Marketing automation and email marketing are powerful tools that can boost your business. However, there are some critical differences between the two. And sometimes people get confused between these two, so let's understand this concept better.
Critical Differences Between Email Marketing and Automation: When it comes to email marketing, this means that you don't necessarily have to be an "expert" or a marketer.
You can give high-value content for your prospects in the form of blog posts, white papers, eBooks or various types of articles that may help them on their way when they are trying to make decisions about buying from you.
In contrast, with marketing automation, which is more popular these days than email marketing among both small businesses and large companies and organizations, marketers need to possess specific quantitative and qualitative skills.
Marketing automation combines various aspects of the processes present in email marketing and the elements of other digital channels such as social media, search engine optimization or SEO, affiliate programs, etc.
Now that you have gone through some information on the topic of Marketing Automation vs Email Marketing, let's learn what this term exactly means -
Marketing automation, or marketing software, tracks and automates the actions taken by recipients based on known triggers.
Because marketing automation uses activity levels as a means of motivation to set specific tasks for your sales team, it has become an industry term used in connection with several different products and languages.
The term "marketing automation," sometimes referred to as marketing technology, is neither new nor specifically defined but instead exists in a grey area between marketing and technology.
Aligned with this definition is email marketing (or direct mail) as an opt-in system designed for delivering marketing messages via email. It serves primarily to build lists from which messages are sent through autoresponders, bounce-back systems, or similar automation functionality.
It is not. Email Marketing Automation Tool gives you total control over all channels on which your message will be sent.
For example, you can send emails to all members of the company with a single campaign and also affiliate programs etc as per your requirements.
Unfortunately, yes.
You need to overcome this hurdle before pushing for marketing automation!
If you are a pure “email marketing” person, it’s easy to do one email at the right time when the right prospect is ready, and believe it or not, most of your campaigns will be an exception in your case.
On the opposite side – there is no more efficient way than using Marketing Automation tools like Marketo, Hubspot etc.
Email marketing is better than an automation system if you are looking for developing a relationship with the customer.
For example, an email campaign generated by automation software that helps marketers to nurture subscribers and inform them about the latest offers can help in winning loyal customers.
On the other hand, an automation system helps in creating lists of interested prospects through autoresponder sequences or drip emails on email platforms.
And it’s quite important for marketers to be aware of which kind of messages their recipients prefer – perhaps, that is why companies need an email marketing automation system.
E-mail by itself does not have the same power as two or three touchpoints with customers.
Marketing automation systems can optimize your marketing and sales efforts and augment your existing CRM.
Marketing automation software plays a critical role in modern marketing, but it's important to clarify what you need out of an email marketing system before you choose the right platform by which to deliver that success.
Let's first discuss the features and capabilities of a typical marketing automation system.
Automated email campaigns:
Marketing automation systems allow you to create automated email sequences, which can be triggered based on various conditions.
For example, if your customer purchases a product or subscription with an online coupon code provided by your company website when they enter their basic personal details in CRM (such as name & address), then the set-up will automatically send them a welcome email to test the functionality of your product.
The mail is triggered by certain conditions that are collected, analyzed and compared with reports in order to promote activated subscriptions or to influence online purchases immediately.
A marketing automation system can collect information such as these in one place and evaluate it against campaign goals so you can automate future actions via sequences or emails (which will be very important later when we speak about predictive analytics).
In order to respond effectively, it is important that one has the right leader set in place.
Personalized emails provide a great opportunity for customer follow-up as they allow customers to engage with your brand personality and see their efforts pay off even after initial contact.
When building an email list, the creators should know what sorts of people they want to attract and how best to communicate with them.
The following are some key differences between Email Marketing and Marketing Automation -
1. Simple Automation vs. Intelligent Follow-Up
The biggest gulf between marketing automation and email messaging is the ability to follow up with a message when you don’t hear back.
If someone forwards your campaign to a colleague on their contacts list, that person may make five additional inbound messages before they buy (because it’s easier for them to find an answer in an internal network).
In an automated email engagement, though, the recipient will rarely get more than one or two emails from marketers. It's built-in behaviour – but absent any context of user engagement.
This could be dramatically improved by programming into sales automation systems so that the recipient has an automatic reply message.
2. Email Behavior Tracking vs. Web Behavior Tracking
Email marketing tracks the activity of your leads on the inbox, but it cannot track the landing page conversion or phone call that results from a customer interacting with your brand.
Marketing automation, however, will see your prospect's journey through optimization – so even if a lead comes to an inbound landing page without filling out a form – when they follow up and then download content.
3. Revenue Assumption vs. Revenue Attribution
The next difference is about how you treat revenues.
Marketing automation allows for both revenue assumptions and attribution. Most email marketing tools, on the other hand, only have attribution.
Here's what that means: What if you're running a campaign set up to alert people at certain times of day (say a weekly direct mail sent on Monday mornings), but they rarely open it? With email marketing tools, you can’t manually tweak your list to keep them from being "too aggressive" or wasteful with their time; you have no way of knowing who opened your emails at 1 pm or 2 pm.
Marketing automation takes into account where buyers have encountered your brand in the past and put those opportunities back out to them.
Maybe you track opens that happened on Facebook last week or from a text message two years ago, then bid around 70% of similar ones for this campaign.
4. Email Behavior Tracking vs. Web Behavior Tracking
Verify that your email marketing system tracks all HTML links in your emails.
This is where the real value of outbound automation comes into play, as it can automatically follow a basket of different types of interactions for every prospect:
View more, submit a form, read the article, download an app or extension, write a review.
While web-based tracking is fairly simple and easy to implement using an A/B testing platform like Google Tag Manager, whether, by line item or entire pageview, it's difficult to establish what actions you get when compared with digital interactions that might have previously been tracked manually.
At this point, you still have to rely on a third party for links and calls to action. So the tracking needs to verify which pages led to action or visit that can then be surfaced back into social media marketing automation.
5. More Ways to Track Activity
Tech stack must include web scraper, Google Analytics and a dynamic email marketing platform such as MailChimp or SendGrid (or both).
Depending on the size of your business, it might be more cost-effective to concentrate on certain verticals first before going all-in with an entire tech stack solution, including budgeting for additional prospects that still need hooks.
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to get your message out to your target audience. But as technology changes, email marketing will be less effective.
I am sure now you know everything about the topic Marketing Automation vs Email Marketing.
That's all for now! See you later with a new topic!
