Marketing Automation 101: Tips, Examples, Uses, and Tools
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A marketer’s job is by no means easy. You’ve got to get all fronts covered, whether it is market research, managing customer engagement strategies, or boosting sales. Since marketing has gone digital, it has become even more competitive. In this backdrop, digital marketing automation offers a level playing field for marketers to keep up with the competition.
But that’s not all. Well-crafted marketing automation strategies can do more than just automate repetitive tasks. As per Ascend2’s 2024 survey on marketing automation, 89% agree that automation helps create effective customer journeys.
From benefits and uses to tactics and the best tools, here’s all you need to know about automation in marketing in 2025. Let’s dive in!
What Is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation refers to the use of technology to automate routine tasks and processes in marketing. These tasks include sending scheduled emails, posting on social media, analyzing customer data, and more. Automation in marketing can help brands save time, effort, and costs, enhance efficiency, and boost ROI.
Besides automating repetitive processes, automation in marketing can help with lead generation, personalize customer journeys, and facilitate cross-channel marketing communication. This equips marketers with the arsenal they need to easily execute their marketing automation strategy.
How does marketing automation work?
Marketing automation helps collect customer data, which can be used to effectively segment customers and hyper-personalize journeys. Moreover, it can execute workflows when certain trigger conditions are met. For example, sending a specific email automatically at a certain time to a certain customer.
Essentially, digital marketing automation can automate entire workflows, such as onboarding processes and campaigns, while also analyzing performance and optimizing efforts in real time.
Benefits of Marketing Automation
Among the many marketing automation benefits, we’ve listed the most noteworthy ones below.
- Saves time: One of the main advantages of marketing automation strategies is efficiency. It can take over your daily mundane tasks like scheduling posts and emails, and enabling your team to focus on strategy and creativity instead of execution. No wonder 91% of marketers said automation is essential for business productivity.
- Improves conversion rate: Marketing process automation can allow you to focus on lead nurturing, A/B testing, personalization, and data-driven targeting. 76% of businesses that use digital marketing automation saw ROI within a year.
- Helps scale operations: Growth can add complexity to your business. Digital marketing automation can help retain the quality of your campaigns as the scale rises. Whether you are managing hundreds of customers or millions, each customer can receive personalized, relevant, and timely messaging without ballooning headcount, effort, or costs.
- Enables integration of sales & marketing: Automation passes your leads to sales with a rich context of customer behavior. This way, your sales teams can act faster and smarter in alignment with the brand’s marketing strategy.
- Efficiently tracks performance: Good automation platforms offer analytics that show which channels and creatives are working for your brand. Real-time feedback for your brand means dynamic optimization based on data, not guesswork.
Common Marketing Automation Mistakes
Before leapfrogging into how automating your marketing efforts can help your brand, let’s understand what you must avoid doing.
- Setting and forgetting: Automation isn’t about “setting and forgetting.” One of the most common marketing automation mistakes is keeping rules associated with outdated triggers, expired consent, or old customer behavior running. Such mistakes can lead to irrelevant messaging, affecting engagement.
- Lack of clear goals: Without specific goals, automation is like shooting arrows in the dark. Anchor each workflow to measurable outcomes (e.g., “Convert 5% of free-trial users in 7 days to paying customers”).
- Using automation only for one purpose: Imagine you’re using a Ferrari just for some daily grocery runs. Sure, it works, but it’s underpowered and underutilized. The same goes for automation when you use it for only one channel or format.
- Choosing the wrong automation tool: An ill-suited automation tool can lead to duplication, data lags, and unreliable dashboards. If it can’t sync with your CRM, it can lead to even greater manual efforts—the opposite of good marketing automation implementation.
- Not experimenting: Automation in marketing is all about experimenting with features, channels, messaging, formats, and more. If you’re not leveraging features like real-time analytics, A/B testing, and more, for instance, you’re not making the most of automation.
