Gaining a better understanding of customer behaviour, generating leads for the database and growing sales are all high on the wish list of companies, in the scientific industry. With customers increasingly looking for information online, businesses have had to change the way they target customers and optimize their sales and marketing activity to reach them effectively.

At The Scott Partnership we help our clients engage with their customers more effectively as well as helping them to identify and engage with potential customers who they don’t know via integrated sales and marketing. We have been busy working with various clients helping them achieve these goals via our marketing automation solution. We’ve received some great feedback regarding our marketing automation capabilities with clients commenting on the insight they have gained into their database and who is engaging with them.Marketing automation

In simple terms, marketing automation is the glue that binds together marketing and sales activity. Marketing automation software allows businesses to pre-plan their marketing activities creating a workflow, mapping marketing tactics against audience buying behaviour which helps companies really focus on their customers. It shows who is/isn’t engaging with you and therefore allows companies to nurture engaged leads into clients. A good way to think of marketing automation is to imagine you’re trying to grow a plant. First, you need fertile soil ripe for the growth of your plant. Next you need seeds to care for, and finally you need water and light in order to nurture those seeds into a lush, blooming plant.

A common mistake is to think marketing automation is the same as email marketing but there is an important distinction that needs to be made; email marketing is just one component of marketing automation. Marketing automation makes it easier to send personal 1:1 messages. This helps to strengthen communication by allowing personal touches to be made and also enabling data to be collected on prospects. The prospects are guided through the sales funnel in a more targeted way, rather than bombarding your database with blanket emails of information that does not interest them. Another important benefit is that the insights provided by a marketing automation programme enable you to see immediately what is and isn’t working when it comes to targeting your potential customers, allowing you to modify campaigns to be more effective on that basis.

In order to expand your business you need effective communication with the people you do know as well as identifying the people you don’t. Marketing automation is the solution! If you want to learn more about how marketing automation could help you then drop us a line via [email protected] and while you’re here why not take some time to read some of our other blogs written by the team here at The Scott Partnership.

Amy Gerrard, Account Executive at The Scott Partnership.