Marketing Automation + Sales Automation: The Duo That Converts More Leads

One of the most important aspects of any successful company is customer satisfaction. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business or a big corporation – keeping customers happy is crucial to your success.

However, your customers won’t necessarily become loyal customers unless they feel like their voice has been heard and their needs have been met.

In today’s competitive market conditions, marketing automation can be your true ally in automating the process of lead nurturing and pushing those leads to sales-readiness. It can help you keep up with your customers, and it can help you create the products and services that your customers need.

And sales automation can be the icing on the cake. How, you ask? Read on to find out.

In this article, you will learn what marketing and sales automation is, how these two are different, and how you can use them to your advantage.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation allows you to automate various marketing tasks both before and after someone buys your product. It can help increase the chances of converting contacts into leads and leads into customers, which equates to more sales, repeat business, and improved customer satisfaction.

All in all, marketing automation is all about analyzing data and finding the patterns. This allows companies to know what customers want, when they want it, and how much they are willing to spend.

By using this kind of personalization, companies can now connect with customers more intimately than ever before and then produce better results for their business, too. The result? Higher conversion rates for your marketing efforts.

What is Sales Automation?

Simply put, sales automation is the process of using software to take over some of the tasks performed by a salesperson. Sales automation is about reducing the amount of time it takes for leads to convert into sales and increase the lifetime value of your customer base.

Sales automation tools are designed to automate repetitive tasks, improve efficiency, and help keep your business’s pipeline full at all times.

What Is the Difference Between Marketing Automation and Sales Automation?

Marketing automation and sales automation offer incredible benefits but they work in distinctly different ways. While they are designed to help businesses with different functions – marketing and sales, respectively – both systems have much more in common than you might realize.

Here are the major differences between these two.

1. Purpose

The main purpose of marketing automation is to create leads whereas sales automation is geared towards closing deals. Although the processes of marketing and sales automation can overlap, they are inherently different because they focus on two different things at two different levels.

Marketing automation boosts the lead generation process and generates more qualified leads, whereas sales automation tools are designed to help close deals by taking care of repetitive tasks that keep your sales pipeline full at all times.

2. Actions

The main task of marketing automation is to build a client base by analyzing data and finding patterns. It even helps in nurturing those leads. On the other hand, sales automation is all about tracking lead scores and closing deals.

As a sales automation system scans your prospect’s contact details, it triggers automated actions like email marketing to increase the probability of converting a prospect into a sale.

3. Responsibility

Marketing automation is primarily responsible for the optimization of marketing flow whereas sales automation works as a system to make calls to schedule meetings with leads. This is helpful for lead generation where the sales team is counting on the auto-generated leads, which might not be relevant to the sales process.

4. Implementation Stage

A marketing automation system is usually implemented in the early stages of a company’s development and mostly in the pre-sales stages whereas sales automation is usually implemented during the latter stages of a company’s development.

However, marketing automation platforms can also be used in all stages of the sales process. But if you’re a new company, you might not need a sales automation platform at first.

When To Use Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is great for early business development. Whether it is your monthly newsletter, automated eCommerce mails or product promotions, marketing automation helps you streamline these tasks and saves a lot of time for the marketing team.

Marketing automation can also be used for customer retention. For example, if a customer has bought something, you can send them automated upsell emails to give them a nudge to make a purchase again.

Or, if someone has abandoned your cart, you can send automated messages to remind them of the amazing products they might have forgotten in their cart.

When To Use Sales Automation

Sales automation comes in handy when a prospect is close to making a purchase but might need a slight nudge to help them move further along the sales cycle.

And this is where the magic happens! Your CRM and marketing automation platform come together to convert a lead into a sale.

Sales automation speeds up your sales process and improves the efficiency of your sales team.

Wrapping Up

When your marketing process is well-oiled, sales automation can help smooth out some of the unnecessary bumps.

Needless to say, marketing automation and sales automation are both popular tools for companies to use in their day-to-day operations. They can work together or independently to help your company automate repetitive tasks and improve efficiency and effectiveness.

The key is finding the right tool set that fits into your business model and then learning how to incorporate it into your daily routine.

To get the most out of marketing automation and sales automation, make sure to combine both approaches!