More and more small- to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) today are embracing automation solutions to help grow their business. Marketing automation, in particular, provides the tools necessary to execute, manage, and streamline marketing tasks that help capture leads and nurture them into sales-ready prospects. Here’s why your SMB shouldn’t pass up the powerful opportunities you get with marketing automation.

Instant responses to email requests

If a customer or prospect sends your business an email via your website or a “Contact Us” form, any delay in response could ultimately cost you a client. But if you have a marketing automation plan in place, you can customize automatic email responses to respond to these leads as soon as an email is received. This either provides potential customers with the information they requested or informs them that you will be responding in greater detail soon.

Automatic follow-ups

There’s a reason most people prefer to communicate via email: keeping in touch over the phone can be tough if both parties are always busy. An automated system solves this by logging the time and date of your contact with the leads, then automatically emailing them about follow-up times. The call, email, and responses are all logged in your customer relationship management software and calendar without a single minute wasted on inputting information.

Inbound lead assignment

When you have phone calls, emails, and meetings piling up, it’s hard to keep track of who is working with a customer. With marketing automation software and tracking, customer service representatives are automatically assigned to inbound leads based on specialties and demographics so they can begin working on building profitable rapport right away.

Easier content distribution

Potential clients and leads get dozens, sometimes hundreds, of business emails every day. You need something to set your business apart from the rest. By offering valuable content such as how-to guides and total cost of ownership tools in exchange for contact information, you can provide prospects with content they actually want.

All it takes is a web form and some creative writing that will ultimately lead visitors back to your products and/or services. Your automation software delivers content to anyone who provides contact information, and it downloads metrics that can be tracked and analyzed by your solution.

Organized contact list

Networking events generate new contacts and new leads. This used to mean having to keep track of thick stacks of business cards, but cutting-edge marketing tools has made it possible to take a picture of contact information and automatically store it as part of a cloud-based database. Call-ins, scanned business cards, and received emails all get organized into a single digital Rolodex with recommendations on whom to contact and when it is best to do so — without one minute of tedious data entry.

Every business owner knows that automating mindless tasks is a worthwhile investment. But not everyone knows just what tools are available to help them cut down on wasted work. Our team specializes in using technology to add value to your business, and we believe that if you’re not utilizing any of the solutions above, that’s the best place to start. Get in touch with us today to make your marketing technology work for you.

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People are visual creatures, which means we interpret visual data better than written words. That’s why most businesses turn to dashboards as a business intelligence tool to present data in a way that’s easy to understand. Dashboards have become a critical part of the analytics process. Here are some common uses of dashboards across various business functions.

Marketing insights

An organization’s marketing department typically analyzes a significant amount of data from various channels. Whether the purpose is to forecast monthly sales, predict trends, or build marketing strategies, marketing officers use dashboards to compare, sort, and analyze raw data to churn out meaningful information presented in an easy-to-understand format. This allows key decision makers to easily make decisions using that information.

Tracking sales opportunities

Sales dashboards are perfect for tracking products and services. They help you identify sales opportunities by monitoring top-selling products and comparing the growth in revenue on a periodical basis. They sync to your raw data, so your charts are always up to date, thus eliminating the need to spend hours manually entering and preparing sales reports and charts.

Social media management

Social media management is more than just posting regularly on your business’s social media accounts. And in most cases, your social media platform’s default dashboard doesn’t give you deep insight into your social media campaigns. What’s more, managing multiple social media accounts can quickly become a cumbersome process since you have to use several login credentials. Instead, you can manage your accounts all at once through a comprehensive social media dashboard, saving you valuable time and effort.

Financial reports

Presenting financial data is so complex that it often leads to misinterpretation and misunderstanding of critical data. Dashboards make creating financial reports much easier, and financial analysts can take advantage of dashboards to display sensitive data in a comprehensible graphical format — be it customer invoices, progress toward revenue goals, or business expenses.

Project collaboration

Businesses of all sizes require their employees to collaborate on projects, whether on-site or online. Project supervisors need to get their teams together to give them projects’ requirements, deadlines, and responsibilities, and to get progress updates. With the help of project collaboration dashboards, members will see the complete workflow of the project, allowing for a more efficient and collaborative working environment.

Dashboards eliminate the complications of presenting complex business data and make your team more efficient. If you’re looking to implement dashboards and other cutting-edge tools to make your job easier, contact our consultants today.

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