3 industries that are evolving with marketing automation

To successfully capture today’s digital customers, generate heaps of profit, and dominate your competitors, you need to modernize your marketing workflows and tactics by using marketing automation.

One of the ways to do so is by automating your entire sales funnel. Fortunately, several industries have begun using marketing automation and, as a result, revolutionized their promotional operations.

Check out three industries that are prominently evolving by harnessing marketing automation:

1. Automotive

Aharon Horwitz, Co-founder of automated marketing platform AutoLeadStar and co-host of the Inside Auto Podcast, shared in a recent episode how marketing automation has remarkably transformed the automotive industry: 

“Marketing and auto is evolving. It’s shifting from a model that was common outside of auto ten years ago, to align itself with modern-day marketing which is premised on AI, automation, being able to do some really sophisticated stuff with targeting.”

This shift from traditional to automated marketing methods helped, for example, a dealership to increase leads by 33% during the COVID-19 pandemic and engage and transform these online prospects into car buyers.

Marketing automation also helps automotive companies in various ways, such as:

Data-driven sales and marketing processes

Conventional automotive ads use generic designs and send information to as many people as possible. However, this method isn’t strategic. Its performance metrics, e.g., sales, click-through rates, are subsequently harder to predict and even attain.

This is because they don’t use personalized customer data to boost their promotional messages and sales discussions — something marketing automation can provide.

Automated marketing systems can handle customer inquiries and gather their contact and other relevant information (e.g., interests, demographics) for more persuasive and targeted ads.

This technology can also assist in determining peoples’ stages in the customer journey or purchase lifecycle according to their online behavior.

With these data, automotive marketers can reach and capture more specific and qualified leads, increasing the chances of scoring sales and closed deals.

The marketing data can also be used to help streamline your sales department, leading to further conversions and an increase in sales. Once your team finds what is sales automation, it can lead to a sharp rise in business.

Marketing automation even streamlines other automotive marketing and sales activities, such as:

• Documenting all interactions with vehicle prospects and buyers;
• Segmenting leads and delivering suitable marketing campaigns to each group;
• Tracking end-to-end customer journeys, and
• Recognizing upsell and cross-sell opportunities based on activities on the company’s website.

Management of lead and buyer relationships

Marketing automation not only assists automotive businesses in acquiring buyers but also efficiently bringing them through each step in the sales funnel.

For one, it can quickly and comprehensively search for leads from several sources (social media, referral networks, websites, PPC ad campaigns, etc.) and consistently follow them up without a miss.

Automated marketing systems can also classify and send relevant messages to their corresponding recipient groups at the best times. This increases audience engagement and buy-in (not to mention automation success for the industry).

Even scoring leads becomes more accurate because the ratings are based on vast monitored data and criteria set. 

Then, with these precisely determined scores, automated marketing systems can assign leads to sales reps who are available or best-suited to handle them.

Automotive sales reps can also chase and prioritize the best prospects and close deals more effectively. This is particularly helpful for industries with multiple branches.

Marketing automation streamlines and autonomously executes this workflow, coordinating with other linked software, whether CRM, cloud calling, or others.

This significantly reduces automotive industries’ manual labor in repetitive, mundane tasks and increases their productivity in profitable customer-facing activities, such as negotiating deals.

2. Financial services

Institutions delivering financial services, such as banks and credit unions, have leveraged marketing automation in different ways, especially in sending out promotional emails.

For instance, email marketing automation enables them to acquire new credit cardholders. Through it, financial entities can instantly:

• Extract prospect information;
• Personalize messages and card art;
• Showcase live annualized percentage rate (APR) details;
• Lessen customer service requests and inquiries, and
• Ensuring that the information in emails is updated.

Financial service industries also get to reward loyal credit card members, updating and sharing with them the advantages they can avail.

For brokers, email marketing automation helps customize messages with contact details, even maps updated in real-time, so clients can locate their local offices. This creates a one-to-one asset management experience for fostering client trust and relationships.

If client-investors want to see frequent stock updates, automation allows them to receive emails with live-to-the-second stock data tied to their interests. These emails also instantly change each time they open the message. The email acts as a personal stock ticker in their inbox.

Financial service sectors can even assist their members better when needing to view their account details.

For example, banks traditionally send “snapshot” emails with information that usually becomes out-of-date once clients receive it — creating a less-than-satisfying member experience.

Fortunately, automation enhances that by enabling banks and credit unions to instantly draw in secure, up-to-the-minute details from their APIs. This lets clients check their balances, points, and others in actual times.

3. Healthcare

Marketing automation has also transformed the healthcare industry in various ways, especially during the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic.

Marketing automation not only helps healthcare institutions acquire clients and build patient relationships but also preserves and personalizes these connections.

The system also enables medical establishments to disseminate relevant details about patients’ surgery appointments and others.

Additionally, health providers can send various critical messages to clients and staff. Marketing automation enables them to schedule and auto-deliver these communications, educational COVID-19, and safety-centered information to potential clients, etc.

Using medical care chatbots, hospitals and clinics have also automatically responded to patient and client queries and sent reassurances accordingly.

Be ready to transform your industry with marketing automation

With marketing automation, you can’t help but evolve in the way you promote your offers, engage prospective buyers, and raise your sales more steadily than traditional methods.

Marketing automation simplifies processes and handles tedious, time-consuming tasks, so you can focus on fulfilling primary, human-oriented promotional activities.

So start investing in it to transform your industry into an exceptional brand, and expect to reap the rewards eventually. You won’t regret it.