eMarketer forecasted that online marketing will overtake TV advertising spending by $5 billion this year. This trend will continue as mobile devices make it very easy for marketers to target specific audiences, thus the higher response rate. Today, people get to interact with ad campaigns quicker thanks to social media. But information decay also got faster. These changes in the marketing space are necessitating not just new tools but also new approaches in using existing technology. The implication is this: more people are being reached but expectations also got high.

Marketing automation is the way

For years now marketing automation has been a tool for productivity. At some point hiring more people to send out repetitive emails is not cost-efficient anymore. With more prospective customers captured in sales funnels, the immense work of getting to each captured lead becomes overwhelming.

Automation is the only way to make sense of online marketing. With click-through rates decreasing, the need to process every lead becomes very important. But it is not just lead generation. People have heightened expectations with Internet marketing – relationship.

Relationship matters

The breakthrough of social media introduces a new dynamic in marketing automation and online marketing as a whole. Automation and campaigns are no longer just about responding to people in websites. More than just acknowledging subscriptions, it pursues engagement and relationship building.

People don’t like to be sold to and they do not like it when marketers expect them to give away their time. But they want to be updated with good content, to be led to better, more usable information. When a brand is able to build a relationship with their prospects, conversion is but a natural consequence. Marketing automation is not just a solution to repetitive tasks. It becomes a tool for enriching conversations and strengthening loyalty.

Making it all work

It all boils down to one word. Intention. Marketers cannot send out weak emails just to acknowledge a response from a CTA button. There must be an intention for everything. The person receiving automated emails must go deeper into the funnel, not for the sole purpose of conversion but to create a connection.

Marketing automation must be executed with clear goals. Because of the changing attitude towards emails and SMS, a business must be able to position itself as a source of relevant and usable content. Anything more than that is spamming, anything short of that is passivity.