Marketing automation software

News: December 2012

Marketing automation software

In today’s ultra-competitive business environment, marketing is arguably more important than ever. However, executing marketing campaigns can be an intensive process, making them a challenge for smaller businesses. Automating parts of the marketing process can assist such businesses in getting the job done.

Marketing automation software is designed for marketing departments and businesses to automate repetitive tasks. The marketing team specifies the criteria and outcomes for tasks, which are then interpreted, stored and executed by software. This has the duel benefit of increasing efficiency while reducing human error.

Particularly in small and medium sized business, the marketing manager can set up simple e-mail programs and plan to run direct mail campaigns but unless it’s fully automated nobody has the time to actually “pack the envelopes” and send the campaign out.

Marketing automation systems can be used to generate quality sales leads and manage demand generation campaigns. Such systems also include analytics to measure marketing ROI (return on investment) and forecast the impact your marketing activity will have on business development and revenue.

For small and medium sized businesses, marketing automation software from the likes of SalesFusion offer feature rich packages at price points that won’t break the bank. SalesFusion combines all channels within marketing, and merges marketing automation with CRM as well. This one-stop-shop approach is attractive to smaller businesses, as it avoids the complexity of running multiple systems which can require extensive and costly support to manage.

For larger businesses, solutions such as Oracle CRM On-Demand Marketing offer enterprise level solutions. Whether a firm has a full team of marketing professionals or a smaller “demand generation” team, this system provides a full suite of capabilities to automate the complete marketing process. This includes inbound and outbound campaigns, lead management and lead nurturing (to measuring marketing ROI). These capabilities are combined with built-in e-mail and web marketing, easy-to-use automation, and built-in analytics.