Today’s buyers are more capable and better informed than ever before so you need to deliver the right message to the right person, at the right time. Consumers expect a more thoughtful communication from your company, so you need to invest much more time and energy in the database you manage for e-mail marketing. Luckily, there’s a new and powerful tool you can use and it’s called “marketing automation”, where software meets tactics so you can optimize your message to the buyer. This leads to a more personalized, one-to-one sales experience for each client, that wants to be accustomed to a more tailored sales cycle.

So, how does this work?

“Marketing automation” combines user’s demographic and behavioral data so you can identify exactly who is in your audience and create content valuable for that specific person. What are the features of “marketing automation” that can help you collect those information from your buyers?

First of all, there are the landing pages that visitors reach after clicking an advertisement or a link. You can use them to encourage people to engage in submitting their data or to present an offer and help them make a decision to purchase your products or services. Forms can help you fill your data base with prospect data so you can turn the anonymous visitor into a prospect, then into a customer and finally into a satisfied client. Progressive profiling can be used to improve your conversion rates while you maximize the amount of information you can collect from your client, so present visitors with different form fields each time they fill out a form. Also, you can use marketing automation in tandem with Data . com to build a complete profile of your customers.

Marketing automation is built around feedback loops. With every action, there’s a consumer-driven reaction.

It is important to monitor these feedback loops with an objective eye. The reason? As a marketing, demand generation, or business development professional, you’re probably under immense pressure to sell. Even if you’re emailing a basic newsletter or content update, you never know how consumers will respond to your messaging.

Consumers are extremely sensitive and attuned to ‘salesiness.’ That’s why it’s so important to monitor your data—unsubscribe rates, spam complaints, open rates, and click-through rates—on email campaigns. Watch every customer service complaint. Listen to everything that your customers are telling you.

How can “marketing automation” offer companies revenue and provide excellent ROI? Well, marketing departments can use this data to create lead nurturing e-mails to deliver the right content at the right time, to segment the database into smaller groups, which can be targeted with a more personalized message and to use dynamic content, that can tailor your web or email content to a specific viewer. Also, the sales department can use marketing automation for real time sales alerts, email tracking and cold calling, when you can spark a deeper conversation with the prospect about your product’s specific benefits.