What are the differences between e-mail marketing automation and marketing automation? Blendee explains it to you in a few simple steps.
The term marketing automation originated in the late 1990s and early 2000s to denote a natural evolution of many CRM platforms. The main innovation consisted, in those years, in the ability to perform repetitive tasks such as sending messages via sms and email, automatically and based on available data (we are talking about times when mobile internet and social networks did not yet exist).
Marketing Automation vs Email Marketing Automation
Although the two terms email marketing automation and marketing automation for much of the market are equivalent, it is appropriate and due to make a distinction. Today marketing automation should be understood to mean all forms of automation, which affect the user experience, taking into account all available channels: from mobile to social, from website to whatsapp.
Email marketing automation, on the other hand, is only about sending the email. To better understand the difference, let’s look at how an email marketing automation platform works: typically, email marketing automation is based on the concatenation of automated messages. These email sequences are set up in a workflow. This is a flowchart of cause and effect setting, with alternate paths based on opening and clicks on an email. It goes without saying that if the user does not open the communications, the company is left without alternative means, having no other channels to contact them.
Email marketing automation: the limitations
Although it is a powerful tool, it cannot solve all the needs of a modern marketer for many reasons. In particular, it cannot and should not work on concatenation, but on simultaneity.
Here’s why:
For the omnichannel consumer, one channel is not enough
Journeys are very complex and touch so many touchpoints within even a few hours. An email open can occur long after it is sent. Waiting time between an open and a click to determine the next action risks missing opportunities. Action needs to be taken now. If the user browses social and then only later checks mail, can we perhaps not intercept them? The logics by whichemail marketing works do not simulate the actual behavior of an online user.
Email is an overcrowded channel
Overused and often with little attention span, it is certainly not sufficient unto itself. There are segments of users that are perfectly “insensitive” to email. This is why marketing automation needs to be everywhere, from ads on social to apps to possible interactions within physical stores.
No predictive marketing
Email marketing automation does not make decisions like predictive marketing platforms. It simply relies on the verification of certain conditions – elementary and content-poor as open clicks – and acts accordingly. Therefore, it does not take advantage of the potential of algorithms that can intervene in real time by also considering the behavior of similar users, also possibly learning from the “non-action” of users and making the most of all the information that they leave us in whatever time and manner they interact with us.
Works only on registered users
Email marketing does not work on anonymous users, those who browse the site but have not yet registered either for technical or obvious legal issues. Even on these targets it is possible to automate messages onsite and by personalizing the website in real time, for example with pop-ups and behavioral messages.
Segmentation only on the database
So segmentation is based only on static information. The experience begins only after they are “facts have already happened,” whereas an automation platform should take into account changing circumstances (purchases, abandonments, clicks on proprietary and third-party platforms, etc.).
The potential of Marketing Automation
Here, instead, are the features of a marketing automation platform such as Blendee:
Acts on all channels
Blendee is natively omnichannel. Its “Experience Manager” dashboard allows you to articulate a rich and complex interaction taking into account all the channels available to you.
Customize content in real time
Email communications sent by Blendee can change their content upon opening and thus taking into account all previous interactions that have occurred at the experience manager level. In this way, messages will always be the most relevant to the user
Stops a workflow if circumstances change.
With Blendee, it is the users’ own behaviors that drive, not the concatenation typical ofemail marketing. An experience can stop or change at any time based on the outcomes recorded in real time and as a user moves from one segment to another.
Dynamic Segmentation
t has dynamic segmentation that acts on the customer lifecycle not just static profiling. This means that a user can fluidly enter and exit an experience while browsing a site or visiting a store. If he buys something or is interested in a certain product, Blendee finds out right away, not waiting for an email click.
Marketing automation then is much more than an email marketing workflow. Want to see it for yourself? Request a demo!
