Marketing Automation for Small Businesses 2023

Let me begin this by saying, marketing automation for small businesses works.

That’s why 51% of companies today are using marketing automation, according to recent numbers by EmailMonday. These companies believe that an investment in marketing automation for small businesses can set their business apart, especially with the cutthroat level of competition in the marketing landscape today.

Woman planning her day - Marketing Automation for Small Businesses

With more businesses and consumers going digital these days, the rise of marketing automation is inevitable. In fact, a report from Bold Digital found that more than 480,000 websites were already using marketing automation software back in 2016— that’s five years ago. It’s almost certain that that figure has gone up since.

What is marketing automation for small businesses?

According to digital marketing giant Marketo, “Marketing automation enables companies to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows so they can increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster. This category of software tech is designed to allow organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels and automate repetitive tasks.

Marketing automation enables many modern marketing practices, including lead generation, segmentation, lead nurturing and scoring, relationship marketing, cross-sell and upsell, retention, return on investment (ROI) measurement, and account-based marketing.”

Basically, marketing automation saves time— like a lot of it. A report from Adestra’s Marketer vs. Machine says so, too. “Marketers say the biggest benefits of automation are saving time (74%), increased customer engagement (68%), more timely communications (58%), and increased opportunities, including up-selling (58%).”

To give you a richer, more detailed picture of how marketing automation works, here’s a scenario:

Let’s say you have put up an e-commerce store for your handmade accessories. After a while, 5 people visit your website and register their information. The email marketing automation tool you have will then trigger a set of emails to confirm their registration and welcome them.

After a few days, three out of those five visitors opened your website again and this time, have added products to their cart. But two of them left without making it past checkout.

The magic here is that marketing automation can read your customers’ behavior.

The marketing software can identify patterns that it can use to perform behavior-based marketing such as:

Send an automated email of order confirmation to the customer who has purchased products from the site
Send an automated email of special offers and discounts to the two people who never visited the store again after registering
Send an automated email that reminds the two customers of their abandoned carts

This is how marketing automation software can work for you. It helps you get the right content to the right people at the right time. Marketing automation helps identify the lead— and email marketing helps nurture the lead, and close the sale without any more manual assistance.

Benefits of Marketing Automation for small businesses

Need some more convincing to go digital on your marketing? Here are 3 major benefits of using marketing automation for your growing business:

It automates workflow.

First, no small business owner wants to spend time handling repetitive tasks. They have more important things to focus on about their business.

As mentioned earlier, marketing automation saves time and manual effort (and a lot of it too). Marketing automation is a smart way to deal with repetitive tasks like sending emails, updating your social media, and other important activities. This means less time on emails and more time on creating great content and strategies. All you need to do is feed all your repetitive tasks into your automation software and let it manage the tasks automatically.

It declutters your database.

Additionally, aside from automating tasks, marketing automation also helps declutter your database, giving you a smoother marketing workflow.

Best part? All the tasks mentioned above can be done by one single software which equals another huge benefit— saving marketing costs! You don’t need to buy separate software for email marketing, database management, marketing design, and etc. You can find them in one software, allowing you to cut down on resources and marketing costs.

Lead generation

Lead generation is an important benefit of marketing automation. Identifying leads can be tricky and time-consuming. But marketing automation takes the whole lead gen process a step further. Marketing automation has the ability to generate and spread out personalized and dynamic content based on a buyer’s interactions with your business’ website, emails, and social accounts.

One of the most common (and the most effective) forms of marketing automation is email marketing automation. The scenario discussed in the beginning is a great example of an email marketing automation strategy.

Email marketing automation starts after a lead has completed a contact form. That action then triggers the software to set up a series of follow-up emails. This can easily be the ground zero of your sales funnel. But the wonder of it all is that you can adjust your email marketing tool to react based on the customer’s specific behavior.

Say, for example, a customer makes a small purchase on your website. The email marketing software can automatically add them to a “buyer” list. It will send them an automated email with content that’s designed to encourage them to make another purchase.

Over the past few years, a huge number of email marketing automation tools have appeared to cater to all your marketing needs in mind. Here are some of the best email marketing automation tools that you can try:

PRO TIP! Personalize your email content. Personalized email content delivers higher email engagement than general emails.

Management

This makes it an important key to nurturing leads. When you treat an email subscriber like a real person, they start trusting your brand. And a happy and satisfied customer means repeat sales and reduced cart abandonment. Plus a bonus of word-of-mouth promotion, which in itself, is already such a powerful marketing tool.

Here are important stats from Hubspot that you need to keep in mind before you start drafting your customer’s personalized email content:

Message Personalization is the #1 tactic used by email marketers to increase engagement rates. (HubSpot)
More than 20% of marketers say personalization can improve email engagement. (HubSpot)
99% of marketers say personalization helps advance customer relationships, with 78% claiming it has a“strong” or “extremely strong” impact. (Evergage)
80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences. (Epsilon)
92% of marketers say customers and prospects expect a personalized experience — up from 85% in 2019. (Evergage)
45% of consumers say the “coolest” personalized tactic they’ve seen is when a brand apologizes for poor shopping experiences. (Accenture)
77% would trust businesses more if they explained how they’re using personal information to improve their online experience. (Janrain)
62% of adults under 34 are willing to share their location for more relevant content. (Jiwire)

Become a better, smarter business owner.

Besides the financial and statistical impact of marketing automation on your business, it helps you become a better business owner.

Marketing automation helps you understand what your prospects expect from your business. This allows you to innovate and install new strategies to keep them engaged.

You can collect all the valuable data gathered by your marketing automation software, analyze it and identify the pain points of your customers. Then you can create effective marketing strategies based on customer behavior and preferences.

Given that marketing automation eliminates repetitive tasks by placing in automated solutions, this, in turn, increases your personal productivity. You can focus more on tasks that need more stringent manual monitoring, analyze the performance of your marketing efforts and resolve bottlenecks in your sales pipeline.

Marketing Automation for Small Businesses Ultimately…

Marketing automation can make such a difference to your overall marketing strategy. This is especially helpful if your business is still growing. Rather than focusing on manual tasks, marketing automation helps free up time and resources so you can focus on other key factors that help grow your business.

So, are you ready to dive into the world of marketing automation?

Here is a list of some of the best tools for marketing automation and email marketing automation for beginners. They are all available either as a free trial or with an inexpensive monthly subscription fee.

MailChimp is an email marketing automation platform that is a crowd-favorite. It offers a wide range of pre-built automation workflows, especially email automation services.
Drip is a marketing automation toolkit. This is perfect for solo entrepreneurs and small, growing businesses.
ConvertKit has one the cleanest user interfaces of any marketing automation platform. Best suited for bloggers and content marketers.
ActiveCampaign is a powerful marketing automation tool best for startups.

Okay, now go create awesome marketing content, and follow-up them with hot leads. Build better relationships with your customers!

What marketing tasks are you planning to automate to improve efficiency? Let me know!

The power of email marketing is completely undeniable! It is one of the most reliable, consistent ways to grow your business and make sales consistently with your email list.

Finally at Gal, I have strategies for businesses in all stages developed to help you build, convert, and create engaging relationships in your mailing list. I have helped all sorts of businesses grow and implement a strategy for their success. Book a free consultation today.

Learn more about Gal’s services here.

This blog does contain affiliate links – all products I love for business owners at different stages.