Infographic | Understanding Marketing Automation in 50 seconds

Marketing Automation has become a favourite topic of conversation among marketers, including those working in B2B.

In principle, it lets you nurture leads with personalised content so as to convert them into clients. Its vocation is to optimise the effectiveness of marketing processes, while automating time-consuming and repetitive manual tasks. Put in that way, Marketing Automation sounds really simple. Yet, in reality, the majority of marketers retain a relatively confused idea of it.

One of the main misunderstandings about Marketing Automation is that many marketers think of it as just another word to describe e-mail marketing. After all, we’re talking about content, e-mails, deliverability, opening rates, clicks, etc. E-mail marketing is effectively one component of Marketing Automation, but it’s far from being all there is to it. Let’s call it a card in its hand. So, although Marketing Automation fully integrates e-mailings into the implementation of a new client acquisition strategy, it also envisages building a long-term relationship with the client. Here, it’s not about pushing aggressive campaigns in 1-shot mode, which you can do really well with a traditional e-mail solution. No, Marketing Automation aims to define scenarios, to sequence them into successive stages depending on the target’s level of engagement (wether they open emails, click on links, download assets, etc.) and to follow them over time, in order to bring them to the purchasing act, via content that is adapted and segmented depending on these stages. A good Marketing Automation scenario will last a minimum of 3 to 6 months, even longer for certain markets in which the sales cycles are particularly long, notably in B2B.

An infographic recently published by an American marketing agency, Boston Interactive, allows us, in a very educational and clear manner, to really grasp what it is, in less than a minute: How does it work? What is it used for? What are the expected and reported benefits?

The key elements to retain:

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