Every good digital marketer knows content marketing is important, but measuring the effect of content is crucial. Calculating if that blog post led to customer conversions, how many leads it generated or how much it fattented your bottom line is nearly impossible with standard methods, but nearly effortless with marketing automation tools.
Related: Marketing Automation Explained (Infographic)
Hubspot defines marketing automation as “[S]oftware and tactics that allow companies to buy and sell like Amazon — that is, to nurture prospects with highly personalized, useful content that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into delighted customers. This type of marketing automation typically generates significant new revenue for companies, and provides an excellent return on the investment required.”
Key features of effective marketing-automation programs are:
- Measuring prospect and customer movement through tracked email messages, web page browsing, social profile visits and other online activities.
- Automating such common marketing tasks as sending email and publishing blog posts according to various triggers and events.
- Lead scoring and prioritizing prospective customers in the sales cycle based on their interaction with your online content.
These five tools are great starts to your marketing-automation search:
