Discover Effective Strategies to Save Time, Reduce Effort, and Achieve Your Marketing Goals
Your iPhone wakes you up, ChatGPT helps you write interoffice emails, and TikTok ads fuel your shopping addiction all night. But in other words, you benefit from technology-based tools and conveniences every day.
Marketing automation has been around for a while, but the tools are becoming more useful and valuable with time, especially as AI (artificial intelligence) and automation get increasingly integrated. Ready to reinvestigate how the power of marketing automation can help make your efforts more productive, affordable, convenient, and effective?
What is Marketing Automation?
Many sources say that marketing automation emerged in 1999 with the launch of Eloqua from tech giant Oracle. It’s still around today and used by industry power players. (Yes, marketing automation is here to stay.) As far as definitions go …
marketing automation / noun
mar•ket•ing au•to•ma•tion
A tool (or collection of tools) that makes your marketing processes faster and easier.
As a modern marketer, you have so much to do, from synergizing staggering amounts of data and keeping tabs on the creative efforts of your competitors to strategizing and implementing cross-channel campaigns. Marketing automation is meant to make all of that more manageable.
Benefits of Marketing Automation
- Productivity: Tedious, repetitive tasks that your team would otherwise have to complete can instead be handled by automation (i.e., scheduling social media posts at set times).
- Affordability: Because your team can accomplish more work in the same amount of time as before, you save on staffing costs.
- Ease of use: Many current marketing automation tools prioritize easy interfaces and leverage AI to boost the convenience factor. (Much more on that below.)
- Efficacy: With automation, your team can gather and share data faster and more efficiently, helping you make better-informed decisions faster.
10 Ways to Use Marketing Automation Into 2025 and Beyond
- Account-based marketing (ABM): Tools help you pull data on job titles, company size, and more, then use the data to identify accounts your sales team should focus on.
- Content management: Tools help you organize large content libraries and handle publishing and distribution for you.
- Email marketing: Tools A/B test subject lines for you and provide valuable insights, among other benefits.
- Gathering data and forming insights: Tools pull data automatically and organize it in ways that make sense to you (i.e., custom charts).
- Landing pages: Tools rid your team of manual tasks like data entry, email follow-up sends, and contact list segmentation.
- Lead generation, nurturing, and management: Tools deliver uniquely relevant messages to users, collect data, and follow up with contacts regularly.
- Live chat: Tools use marketing automation to deliver helpful customer service messages even when your team isn’t available.
- Paid advertising: Tools make managing paid minutiae easier; for instance, they minimize mistakes like overbidding and refine audience targeting instantaneously.
- SEO: Tools handle resource-draining tasks like keyword research, structured data markup, rank tracking, and more.
- Social media management: Tools tackle post scheduling, data collection, and analysis, so you can focus on creation, engagement, and curation.
Automation vs. AI: What’s the Difference?
If you’re wondering where marketing automation stops and AI begins, here’s a good way to think about it:
- Automation uses technology and software to complete tasks that would normally require human intervention. (Think: monotonous things you have to check off your list but aren’t always an effective use of your precious time.)
- AI uses things like algorithms and deep learning to analyze, interpret, and learn from data, giving the AI tool the ability to complete tasks without human intervention. (Think: AI is like your assistant who can brainstorm new ways to reach your target audience.)
When you combine automation and AI, your “assistant” gets a boost. Your little sidekick learns from you and helps you do more awesome work with less time and resources.
Enhancing Email Marketing with AI-Powered Automation
Email marketing is a proven powerhouse, generating an impressive $36 for every U.S. dollar spent by brands. Now, imagine adding AI-powered automation to the mix—it's the cherry on top of a delicious sundae.
AI Helps You Go with the Flow
AI-supported email marketing platforms streamline the creation of sophisticated email flows in minutes. You simply outline your desired parameters, and the platform does the heavy lifting. Whether it's scheduling intervals between emails or incorporating SMS messages, AI handles the details while you focus on strategy.
Harnessing AI for Smarter Lead Management
In a world where time is your most treasured resource, prioritizing leads effectively is crucial. AI tools like those offered by leading platforms analyze data to assign win probability percentages to contacts. For instance, contacts who engage positively with your content receive higher scores, signaling optimal times for follow-up actions such as personal calls.
Personalization Powered by Predictive Insights
The demand for personalized marketing experiences is growing, and AI tools make it a reality. Imagine crafting multiple email variations and letting AI analyze real-time data—sentiment, engagement metrics, and more—to determine the optimal content for each recipient. This predictive approach enhances engagement and continually refines your content strategy without daily manual intervention. Clearly, the possibilities can expand exponentially with AI tools, and that’s why we use email marketing tools that blend automation and AI like Active Campaign.
Delivering Tangible Results
Transforming concepts into real-world results is at the heart of what we do at Element. Our approach to marketing automation isn't just theoretical—it's about driving tangible outcomes for our clients. Take, for example, our recent success with email automation: by setting up targeted flows for a client, we strategically reached out to customers who hadn’t made repeat purchases. This resulted in a remarkable $139K in additional revenue within the first year, simply by reengaging their existing customer base. (Psst! Be sure to contact us for the full case study and discover how automation can drive significant results for your business.)
Don’t Worry, You’re Still Better than AI
A caveat: yes, AI is awesome, but it doesn’t replace smart marketers. You bring your expertise and experience—and your big brain—to the table, and AI and marketing automation act as tools. Just tools, like spell check or those fancy machines that automatically fill your tires to the right pressure. There’s no technological replacement for innovative strategy, industry experience, strong storytelling, or the authentic “human element.”
Work Smarter, Not Harder—Make AI and Automation Work for You
If we’ve overwhelmed you with the possibilities of marketing automation and AI, don’t fret. We’re here to back you up and show you how to exceed your goals with the best tools and techniques. At Element, we use AI to iterate faster, spark creativity, and achieve results for you.
Give us a shout and tell us about your marketing goals. We’ll set you up with strategic marketing automation and seamless flows to funnel your target audience toward the finish line. And we’ll help you round out your marketing umbrella with the support you can only get from a customized, integrated marketing strategy.
