Marketing automation has proven critical for successful marketing campaigns across different businesses. Companies that have embraced the use of marketing automation report better return on investment.

It facilitates consumer relationships, lead generation and saves resources on repetitive tasks.

However, many marketers still face the challenge of achieving these great results from automation. Research indicates that over 24% of businesses have low returns for their automation software especially in the first year.

This article will show you how to maximize your marketing automation ROI.

How To Determine Your Marketing Automation ROI

1. Identify and set your marketing goals

To determine the returns, you must first set clear goals for your automation systems. For instance, your business can plan to use automation to increase your monthly leads from 10 to an average of 15 in the next 3 months.

Setting such goals would help you gauge how much you have achieved through automation in that time.

2. Measure and track your metrics

Measuring your performance is critical to determining your ROI. Tracking helps you to gauge your progress. 

You can identify elements in your system that aren’t working or producing results. This would then allow you to tweak them to become even more productive.

For example, suppose you want to increase leads. In that case, you can try to measure the number of sales-qualified leads per month, time taken to nurture leads and turn them into customers, etc. 

3. Calculate the ROI

With the above factors in mind, you can then calculate the returns at the end of the period using any set formulas.

For instance this simple method

However, not all your returns will be straightforward to calculate. This is mainly for non-monetary factors, such as event attendees or social media engagements. 

So, how do you ensure you ensure you are getting the highest possible return on your marketing automation?

6 Ways To Maximize Marketing Automation ROI

1. Design a scoring System

A scoring system is a checkpoint to eliminate leads that may not yield the results that you need. Using the data analyzed at every stage of your marketing automation, you have the relevant information to create a scoring system.

This data will enable you to screen the leads you acquire to determine which ones are worth pursuing. The scoring system looks at how relevant the customers are to your company in terms of:

• Demographics

• Location

• Interaction with your company (website or social media visits)

• Forms filled

• Purchase behavior etc.

With the final scored values, you can classify the customers into target groups for your subsequent actions. These processes help you save time and resources in chasing poor leads and consequently boost your returns.

2. Create next step triggers

You should automate behavioral triggers in your marketing process to get the full benefits of automation.

You should carefully craft your landing page to respond to user actions and guide them to the next steps. Such systems help your business to track and segment leads.

With automated triggers, your leads can move seamlessly from one step to another. You can also provide them the appropriate content that they may need. 

All these elements boost customer satisfaction. In turn, satisfaction increases conversions and thus driving higher returns. 

Such features also save you the resources on unpromising leads.

3. Build a customer database

Marketing automation is one of the best ways to build a database of knowledge about your customers.

You gain this knowledge/information right from when customers contact the business. For instance, visiting your website or social media. 

The more they interact with you and your company, the more insights you gain on who they are and how best to serve them.  

You can leverage the information you have collected to increase your targeting and content creation accuracy. As research indicates, more personalized information makes users more likely to buy from you. 

Therefore, you get the highest possible returns on investment. 

4. Develop customized marketing campaigns

Marketing automation is very instrumental in providing targeted content to the right customers. So, you can create highly personalized marketing campaigns to appeal to your customers. 

Personalized campaigns solve the users' needs and answer their questions. It also provides excellent customer service.

As a result, customers are more likely to move further down the marketing funnels and eventually convert. Such campaigns have higher success rates, which leads to revenue growth and higher returns on investment. 

5. Do cross-platform marketing campaigns

Marketing automation allows you to target customers across several platforms, thereby increasing the reach of your marketing campaigns. 

With automation, you run your campaigns from one platform (your marketing automation software). During configuration or setup, you can select several platforms as channels for your marketing. 

It allows you to tap into different potential customer audiences and leads. Platforms you can use as channels for your marketing include:

• Email

• Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snap Chat and many more)

• Websites

By marketing across all these platforms, you redirect these leads onto your website from where the sales process can begin.

Therefore, leveraging automated systems for cross-platform marketing can help you increase your customers and thus marketing automation ROI.

6. Analyze marketing campaign performance and adjust

Data analysis and insights into your marketing show you how your campaigns are performing. 

With this information, you can then compare them with your set goals and gauge whether your methods are working. Then, it helps you know what and where to adjust to yield even better results. 

The data also shows you where you need to focus more. For instance, your campaign results might show more converting leads coming through emails. Then you can invest more in improving your email automation systems. 

These actions ensure that you are executing informed strategies, which would then boost your ROI. 

Conclusion

Installing and implementing marketing automation software does not guarantee more leads, conversions, or revenue growth. How best you can utilize your systems to generate these results is what makes the difference. 

These practices and tactics mentioned will help you leverage your software’s capabilities to produce the results that you need.