Many years ago, marketing automation was one of the representatives of traditional software. After nearly 30 years, the marketing automation system software has approached maturity.
With the sudden change of the situation, along with the exhaustion of C-side dividends and the rise of the B-side digital wave, people's attention to the field of marketing automation has suddenly continued to increase. Especially in the context of the concept of selfish traffic that has been popular in the past two years. Marketing automation is gradually introduced into a new, to a new level.
The marketing automation system was born in the United States and can be traced back to 1992. It is generally believed that the founding of Unica in 1992 represented the rise of the marketing automation industry.
But in fact, it wasn't until nearly 5 years before 2010 that the marketing automation industry grew exponentially from $225 million in annual revenue to $1.65 billion in revenue. With the entry of big companies such as Salesforce, IBM, Adobe and Microsoft, the competition in the industry has gradually intensified.
From the initial focus on email marketing, after years of development, marketing automation has become very powerful, and it can be found in almost all Internet products.
Today, whether it is C-end or B-end products, marketing automation systems play an important role in building a business system and enhancing business value. Almost all Internet companies, companies that focus on user operations and marketing companies are accelerating the construction of marketing automation systems that meet their own characteristics.
Although, marketing automation is all the rage. However, relatively systematic marketing automation knowledge sharing is relatively lacking on the Internet. Therefore, this article will share some of my gains from learning marketing automation and some experiences in the working process. This article will try to show the whole picture of a marketing automation system from conception to implementation, as well as some necessary knowledge to build a marketing automation system.
Today, any internet practitioner should learn about marketing automation. Because marketing automation is an important part of the digital economy and smart industry. Even if you don't pay attention to the future trends of the Internet industry, there are still some reasons for you to consider.
Marketing automation has developed to this day, and it is no longer exclusive to B-end products as we traditionally think. Marketing automation pervades every internet product. As long as Internet products have operational processes and sales links, marketing automation is inevitably involved.
Mainstream C-end products are also deeply integrated with marketing automation systems. For example, the launch process of various fission activities of Pinduoduo is a typical marketing automation scenario.
At the same time, marketing automation is now an important way to improve product business data indicators. Even some product-based metrics rely on marketing automation system improvements. It can be said that dealing with marketing automation systems is inevitable in the daily work of a product manager.
Marketing automation is an important innovation direction for low-increment or existing businesses.
1. Understanding Marketing Automation
First, what is marketing automation?
A more formal definition is that marketing automation is the use of software to automate marketing activities and processes. A marketing automation system refers to a system software deployed in the cloud to execute, manage, and automate marketing tasks and processes.
I personally feel that this definition is no longer in line with the modern market situation, and it places too much emphasis on "automation". A more succinct definition in line with 2021 is a system that automatically delivers the right marketing content to the right user at the right time and place.
This is because, today, "automation" no longer telemarketing list represents the core value of marketing automation systems. In its place is "wisdom".
In order to give you a more intuitive understanding of what a marketing automation system is, here is a typical example. Here is an example of the C-end product that everyone has been exposed to the most.
For example, a user browsed product A on our platform, but did not place an order. After three days, users did not browse the product again. At this time, the system will add a label X to the user to record that the user browses the product A but does not place an order.
At this point, the automated marketing system starts to operate, filters out users with tag X, and then goes to the scheme library to match the scheme, matching the coupon scheme Y. After that, at 8:00 p.m., marketing automation began to implement plan Y, delivering the corresponding coupons to users in the form of text messages. After the user receives the text message, they use the coupon to place an o