Old style marketing automation methodology
To fully understand how inbound marketing works with marketing automation tools, we need to go back in time (like, a few years ago).
Back then, marketing automation was very linear by design. Automation programs consisted of a series of emails that would have a pause in between where it would check for a click or an open. You’d then make a decision on how to treat them based on whether they clicked/opened or not. For example, you might send an email, see if they clicked and if they did then add them to a salesperson's list so they could give them a call and if they didn’t then send them the next email a week later.
Linear marketing germany phone number automation tools use
It was good at the time, but now it’s not good enough.
What happens if someone engages with you on social or downloads a piece of content unrelated to that automation program? Would you still want to send them on the same nurture path?
The answer is you no, you’ll probably want to treat them differently.
Present day marketing automation tools & your inbound leads
Fast forward to today’s automation capabilities and it’s a different story.
The most effective way for an organisation to succeed in marketing today is to be able to send every single prospect content in context. Sending them the right message at the right time, every time. This can only be achieved through a marketing automation tool such as Pardot and once set up, your inbound traffic is essentially being nurtured while your marketing team are focusing on other important things.
Here’s an example of how today’s automation could look:
Present day automation example - Page 1