5 Innovative Marketing Automation Uses
Using digital marketing automation in your strategy can open up a world of new possibilities. However, it’s important to stick to those applications that are aligned with your overall marketing strategy. Here’s a glimpse at some key marketing automation use cases that are common for B2C brands.
1. Text Message Automation
There is nothing more personal than sending a relevant text message to customers exactly when they need it. Done right, text message automation is like having a personal sales associate in their pocket.
Think of a retail brand sending cart reminders or flash sale text messages to reach relevant customers instantly, which can potentially lift conversion.
2. Email Automation
One of the most innovative digital marketing automation uses is creating email drip campaigns. Marketing automation can orchestrate anything from welcome sequences to re-engagement flows.
With email marketing automation software, you can also onboard new customers in industries like higher education or financial services with curated resources, video walkthroughs, and step-by-step guides.
3. Push Notification Automation
A small but powerful way to keep your customers engaged is to send personalized automated push notifications. For example, a food delivery app sends lunch-hour offers near office districts. Or a med spa sends a gentle nudge 5 weeks after a treatment, saying, “Time to book your next appointment? We’ve saved you your favorite slot.”
Such alerts work best in case of flash sales, limited-time offers, and other scenarios where timing is everything.
4. Mobile Marketing Automation
As an increasing number of customers transact on their smartphones, mobile marketing automation is no longer an option. B2C marketers can cleverly use in-app messages, SMS, and push notifications to create a more intimate and connected customer experience.
For instance, a luxury travel brand sends a mobile push notification about an exclusive trip. When the customer clicks it and opens the app, there’s an in-app message displaying the detailed itinerary.
5. Enterprise Marketing Automation
Automation at the enterprise level is about orchestrating entire customer journeys. Not only do you have to move customers across multiple touchpoints, but you also have to think about brand consistency and regulatory compliance.
With enterprise marketing automation software, you get to automate multi-brand, multi-region journeys at scale with localization and consent controls. A global retail brand, for example, can roll out a regional product launch, automatically tailoring messages by preferred customer profiles, store inventory, and local events.
Marketing Automation Strategies & Tactics
An effective marketing automation strategy meets the brand’s objectives. Here are some smart steps and strategies you can implement in your automation journey.
How to set up marketing automation
It’s time to act! Here’s your step-by-step guide on how to get started with marketing automation:
- Have specific goals: Set specific outcomes with KPIs and time windows. For instance, a specific ROI, repeat purchase targets, conversion rate, etc., all within a finite timeframe.
- Define your customer: Capture the required demographics, interests, and preferred channels to design tailored automation.
- Chart out customer journeys: Map through the stages of awareness, consideration, purchase, onboarding, retention, and expansion.
- Prioritize omnichannel experiences: Ensure that your messaging is consistent across email, SMS, push, in-app, physical stores, and website.
- Analyze data: Choose a metric for every flow as well as supporting KPIs (like conversion rate, time-to-value, CLV, etc.).
Best practices in marketing automation
Marketing automation strategies work best when they mirror how your customers are actually moving, speak to them in the right place, and prove their impact at every step. Below are some best practices you can use in your automation efforts.
1. Define the customer journey
Make a sketch of the stages beginning with onboarding, annotate the drop-offs, and list triggers and roadblocks. This converts vague “engagement” into fixable bottlenecks and becomes your marketing automation process flow.
2. Identify channels
Choose the channels you want to use automation for. For instance, awareness and informative messaging may require email or in-app, urgent communication may require push notifications/SMS, and so on. Remember that the right message, channel, and time is just the concoction you need to nudge your customers to the next step.
3. Measure impact
Track KPIs meant for analyzing engagement, conversion, and costs of your content marketing automation campaign. It is wise to choose these KPIs before you commence your automation journey so you know whether your strategy is well-aligned with your goals. For example, a marketing automation strategy aimed at boosting conversion will measure ROI.
4. Hyper-personalize and warm up leads slowly
Automation platforms go beyond regular personalization by leveraging customer behavior patterns. Using AI, marketers can get customer insights and create dynamic content to customize messaging in real-time. This can lead to greater engagement and, in the long run, trust, retention, and, in turn, enhance conversion.
5. Find the right frequency
How often does a customer need to hear from you? Strike the right chord when it comes to the frequency of interacting with your customers during stages like onboarding, browsing, and purchase completion.
A key marketing automation benefit is the ability to dynamically optimize interactions at various touchpoints based on previous interaction outcomes.
6. Social listening
Reviews, comments, and support tickets can work as a guiding compass for your brand. Using marketing automation software, you can effectively gather what your customers and prospects think about your brand, products, or offerings, and where you can make improvements from multiple channels, like your website, app, and social media.
Cross-channel marketing automation tools can even help you analyze this data so you can effectively act on the insights.
7. Drive cross-channel campaigns
If you want to truly take advantage of automation, consider executing your marketing initiatives across channels. Telling a single coherent story across platforms can cement your positioning in your customer’s minds and make it easy for them to continue their journey seamlessly.
For instance, a customer who browses some products on your website and then sees similar products on your app is more likely to make a purchase than a customer who has to start the search afresh on the app.
Optimizing marketing automation workflows
Optimization of your marketing automation workflows can help you turn a working plan into a reliable growth engine. Here are some ways to do so.
- Place the customer at the center when planning a workflow: Plan all the communication based on where the customer is in the purchase journey. For instance, a new customer can be allocated to a flow that nudges them to create an account, browse products, and finish a purchase. On the other hand, a customer who has abandoned their cart can be part of a flow that retargets them with relevant offers.
- Identify suitable channels and frequency for campaigns: Launching a campaign? It’s wise to determine the right channels and frequency for specific customer segments first. For example, a festive sale campaign can be announced a month before via email with weekly reminders and via push notifications on the day of the sale.
- Experiment, analyze, iterate: Unlike manual marketing, marketing automation workflows allow marketers to experiment. With real-time data insights, brands can refine their marketing efforts quickly.
Reporting on Marketing Automation Performance
If automation is your car’s engine, reporting is your go-to dashboard. Measuring marketing automation performance can help turn insights into actionable decisions: what to keep, what to fix, and what to stop.
Below are some key metrics to help analyze your marketing automation performance.
Open Rate / Click-Through Rate
Open rate and click-through rate (CTR) can be considered as the first signals of a campaign’s health. Strong results show that your audience is engaging with your brand. Open rate is important to measure because it shows if your messaging is relevant enough for the audience to read through.
How to measure: You can measure open rate by dividing the unique opens by the number of delivered messages, and then multiplying the result by 100.
Conversion Rate
Clicks are nice to have, but conversions drive sales. For marketers, conversion rate is an important metric to track as it measures the overall efficiency of your campaign, that is, the percentage of visitors who actually make a purchase. This way, you know if marketing and automation are giving you tangible results.
How to measure: To measure conversion rate, simply divide total conversions by the total number of visitors and multiply the result by 100.
Customer Acquisition Cost
Customer acquisition cost, or CAC, is the total expense incurred to acquire a new customer. With CAC, you can understand whether your digital marketing automation strategy is cost-effective and whether it needs to be optimized.
How to measure: You can measure customer acquisition cost by dividing the total acquisition spend during a period by the number of new customers in the same period.
ROI
Return on investment, or marketing automation ROI, measures the overall profitability of your marketing automation initiatives. ROI can inform brands if the spending is justified, help allocate budgets for future campaigns, and so on.
How to measure: To calculate return on investment, subtract the overall marketing cost from the revenue generated and divide the result by the marketing cost. Then, multiply the derived number by 100.
Top 3 Marketing Automation Tools & Software
Choosing the right marketing automation software is a crucial step that can make or break your brand. Here are some platforms that deserve your attention.
