In my last post we spent some time talking about marketing automation, and the ways that businesses might benefit from investing in an automated solution.  Today, let's follow a piece of data through the marketing automation cycle so that we can see how it works in a real-world situation - and how it might work for your business.

Imagine that customer Jane sees a pay-per-click (PPC) ad offering a free white paper.  She clicks through to the landing page associated with the ad, browses around the site for a bit, then returns to the landing page and fills out the short web form. 

When Jane hits the submit button, the automated process kicks into high gear.  Jane's data is automatically transferred; her contact info is added to the appropriate email lists and placed in the company's CRM systems.  Simultaneously, information about Jane's behavior on the landing page itself - from how long she spent on the page to what other parts of the site she visited - is being sent to the web analytics tool. 

Once the information has been processed, the automation continues.  For example, two days after her initial visit the system may deliver an email message to Jane based on the web analytics component showing that she spent a relatively long time on a page touting the features of a specific product.  Based on her reaction to that email - let's say she opens it and clicks through to the site - additional data is collected and additional actions can be automated.  And the automated cycles continue.

So that's how the automation cycle might work.  Have you thought about all of the ways that it could make your life better?  Think about it--you save time and money.  You avoid some of the most tedious tasks associated with marketing.  You improve your ROI by really understanding what’s working and what’s not.  Best of all, you better serve your customers by ensuring that the messages you send them are highly relevant to what they want and need.  And isn't that what it's really all about?

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About The Author

Blaine Mathieu is chief marketing officer for Lyris. Blaine is responsible for Lyris' brand and product strategy, including driving marketing initiatives for the company's Lyris HQ™ integrated-marketing suite and its Lyris ListManager™ email-marketing software.

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