Marketing automation has become an essential part of the tech stack for today's Marketer. If brands wish to compete in today's highly competitive, digital world, and - quite frankly - survive, then having the right technology is imperative. Here we share 5 reasons why marketing automation is more than just a trend.

Here are 5 reasons why marketing automation is more than just a trend.

Save precious time by, well, automating your manual tasks.
Activities such as contact management, list segmentation, lead scoring and nurturing, A/B testing, email marketing and performance measurement can be carried out in a fraction of the time it used to take.

Outperform your competitors.
63% of companies who use marketing automation are outgrowing those who don’t (Lenskold and Pedowitz, 2013).

How? Through higher conversion rates and better data. Marketing automation provides you with a digital infrastructure to manage, measure and optimise your sales and marketing funnel. Get in front of prospects earlier and keep them engaged longer.

Align your marketing and sales teams.

Real-time buyer intelligence means marketing qualifies more sales-ready leads, and sales have warmer conversations with prospective buyers. Mutual decisions help calibrate and harmonise marketing and sales efforts, which increases interdepartmental trust.

Realise the value of your marketing efforts through data.

With marketing automation, you’re able to see precisely which channels and campaigns are converting and understand ROI at every stage of the funnel. Track each prospect’s unique activity and give sales qualified leads, and the intelligence to close them, at just the right time. Last, but by no means least, marketing automation gives you the data that ties your team’s efforts directly to revenue.

Manage multiple channels from one place.

Many of us use multiple channels to communicate with our audiences. The trick is coordinating them (with consistent messaging) and measuring these efforts. With marketing automation, you can run a multi-channel campaign (e.g. social, email, web, and direct mail programs, all within the same platform) and measure each channel as well as the entire effort as a whole.

If you’re serious about generating results for your business in the form of hot prospects and qualified leads, then you need to get serious about the marketing technology tools you use to support this strategy. The right software makes it easier to get the work done efficiently and measure the results, so you can get on with delivering the strategy.