1. MoEngage
MoEngage is one of the most widely recognized customer engagement platforms built for multi-channel automation. It helps you connect with your customers across multiple touchpoints, such as email, push notifications, SMS, and in-app messages. With MoEngage, you can reach customers at scale, deliver relevant messaging, segment and hyper-personalize, and leverage AI-driven capabilities.
How it helps with automation: With an intuitive UI and dual AI capabilities, MoEngage can enable you to engage with your customers automatically in real time across eleven channels. MoEngage’s cross-channel engagement platform does so based on customers’ evolving preferences, behavior, likes, and affinities.
2. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is best known for its email marketing automation. With an easy-to-use interface and AI analytics, it is designed for small- to mid-sized businesses that want quick, effective campaigns without needing a big tech setup. However, Mailchimp’s focus is largely narrowed to email, and its automation capabilities are also limited for complex customer journeys.
How it helps with automation: Mailchimp provides a simplified way to set up automated email sequences, welcome flows, cart recovery, product recommendations, etc, for small- to mid-sized brands without the need for advanced technical skills.
3. HubSpot
HubSpot is a full-fledged CRM automation software for brands that need a single system to manage leads, nurture them, and track their sales pipeline. HubSpot specializes in allowing unified and automated B2B journeys with longer sales cycles; however, it may not be the best fit for B2C brands.
How it helps with automation: HubSpot enables you to align marketing and sales on one platform so you can manage leads automatically through the funnel.
Marketing Automation Examples for Different Industries & Niches
Marketing automation isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Each industry needs to adapt its uses to solve its unique challenges. In fact, three out of four companies (75%) are using at least one automation tool to reduce manual work and improve efficiency.
Let’s look at some interesting marketing automation use cases across industries:
Ecommerce
Ecommerce marketing automation has become the backbone of online retail. An increasing number of ecommerce brands are doubling down on personalized product recommendations, cart recovery reminders, and seasonal promotions.
For example, Nike used a customer service chatbot in Facebook Messenger called Nike StyleBot to offer its customers highly personalized experiences, such as creating their own designs and sharing them with friends.
Quick Service Restaurants
Automation in QSR is allowing restaurants to keep their customers coming back for more. Using email and push notification automation, QSRs can send limited-time menus and offers to customers based on their visit/order history, time of day, and even location.
For instance, a pizza brand may choose to send customers push notifications around dinner time with “2-for-1” deals.
There are many marketing automation use cases where brands effectively gamify loyalty programs. For example, an in-app notification like “You’re one coffee away from becoming a member” can nudge customers to become part of an exclusive club.
Personalization in Marketing Automation
Personalization in marketing automation has moved far beyond using a first name in an email. It now means tailoring experiences based on actual behavior.
For instance, Spotify auto-suggests music their customers are likely to listen to. Likewise, a grocery app may remind you to reorder milk every 10 days because it has learned your purchase habits. Automation makes this level of personalization possible for your brand across millions of users at once.
Omnichannel Experiences
Your customers can be present at any touchpoint. As a brand, your job is to keep their experiences consistent across all touchpoints using omnichannel marketing automation. For example, travel companies might email your ticket confirmation, send app notifications about gate changes, and follow up with an SMS reminder when boarding starts.
AI in Marketing Automation
AI has been a game-changer for digital marketing automation, especially in the areas of predictive analytics and generating content across formats. Marketers can use AI to fine-tune their marketing efforts in real-time. For instance, a Fintech app can nudge its customers to save more when it spots a hike in their spending using its predictive AI model.
Set Up Marketing Automation for Customer Engagement with MoEngage
Clearly, marketing automation strategies can help you achieve what manual marketing cannot. However, selecting the right automation software can be a critical decision for your brand.
If you’re looking for end-to-end automation of your marketing workflow, a one-stop solution like MoEngage can elevate your brand’s efforts. MoEngage is a cross-channel engagement platform that offers unified reporting, real-time analysis, personalized experiences, and improved engagement—all this driven by the dual power of Sherpa AI and Merlin AI.
Talk to us for a demo and learn how MoEngage can help you achieve your marketing goals with complete automation.
