Marketing Automation: What It Is, How It Works, Best Practices

What Is Marketing Automation?

Getting the word out about your business’ offerings takes time, so typically, you’ll need to come up with a strategy to implement, track, and iterate as needed. Marketing automation is the use of software and technology to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows, helping businesses nurture leads, personalize customer interactions, and improve efficiency in their marketing efforts.

With marketing automation, you rely on software for deploying posts, gathering and expanding leads, and measuring your efforts to determine where you’re getting the best return on investment (ROI). But it’s important to have the right tools and to put those tools to use effectively.

How Does Marketing Automation Work?

Marketing automation works by putting software to use in helping marketers carry out their campaigns. These solutions have built-in rules, triggers, and workflows to engage your audience at each step of the customer journey. An ecommerce site, for instance, might use software to detect when a customer has abandoned items in a shopping cart and nudge that customer via email to follow through on the purchase. Tools using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) can optimize ad placements to not only detect opportunities but also place ads where they’re most likely to be effective.

“Marketing automation is a game-changer for small businesses because it gives you the ability to do more with less,” explains Aaron White, CEO at Outbound. “This means being able to engage with customers consistently without having to manually manage every single touchpoint. Whether it’s automating follow-ups, segmenting audiences, or optimizing ad spend, the right automation strategy can turn marketing from a constant struggle into a streamlined system.”

Benefits of Marketing Automation

Automating your marketing efforts can save time and resources while also boosting your effectiveness. Here are some of the top benefits you’ll get by implementing marketing automation.

Increased Efficiency

How much of your day do you waste on repetitive tasks? As Steve Roop, director of CRM and UX at Littlefield Agency, points out, marketing automation can boost efficiency in everything from data collection and analysis to lead nurturing. Taking the manual entry element out of the picture lets you shift your attention to higher-level tasks.

“By automating routine tasks like sending follow-up emails or reports, it can be a game-changer,” Roop says. “Using it in conjunction with a customer relationship management (CRM) platform like Salesforce or HubSpot, it’s like having a whole team of marketers working in the background on your behalf.”

Enhanced Lead Nurturing

Marketing automation doesn’t just improve efficiency, it can also boost conversions. Software can collect data on your website visitors and use that information to improve interactions. Best of all, it does this without adding more work to your plate.

“By setting up automatic triggers based on customer actions — like signing up or clicking on links — you can send timely, relevant information that nurtures the relationship and helps turn them into loyal customers,” says Matt Gehring, chief marketing officer at Dutch.

Improved Customer Segmentation

Spray-and-pray marketing — a strategy where marketers blast the same message out to a wide audience, assuming a percentage will convert — is not as effective as it once was. Consumers are constantly bombarded with marketing messages, leading to audience fatigue, so it’s important to stand out. As a result, more marketers are now using advanced tools with built-in AI, which excel at gathering data and putting it to use in targeting the right customers.

Segmentation, meanwhile, lets you personalize your marketing efforts for better results. You can send sales emails only to customers who’ve bought similar products before, for instance, or suggest products based on previous purchases a customer has made from your online store.

“Today’s customer is pretty savvy,” Roop says. “They know when they’re being marketed to, but through audience segmentation, you can more tightly control and pinpoint relevant messaging to those customers in ways that matter more to them. It gives marketers a stronger tool to use when trying to connect with their customers 1:1 or in a more meaningful way. Those connections are vital to staying top of mind when your customer is ready to buy.”

Better Data and Analytics

Monitoring is essential when you’re launching any marketing campaign. If you don’t measure results, how can you know if all the hard work is paying off? As Andrew Vogel, of Digitalized Elevation, points out, all the information your tools help you collect is useless unless you put it into action.

“The first thing I would say is to track everything that actually matters meticulously,” Vogel advises. “Once you know what few numbers actually matter, you need to make sure you’re tracking them with 100% accuracy, 100% of the time. Sometimes it may seem like the numbers go against what you thought to be true and you’ll second guess the data, but don’t do that. Second guess yourself instead. Unless you set up your tracking wrong, the numbers never lie.”

