Understanding the Sales Benefits of Marketing Automation
Marketing automation delivers sales benefits for both marketing and sales teams. For a sales team working in a high pressure, high reward environment, the benefits of marketing 
automation can mean the difference between making or breaking a sale.
By integrating your segmented sales and marketing efforts, you prepare your business for increased lead generation and nurturing tactics. This gives your sales team “sales-qualified” leads that are ready for engagement sooner than ever before.
Bellow are ten benefits marketing automation can offer your sales team.
1) Score a lead’s actions to prioritize them.
Lead scoring in marketing automation allows you to assign numeric value to leads based off their digital behavior using quantifiable data. This allows sales to:
- Know a lead’s stage in the buying funnel
- Get a notification when a lead passes a combined scoring value
- Contact a lead when they’re still hot
2) Pinpoint who you’re selling to.
With marketing automation, sales reps no longer have to go in blind. With behavior monitoring in marketing automation you can:
- Know a lead’s interactions and interests
- Create a buyer persona before interacting with a lead
- Have an understanding of what leads are looking for and how you can satisfy their needs
3) Know when to contact a lead.
The article Automation: How Marketing Can Sync With Sales cites that sales reps that follow up with a web lead within five minutes are 21 times more likely to enter a lead into the sales process. Marketing automation makes this a possibility by following a leads digital behavior and assigning a score to determines when a lead is ready for more in-depth interaction. This technology helps your sales team by:
- Being alerted when a lead’s score increases
- Avoid spending time or resources on a lead that is not ready to buy
- Know if a lead visits a page that has been decided as a strong indicator for buyer behavior
4) Decrease the sales cycle.
Research shows that with the implementation of marketing automation your business will see a faster sales cycle. This is because marketing automation:
- Allows marketing teams to work with sales by nurturing leads
- Marketing passes leads to sales that exhibit strong buying behavior
- Give marketers the ability to define leads as either “marketing qualified” or “sales qualified”
5) Establish what you want your ideal buyer to look like.
Marketing automation software allows marketing to track and nurture sales-related leads. Lead tracking can be refined by marketing to include leads that posses indicated criteria such as:
- Specific Title
- Involved in certain industries
- Act on a defined behavior – Such as opening an email or engaging in specified actions
6) Create targeted personalized messages.
Email is one of the greatest tools marketers can use to help deliver sales ready leads. Marketing automation allows sales reps to use email to prime buyers for the sales process by:
- Sending out an automated personal message to a lead based on their digital behavior
- Emailing a lead at the right point in the buying process to keep leads engaged
7) Maximized benefits by combining your CRM with marketing automation.
There are many different types of marketing automation software that work with your third party CRM. Combining your CRM with marketing automation allows sales reps to:
- See the history of marketing’s interaction leads
- See lead activity in one place
8) Maximize a customer’s life cycle.
Marketing automation can keep a customer in the buying process even after they have bought your product by providing sales and marketing teams with:
- Real time reports that identify up-selling and cross-selling opportunities
- Show buyer history and behavior to indicate a possible follow-up sale
9) Align sales and marketing.
Marketing automation turns segmented marketing and sales efforts into an integrated process by:
- Allowing a natural flow of real time information from marketing teams to sales teams
- Creating an understanding of shared marketing and sale goals
10) Increase your businesses ROI.
“Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months,” (Gartner). Make your quota and go beyond by implementing marketing automation in your business.
Start Automated Marketing Today to increase Sales Benefits.
With a variety of benefits for sales and marketing, why hold off on automating your sales process any longer? Research shows that “58% of top-performing companies; where marketing contributes for more than half of the sales pipeline, have adopted marketing automation,” (Forrester Research). Don’t keep your business trapped in the past with outdated technology. Bring your company into the “know” with marketing automation. Take Biznet’s free “Marketing Automation Health Check” now and determine what you need to start growing you business.
