“Marketing automation is about taking a lot of communication that previously happened on a phone, and building that capability into a digital medium, into the work flow across all stages of the process.”

Bob House, Head of Worldwide Marketing Automation at ezMarketing

Comparing marketing automation and analytics, perhaps one of the most common statements that arise is that marketing automation is magic. Taking a leap of faith and believing that what you’re seeing is true, the following discussion provides a good analogy of what marketing automation does for the larger purposes of marketing.

The first part of the conversation has to do with machines: when we think of computers, we think of the capabilities of a hard drive or a storage unit. Machines get things done, and they use a lot of our time and cost a lot of money to get things done. Marketing automation is about taking a lot of communication that previously happened on a phone, and building that capability into a digital medium, into the work flow across all stages of the process.

Marketing automation is not just about being able to change the wording of an email or a landing page. It is also about thinking through analytics of your entire database of assets, including never-before-seen assets, as well as properties in your database that you’ve never opened yet. This is also about taking all the investment and effort that went into the build and testing of this inventory and using it to figure out the best way to deliver your message and convert traffic into customers.

Compare this to any other business or process that you think about: having your business run off of Google Analytics or Salesforce’s big data repository makes you quickly realize how much time that investment takes to achieve.

“Every marketer out there has to focus on what their customers need, what they love and want, and the processes through which they want to have an experience with those things.”

However, as much as marketing automation focuses on customer relationship management (CRM), this is only one of its many value-added services. Marketers at heart, and every marketer out there, have to focus on what their customers need, what they love and want, and the processes through which they want to have an experience with those things. Marketers have to create the building blocks for building relationships and sharing those building blocks with their customers, not just following leads and revenue. As many marketers know, using marketing automation to create marketing automation is not enough.

“It’s also a challenge with marketers who haven’t gotten into the business like automation. For a long time, automation wasn’t a part of their thinking process. … So, we have to start thinking about it differently.”

– Nicole Tomten, Chief Technology Officer at alphik

When marketers ask why does my marketing automation platform offer more reporting than reporting on my SEO? When they ask why does the dashboard go blank all the time?

As human beings, our relationship with marketing automation really starts at scale. Starting with the smallest clients, scaling into larger clients, then into the C suite and all the way into the VP. As marketers scale, marketing automation becomes a bigger piece of their spending pie. As marketers begin to find ways to increase the efficiency of their campaigns, the leverage they start to get, and the cost savings they start to realize, the value becomes bigger and bigger.