Scalability

Ideally, your small business will continue to grow with each passing year. That means the platforms you put in place today might not work when your sales have skyrocketed. For that reason, scalability is an important feature in any marketing automation platform you choose. Otherwise, you’ll have to shift to a new solution every few years. AI-backed tools, for example, have the flexibility to grow with your business as it grows. That means you can gather data and use that data whether you have 10 sales a month or 10,000.

“At the end of the day, marketing automation shouldn’t be about replacing your effort,” White adds. “It should be about making your marketing more efficient, targeted, and scalable.”

How to Build Your Marketing Automation Strategy

Building a solid marketing automation strategy means setting your goals and lining up tools that can help you reach them. Here are some steps to help you build a winning strategy using marketing automation.

Define Your Goals

Any marketing strategy should start by defining your goals, whether you’re automating processes or not. By clarifying your goals at the start, you can home in on the strategies and content that matters most. Here are some examples of marketing goals:

• Boosting lead generation: Bringing in new customers or clients calls for specific strategies. While some marketing solutions excel at helping you find those customers, it’s also important that you have a strategy in place for nurturing incoming leads.
• Improving customer engagement: It can be easy to forget about your existing client base when you’re focused on reaching new customers. Customer engagement calls for a separate set of strategies.
• Boosting sales: If you simply want to boost your income by encouraging more sales, you’ll need a strategy that focuses on inciting action from both new and existing customers.

Pick a Platform

With so many marketing automation platforms to fill every business need, narrowing it down to just one can be tricky. The best platform is one that fits your business needs and budget while also using the latest technologies to gather data and refine your targeting. Courtney Malengo, founder at Spark + Buzz Communications, cautions against all-in-one solutions.

“The reality is most businesses will likely require multiple platforms, but that hinges on the size and scope of the business, the budget, the funnel, and the marketing priorities,” she says. “Many platforms have wonderful bells and whistles, but if you won’t end up using those features, it’s a waste of money. Marketers should consider their greatest pain points and how a platform may alleviate those challenges.”

Segment Your Audience

Do you know your audience? If so, you likely realize it isn’t made up of people with identical buying behaviors and interests. Marketing automation makes it easy to divide your audience based on demographics, past behavior, and where they are in the buying journey. This lets you deliver different messaging in the format most likely to encourage action.

“Segmentation is a critical piece where personalization at scale can shine,” White explains. “Instead of blasting the same message to everyone, new automation tools allow businesses to personalize outreach based on behavior, demographics, or purchase history. This could mean higher engagement and better ROI.”

Develop Automated Workflows

Workflows help move your customers through the sales funnel. You can set up systems that carry a new customer from a click to a purchase and beyond. For instance, a website visitor might opt in to receive emails, at which point you can send targeted offers that engage them. From there, your software can track interactions and send follow-ups that re-engage them, turning them into loyal customers.

“If your sales are not where you would like them to be, take a look at your sales funnel and identify where customers might be dropping off,” Gehring recommends. “The key is to use analytics to extract valuable insights and take action based on what the data is telling you.”

Monitor and Optimize

One of the best things about marketing automation is that most platforms come with built-in analytics. This allows you to regularly monitor your efforts and see what’s working and what isn’t. You can then put that information to use in optimizing future campaigns.

“Marketing automation isn’t about replacing marketers, your marketing team, or your marketing budget — it’s about improving the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and getting more of a return from your investment into marketing,” Vogel explains. “The highest leverage thing you can do as a marketer is analyze data and strategize how to improve results, and you can’t do that when you’re executing repetitive tasks all day.”

As AI has become more prevalent, marketers now have an additional tool. Machine learning can help with predicting customer behavior, refining your segmentation and automating content personalization at scale.

Best Practices for Marketing Automation

Successful marketing campaigns don’t just happen. Effective campaigns require strategy, attention to detail, and testing. Here are some best practices to put into place for positive results.

Personalize Your Campaigns

Marketing automation provides deep insights into your audience, but it’s also created a competitive landscape. Your competition could be using those insights to personalize each campaign. To win new customers and engage your brand loyalists in 2025, campaign personalization is a must.

“Audience segmentation can happen in a variety of ways, but leveraging an automation platform can help personalize the journey for your customers/clients,” Malengo explains. “Once you’ve identified target audiences, you can gear specific campaigns, ads, prompts, and correspondence tailored to each audience. Couple that with behavioral insights, and campaigns can be tailored to each individual person within those segments.”

