Published: 28 May 2024
Contributor: Keith O'Brien, Amanda Downie
Marketing automation is the use of software and technology to manage routine marketing processes and tasks across multiple channels.
A marketing automation strategy streamlines how organizations accomplish marketing tasks and segment content and experiences for people they want to influence across the customer journey. It is a critical component of both B2C and B2B marketing campaigns.
Marketing campaigns increasingly use automated technology, which is enhanced with employee expertise on the marketing team. While marketing automation is not new, present-day advances in artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML) create more functions for automation technology. Companies incorporate these automation features into marketing processes and automated workflows to drive even more value.
There are several benefits of marketing automation, including improving lead generation activities, driving positive customer experiences through digital marketing, and freeing up employees to focus on more critical tasks. Used well, marketing automation optimization can cut costs and increase marketing return on investment (ROI), which in turn improves the company’s bottom line.
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The rise of the internet brought an increasing need to create new digital marketing tools to reach audiences who were spending more time online. The modern e-commerce sales funnel now includes stages that are centered on awareness, consideration, purchase, and loyalty. It required companies to have always-on marketing and sales operations.
As demand increased, more companies offered bespoke tools that focused on one aspect of the marketing tech stack. Today, Forrester predicts1 (link resides outside ibm.com) marketing technology expenditure to reach USD 148 billion by the end of 2024.
Marketers are under great pressure to demonstrate value to their executives and boards. They need to remove as much friction as possible in their marketing activities and avoid overhiring marketing employees. Organizations are looking to automate repetitive processes so employees can focus on customer loyalty by building stronger relationships with high-value customers.
Some companies offer all-in-one marketing automation platforms that provide all services.
Companies like Siebel and Salesforce pioneered customer relationship management (CRM) tools that allowed companies to track their target audiences and engagements across the customer lifecycle. Soon companies like Pardot, HubSpot, and Marketo began to offer all-in-one, comprehensive tools that might power all marketing campaign management activities.
The largest all-encompassing marketing automation platforms today include Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Oracle Marketing Cloud, and Adobe Experience Cloud.
Others focus on one aspect and offer that. Marketing automation services can improve the efficacy of all marketing channels, especially for small businesses that can have few marketing employees.
McKinsey predicts that generative AI2(link resides outside ibm.com) will increase marketing productivity by up to 15% of total marketing expenditure, estimated to be about $463 billion annually. AI—particularly generative AI—can supercharge many existing marketing automation processes.
More than three out of four CMOs say that generative AI will change the way marketing operates, according to The IBM Institute for Business Value. The report establishes three important takeaways for all leaders looking to embrace generative AI:
For example, generative AI can take foundational pieces of content and personalize them down to an individual level to appeal to a specific person. It can also serve as a copilot on marketing strategy, generating ideas that individual employees and executives can build upon to find the right approach.
It can also surface insights from customer data quicker and at scale by identifying patterns that humans might miss. Other forms of AI can take existing customer data and complete gaps, like the individual’s home city, email address and purchase preferences. Many marketing automation tools are also embedding generative AI into their dashboard to help employees draft emails, social media copy, and potential website copy.
What leaders should do:
Marketing automation solutions create several important benefits for organizations.
Transform your marketing organization with generative AI that removes complexity, unlocks efficiency and drives growth.
Pursue growth opportunities, achieve return on investments and business goals, and get to the heart of next-level value from Salesforce and IBM.
Use Adobe’s technology to create tailored solutions specific to your business—unlocking the value of your customer data to design and deliver trusted AI-powered experiences.
Generative AI offers marketing a time to shine.
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Discover how the United States Tennis Association (USTA) has worked side-by-side with IBM Consulting™ for more than three decades, developing and delivering a world-class digital experience.
Watch this episode of AI Academy to learn how your organization can harness the power of generative AI to help your marketing team get the right message in front of the right person, at the right time.
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Get key definitions, benefits, use cases and a step-by-step guide for integrating AI into your next marketing campaign.
1 Global martech spending will reach USD 148 billion in 2024 (link resides outside ibm.com), Forrester, 17 January 2024
2 How generative AI can boost consumer marketing (link resides outside ibm.com), McKinsey, 5 December 2023