become a key tool for improving marketing efficiency and customer experience. Here are 10 ways companies can make the most of it:

Map the customer journey A customer journey map shows every touchpoint, from a customer’s first contact with the brand to their interactions after purchase. Understanding the customer journey helps marketers spot key touchpoints, pain points and opportunities for engagement. With a journey map, marketers can design automated workflows that meet customers’ specific needs at each stage. This strengthens personalization, raises customer satisfaction and keeps automated interactions consistent with the customer experience. Whether the goal is lead generation, customer retention or a better customer experience, clear goals guide both the automation strategy and the customer journey.
Create engaging content Compelling content is at the heart of successful marketing. It attracts users, builds brand affinity and encourages action. Automated content and messages should be eye-catching, timely and resonate with the audience. Marketing automation works better when it is backed by high-quality content. When marketers develop engaging content for automated emails, LINE, ads and other channels, they keep their target audiences interested and responsive throughout the customer journey.
Plan a lead management strategy Effective sales data management helps turn prospects into paying customers, and a clear strategy nurtures leads and prevents churn. Marketing automation can streamline these processes. With solid lead management and customer segmentation strategies, marketers can use automation to deliver personalized content to target segments, track behavior and automatically hand leads to the sales team when buying signals appear.
Personalize to raise conversion rates Identify your target audience’s preferences, pain points and motivations, and use marketing insights to create personalized messages. Marketing automation becomes more effective when it is tailored to specific buyer personas. When marketing teams understand their target market more deeply, they can build automated workflows that resonate with the distinct needs and preferences of each segment, which leads to higher engagement and conversion rates.
Set up behavior-based triggers Whether you send a follow-up push message after a customer interacts online or recommend products based on past purchases, this approach boosts engagement and drives conversions when users are most likely to act.
Behavior-based triggers make marketing automation more relevant by responding to user actions, enabling real-time, personalized interactions. They let you send timely automated messages that match users’ current interests or needs.
Segment finely for personalization Segmenting customers helps marketing teams divide their member contact database into distinct groups. These audience lists can be defined by demographics, user behavior, past interactions or purchase preferences, and first-party data.
With segmentation, marketers can create more personalized communications, making messages more relevant and improving the customer experience. When teams build automated workflows, different segments can qualify for different journeys, so marketers can engage each audience group one-to-many.
A/B testing Marketing teams should regularly A/B test campaign elements, such as subject lines, creative and calls to action, to see how audiences respond. A/B testing campaign elements usually raises engagement and conversion rates, because the winning version is served to a large enough audience to make future prospects more likely to act.
Nurture loyal customers Turning customers into loyal advocates can significantly boost a brand’s success. Brand advocates are more likely to refer others who then become customers, supporting long-term business growth.
Marketers can use automation to nurture customer relationships beyond the purchase. For example, they can run automated campaigns that ask for product reviews, encourage social sharing or send exclusive loyalty offers, turning satisfied customers into enthusiastic brand advocates. In turn, these advocates help build a positive brand image and bring in new business.
Align marketing and sales When companies roll out marketing automation, they should integrate the marketing automation platform with their CDP/CRM system so marketing and sales can work together. For sales teams in particular, knowing a prospect’s past and current interactions with campaigns lets reps hold richer conversations and meet, or exceed, the customer’s needs and address their pain points.
Monitor and analyze metrics Marketers should regularly track performance KPIs to judge whether their marketing automation is working, then use the data to adjust and optimize content.
Successful marketing teams change underperforming campaigns and reuse what worked in other campaigns to get similar results. With good data evaluation practices, an organization can better measure return on investment, the business impact of its strategy and the resources needed for future growth.

Marketing automation in practice

A retail brand runs about 50 physical stores across Taiwan along with its own e-commerce website. Facing fierce competition in retail and e-commerce, the brand wanted to attract and retain customers more effectively, and it used marketing automation to raise customer engagement and loyalty.

What the brand did:

Built complete customer profiles - Integrated customer behavior data from online and offline channels\
- Used AI to analyze customers’ purchase preferences, interests and more in depth\
- Created 360-degree customer profiles as the foundation for precision marketing
Set up personalized automated triggers - Set up personalized triggers such as birthday greetings and shopping reminders based on customer profiles\
- Reached customers across channels including email, LINE, text messages and ad audience lists\
- Strengthened customer interaction with the brand and increased customer stickiness
Optimized targeting and content - Delivered personalized product recommendations and campaign information based on customer profiles\
- Used AI algorithms to keep optimizing delivery and content\
- Raised click-through, conversion and repeat purchase rates
Monitored in real time and iterated quickly - Monitored key metrics for every campaign in real time\
- Quickly analyzed data insights and adjusted strategy and content promptly\
- Continuously improved overall campaign performance

Results:

With marketing automation, the brand’s e-commerce platform raised customer engagement and conversion rates. Customer activity and repeat purchase rates rose by 15% and 20% respectively, total online revenue grew by more than 140%, and manual operating costs fell sharply.

This case shows the practical value of marketing automation in e-commerce: it helps companies market with precision, improve the customer experience and become more competitive.

Marketing authority Philip Kotler says that successful sellers focus on the customer first and the product second, stressing that understanding and caring about customer needs is the key to successful selling. In Marketing 5.0, he notes that the new era centers on technology and data: marketers have moved from “adapting to” digital marketing to having to “use” it. Marketing automation greatly reduces the repetitive and tedious work marketers must do.

Marketing automation is powerful and can significantly improve a company’s customer experience and marketing results. Once a company has set clear marketing goals and strategy, it should choose the right automation tools and keep optimizing to achieve the best conversions.

ESi Technology’s AIM is an all-in-one LINE marketing platform. It offers solutions for running a lively LINE presence and understanding who your LINE friends are, paired with in-depth data analysis, so you can grow your LINE friends more efficiently, avoid blocks and turn friends into paying customers.

ESi CDP brings your marketing tools together in one place, so you don’t have to juggle multiple systems. By providing complete, real-time, personalized data, it helps companies adapt to the digital environment, improve business efficiency, customer experience and competitiveness, and move forward with digital transformation.

Want to learn more about the customer data platform (CDP) and how to get started? Visit our website today for more information.

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