Get More Hours In Your Day: How Marketing Automation Turns Back Time

A day in the life of a marketer is akin to a juggling act. You have to plan the day, check emails and respond to anything relevant, conduct a morning huddle with the team, monitor campaign performance, schedule social media posts (opens in new tab)(opens in new tab), and more.

While these tasks are critical, they can also be overwhelming and consume a huge share of your time. Fortunately, marketing automation(opens in new tab) (opens in new tab)(opens in new tab) helps you eliminate repetitive tasks and focus more of your time on high-value items on your to-do list and your big-picture marketing plan (opens in new tab)(opens in new tab).

In this article, we’ll dissect how marketing automation helps reduce the number of “things” you need to do in a day, turning back the clock and creating time so you can accomplish more high-priority items.

Daily Tasks that Marketing Automation Makes Simpler

1. Lead Scoring

Lead scoring(opens in new tab) entails assigning leads a score in a bid to set apart more qualified leads(opens in new tab) from low-fit prospects. It’s an intricate and time-consuming process when done manually, but setting up workflows and triggers within your marketing automation software updates the lead lifecycle and saves you hours(opens in new tab).

You set up automated rules and use the tagging feature to score leads(opens in new tab) based on how they interact with your channels. For example, you can tell BenchmarkONE to add a “CRM” tag to contacts who frequently visit the product page (opens in new tab)(opens in new tab) on your CRM website.

You can then configure automated rules such that when a lead with a “CRM” tag attains a score threshold, they are automatically added to the leads pipeline. Once the process is automated, you don’t have to lift a finger to score leads, saving you tons of tedious work.

Breakdown

To manually score your leads, first calculate your lead-to-customer conversion rate as a baseline.

New Customers / # of leads generated

Next, consider qualifiers such as industry, job title, marketing budget, and on-site actions to help you determine which are more desirable. Consider how many of your leads with those same attributes become customers.

From there, you’ll want to figure out the actual close rate for each qualifier. Determine how many people become customers or qualified leads with those qualifiers.

Lastly, compare that to your lead-to-customer conversion rate. If it’s higher, you’ll know those qualifiers should get a higher score.

As you can see, this process requires time and detail. First, make sure you have all the information you need, then do your calculations and assign your lead scores. With that in mind, let’s estimate that manually scoring one lead can take you approximately 20 minutes and that, on average, you generate 30 leads a week.

20 x 30 = 600 / 60 = 10 hours

2. Lead Nurturing

Once leads enter the pipeline, the next step is to convert them into customers(opens in new tab). Lead nurturing (opens in new tab) can take a lot of time, especially if you’re dealing with hundreds or even thousands of leads.

However, with BenchmarkONE, you can set up a drip email campaign (opens in new tab)(opens in new tab) to send emails to leads when they take a specific action. You could deliver targeted messages to leads based on their score, the pages they visit, whether they fill out a form, or their position in the marketing funnel (opens in new tab)(opens in new tab).

Doing so saves you time and ensures you deliver messages to the right prospect at the right time. The result? You’re able to capitalize on the right moments instead of overlooking them because you’re busy doing other things.

Breakdown

Let’s stick with the 30-leads-a-week model and assume it takes approximately 10 minutes to personalize and send an email. You’ll also want to consider the additional emails you’ll send in your drip campaigns. Let’s say you go with 5 emails per lead.

10 x 5 = 50 x 30 = 1,500 / 60 = 25 hours

3. Campaign Promotion

One of your roles as a marketer is to amplify your promotions and brand awareness(opens in new tab) through campaigns, content creation(opens in new tab), and social media.

These processes involve a lot of moving parts, and often need to work together to ensure your promos go as smoothly as possible. We covered email campaigns in point number two. However, email campaigns are just one side of the coin. Your social campaigns are just as important as they help you reach a wider audience engaged on other platforms.

When we get busy, things fall through the cracks, and, more often than not, social media gets neglected in favor of other things. But when you are able to prioritize social media, you’re not only able to grow your audience; you’re able to take advantage of posting times that will yield higher engagement.

Each social channel works differently. For example, to get the best results on Facebook, you should publish posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays(opens in new tab)(opens in new tab) between 8.00 AM and 12.00 PM, and on LinkedIn on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 9.00 AM. If you’re busy doing other things at these times, you’ll lose out on peak engagement blocks that could ultimately make your campaigns super successful.

Automating social media is key because it ensures you don’t overlook peak posting times and saves time with your social media strategy (opens in new tab)(opens in new tab). Some marketing automation tools include social publishing and scheduling capabilities, while others integrate with social media software, allowing you to access your channels within the same platform.

Whatever situation you find yourself in, utilizing a social media scheduler is an absolute must. Statistics show that scheduling posts all at once can save you up to six hours a week(opens in new tab), and maintaining a consistent social presence bodes well for potential new followers and customers.

4. Collaboration

Collaboration keeps marketing teams firmly fixed and working towards a common goal. While it’s indispensable, some aspects could be automated to save time for other high-value tasks.

Take team meetings, for instance. Meetings follow a near-identical process: you schedule the meeting, invite other team members, prepare the agenda, and finally, have the meeting. High-value meeting-related tasks, such as planning the agenda, can take at least 20 minutes.

According to the latest statistics, marketing executives hold 12 meetings per week(opens in new tab). With that many weekly meetings, agenda planning alone takes four hours. However, with an all-in-one CRM(opens in new tab), you can cut back on meeting time altogether.

An all-in-one CRM is a tool that combines marketing automation and CRM capabilities into a single, seamless package. Your sales and marketing team can access all your customer data and interactions, keeping them aligned and reducing catch-up time on your priority leads and accounts.

Statistics show 71% of meetings are(opens in new tab) ineffective (opens in new tab)(opens in new tab), which means that eight of the 12 meetings executives hold a week aren’t actually necessary. By trimming the fat and eliminating those eight needless touch bases, you’d save two hours and forty minutes a week.

Save Over 8 Hours a Day

After adding up the hours saved and dividing it by five (assuming you only work five days a week, that is), the hours saved by marketing automation is astounding. Marketing has numerous aspects that could be automated to save time. We just highlighted a few of these tasks to give you a sneak peek into the time-saving benefits marketing automation affords you.

It’s important to note, however, that these numbers are mostly estimates based on our predictions of how long these tasks should take the average marketing professional. Some people may take more or less time to complete the various tasks we covered, and some teams may be larger or smaller, which also can contribute to efficiency. Either way, marketing automation truly does save you a ton of time, and as marketers, small business owners, and company leaders, who couldn’t use that?