Peeking into the Present & Future of B2B Marketing Automation

We explore the game changer that B2B Marketing Automation is with a detailed case-study analysis and how it can get the marketing ball rolling for brands.

It is most likely that you might have heard about the term Marketing Automation. If you hardly know about marketing automation, then you might be very new to the martech arena and might find it difficult to visualize and understand how exactly this type of marketing software can be put into use practically. So, I would recommend you to learn the basics of marketing automation before you start reading this article.

As we all know marketing automation is presently a hot topic in the B2B market. With B2B business leaders looking for new ways to enhance the output, automated marketing is one of the best options which is considered by most of them. According to a recent survey, ‘The State of Marketing Automation’, 80% of the respondent already have marketing automation deployed for work. According to the prediction of Forrester, Business spending for Marketing Automation tools will grow from $11.4 billion in 2017 to reach $25.1 billion annually by 2023!

Among B2B businesses, 69% of top B2B performers use marketing automation for customer acquisition and 50% use it for customer retention. All these numbers show that

marketers believe in marketing automation and are ready to invest more and more in smart marketing automation tools.

If you still think that B2B Marketing Automation is for the future and you still have time to think of an implementation strategy then we present to you some startling insights and case-studies that will make you think elsewhere.

1.   Dell sees a double-digit increase in testing templates

Dell wanted to optimize their email templates and also give them a fresh new look. Another aim of optimizing these landing pages was to improve key performance indicator’s results. Initially, they wanted to determine the impact of making changes to the typical email navigations that most companies stick to.

Dell’s marketing team decided to split the test or A/B test their navigation bar in the email. The control version of the email had links to various products of Dell placed at the header space. This suited the navigation on the website of Dell. The variation had the navigation bar at the footer of the email, and in this version, instead of plain links, Dell’s team decided to try placing iconography within the footer. As a result, they were able to decrease the noise before the recipient viewed the actual message in the email.

With more focus on developing the designs mobile responsive, Dell saw a double-digit win by simply testing their navigation bars in the emails & aligning them with their global customers.

2.   Brainshark increases online registration by 15%

Brainshark, a B2B software provider, offered a freemium product for a product of its enterprise solution and also a free trial for a different product. The challenge was to convert their non-paying users into customers. To convert freemium users into paying customers, Brainshark first ran some analysis to understand the reasons behind ‘freemium’ users would not convert.

With this analysis, Brainshark understood it had to develop pipelines to get non-paying customers closer to buying at every step of the pipeline. Marketing automation was the only logical approach to get individuals to respond to in-trial messages

They began by showing their freemium users messages inside the product interface, to guide them through the steps. This communication expanded to advertisements and pop-ups on their site to communicate with existing users. These messages were educational in nature, like tips and tricks.

Brainshark moved to personalized messaging. Personalization started when a visitor landed on one of the three main areas on the Brainshark website, which is sales enablement, marketing solutions, or onboarding and training. These messages were shown on the basis of data points like time on site and pages engaged. Brainshark also intelligently utilized personalized messaging to upgrade its existing users.

3.   Hunter Engineering improves B2B relations

As we know, customer support is the key to long-term relations with customers. Hunter Engineering wanted to improve its B2B relations and wisely invested in a live chat feature. This manufacturer wanted to provide on-the-go service for its customers, by automating on-site chat.

Hunter Engineering realized that a large number of individuals were going to the website, before picking up the phone and calling the customer service representative. That’s where the opportunity for automating online support came into the picture. They conducted a webinar with Comm100 to unveil how Live Chats became their best option in driving customer conversations and improving their B2B relations further.

Final Take

B2B Marketing Automation will play a very huge and significant role in the future of B2B marketing for small as well as large businesses. We know companies are still facing issues with the effective integration of marketing automation platforms, but that can’t be a reason for you to not to implement marketing automation in your business.

Marketing automation is still developing, still offers tons of advantages for B2B marketers and that’s the reason most of the businesses are already implementing and using it. If you don’t start today, you will be left out with tomorrow, and won’t be able to cope-up and compete in the future.

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This article is written by Aashish Yadav and originally published here

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