Maintain the Human Touch

You may be using technology to reach your audience, but the recipients of your messaging are human. What will set you apart as a business is the human touch you bring to each of your interactions.

“Automation should enhance, not replace, human connection,” urges Sophie Musumeci, CEO and founder of Real Entrepreneur Women. “The best marketing strategies blend automation with personal touchpoints, ensuring clients feel seen and valued, while streamlining the sales process.”

Test and Iterate

Software can help ease your workload, but it also frees you up to analyze and learn. Using the tools you’ve put in place, review the numbers and see exactly what’s working and what isn’t. Create separate campaigns, A/B testing subject lines, content, and workflows, and pay close attention to the results.

“Split test everything all the time,” Vogel says. “The saying, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ is for lazy people — nothing is ever as good as it could be, and you know that. The second you stop split testing is the second your numbers start to fall.”

The Impact of Marketing Automation on the Customer Journey: Metrics

Tracking is easier than ever and analytics tend to be built into every platform. However, figuring out which metrics to focus on can be challenging. Here are some factors to highlight as you’re venturing into marketing automation.

Lead Conversion Rates

You’re getting opens and clicks, but is that activity converting? Whether your goal is to boost sales or grow your social media following, it’s important to track how your efforts are landing. Make sure you choose solutions that will let you easily measure sales or lead growth against specific efforts. You can now turbo charge lead conversion using AI tools that analyze trends and suggest optimizations in real time, helping you turn leads into sales.

Customer Engagement

Conversions are important, but second to that is engagement. AI-enhanced analytics have the power to use past information to predict which content will perform best with your audience. To track engagement, you’ll look at:

• Open rates.
• Click-through rates.
• Average session duration.
• Social media shares, likes, and comments.
• Average review rating.
• Referral rates.
• Churn rate.
• Customer lifetime value.

Sales Revenue

ROI is an important part of any marketing campaign. What did you spend? Did you earn it back? Consistently monitoring your revenue can help you measure your return to ensure you’re making the most of every dollar you spend. AI-powered tools can take it a step further, pinpointing trends in your sales data to help you better identify which areas of spend are getting the best return.

Retention and Churn Rates

Before you lean heavily into marketing automation, note your customer retention rates. How many customers return after an initial purchase? Then you can implement your more personalized campaigns and continue to measure, comparing the results to see if more customers are sticking around.

Key Takeaways

Marketing automation increases efficiency by replacing repetitive tasks, freeing up resources to focus on other areas. Technology can also turbo-charge your marketing efforts, letting you segment your audience and deliver more targeted campaigns. A key part of using marketing solutions, though, is measuring your results. By tracking lead conversion and customer engagement, you can determine which marketing efforts are most effective.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are some examples of marketing automation platforms?

Marketing automation comes in a variety of forms, including social media automation, CRM, email marketing, and lead management. For social media automation, tools like Buffer and Hootsuite remain relevant, while CRMs like Salesforce and Hubspot dominate their market. Constant Contact and Mailchimp are popular email automation platforms, and the Apptivo and Zoho CRMs top the list of lead management solutions. Platforms like realize:, meanwhile, are ideal for helping to automate various facets of performance marketing.

What is CRM in marketing automation?

Customer relationship management systems store customer contact information, tracking interactions to give you insights into how consumers are interacting with your business. When used correctly, a CRM helps personalize your customer interactions while providing insights that improve future marketing efforts.

“A good CRM should feel like a business growth partner,” Musumeci advises. “It should track leads, automate follow-ups and offer insights into your client journey. For small businesses, ease of use and integration with marketing tools are non-negotiables.”

Is Marketing Automation AI?

Artificial intelligence (AI) may be built into marketing automation solutions, but not all marketing automation is AI. That said, AI has expanded the capabilities of automation, allowing marketers to predict customer behavior, optimize content, and improve targeting.

“Many platforms have already integrated, or will integrate, AI in some way,” Malengo says. “Over the past year, marketers played with how AI can complement existing efforts — everything from writing and research to graphic design and strategizing. Now, there is a shift to see how AI can manage projects for marketers, acting like an outsourced marketing specialist. Marketers are looking beyond what they can prompt AI to create and are now exploring what AI can execute on their behalf.”