Marketing Automation Predictions

Every year bloggers make predictions about the future of marketing: trends, themes and next year’s silver bullets. Of all these exciting and optimistic predictions, what excites me the most about 2015 is one simple thing: accessibility. William Gibson, a speculative fiction novelist once said, _“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”_ With fewer than 5% of companies leveraging marketing automation in 2014, 2015 owes the other 95% of marketers the future.

Accessible technology: easy to try, buy and use

In 2014, marketing automation is hard, time consuming, and expensive. It’s still shockingly complex for marketers to implement a simple lead nurturing program. As a result, the technology has been mostly relegated to the “tech elite” - or large B2B tech companies with the budgets and skills to automate their marketing - and has failed to become a standard part of every marketer’s toolkit. Today’s most commonly used marketing automation platforms are built for Enterprise buyers, are only used by 3% of businesses - and cannot be self-evaluated or self-implemented like other cloud-based apps built for the internet generation (i.e. services like Basecamp, Zendesk, or Optimizely). Trying and buying marketing automation services requires extensive interaction with sales people, long-term contracts, time-consuming implementation projects, and price tags in the tens or hundreds of thousands per year— which is out of reach for the majority of marketers. Prediction: In 2015, the barriers to entry, complexity, and evaluation of marketing technology will change, leading to higher industry adoption. Lead nurturing will become a marketing best practice, as new technologies and simple solutions to complex problems emerge.

Physical APIs in marketing

You’ve heard the buzz surrounding big data, dynamic content, and website personalization. But one trend that makes it easy to put the physical touch into digital marketing has garnered surprisingly little attention: I’d like to declare 2015 the year of the Physical API. Physical APIs give developers access to infrastructure services that were not previously connected to the Internet and were hard to automate - like high quality printing services that create beautiful postcards and mail them via the world’s postal services. Now, imagine combining physical APIs with your marketing automation system. Instead of sending email as part of a lead nurturing program, imagine being able to mail a personalized postcard to a person after they take certain actions, like attending your webinar. Imagine after someone completes a survey, your marketing automation system automatically sends a gift card as a way of saying thanks. This is the new world of marketing using Physical APIs + automation, and this is a remarkable breakthrough in technology. _Prediction: In 2015, Physical APIs will give marketers access to new communication methods in lead nurturing. Expect to see channels including print, SMS, phone calls, surveys, push notifications, handwritten notes and gifts be more widely used by ever-more creative marketers. _

Lead nurturing beyond email

Today, we still think of lead nurturing as a barrage of impersonal, commercial-sounding emails sent to inboxes that people are trying hard to avoid. Instead of being about nurturing better relationships through personalized, insightful content, lead nurturing is often a series of generic, self-serving ”drip-nurture” emails. This is the biggest disappointment in our industry. Google is working on self-driving cars, and marketing automation still hasn’t advanced beyond timed email. Prediction: In 2015, we will finally see lead nurturing break through beyond basic email communication. As marketing automation + Physical APIs make multi-channel engagement more accessible, we will see more creative approaches to relationship building with prospects and customers.

“Relationship Marketing” that spans the buyer’s journey

The complexity of marketing automation implementations today means most of your time is spent simply getting the technology to work – as opposed to actually building better customer buying journeys through useful nurturing. But in 2015, marketing automation software will become easier to use, and Physical APIs and personalization technologies will expand the marketers’ quiver. We believe the fusion of automation, physical APIs, and personalization will lead to what we call relationship marketing. While lead nurturing is a means to an end, the goal is really to build better relationships with your customers. Better relationships beget word-of-mouth recommendations, turn leads into loyal customers, and help shorten the buying cycle. Prediction: In 2015, the fusion of automation, physical APIs, and personalization technologies spanning the buyer’s journey will lead to the inception of relationship marketing. Relationship marketing brings customers and companies closer together - while driving short and long-term financial success.

Ad retargeting’s new best friend: marketing automation

In 2014, retargeting is smarter than ever before. When we browse websites, relevant ads follow us around the internet—sometimes it’s creepy and sometimes it’s incredibly helpful. This technology will improve in leaps and bounds in 2015 thanks to retargeting’s new best friend: marketing automation. Today, after you have purchased a product or have moved on from an evaluation, you are still served ads that are no longer relevant. These ads do nothing to foster a better relationship with you and the company. Instead they become annoying, unhelpful, and expose a lack of understanding between the business and customer. But instead, imagine that after you purchase a service like Autopilot, and are in the early stages of learning the product, you are served retargeted ads that promote the objectives of becoming proficient with Autopilot. By understanding the customer relationship, marketing automation can facilitate better retargeting journeys. Prediction: In 2015, marketing automation coupled with ad retargeting will help marketers create better relationships with prospects and customers, while driving measurable results across the full revenue cycle. What are your predictions for marketing automation in 2015? Please share in the comments below!