The 7 Types of Marketing Automation Any Local Business Can Use

By Raubi Perilli

May 21, 2021 Solutions

Marketing takes a lot of time and resources. For local businesses, it can feel overwhelming to need to constantly monitor and set up campaigns. Thankfully, there are types of marketing automation that both big and small brands can use to make their marketing more simple and streamlined.

Local businesses can set up marketing automation tactics that keep their marketing running in the background while they take care of business in other departments.

Let’s look at a few of these types of marketing automation and how they can simplify your marketing tasks.

What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is a series of systems that collects business data and automates repetitive marketing tasks based on data. Rather than manually setting up marketing campaigns, you can use marketing automation to define triggers that release marketing messages.

Not only does automation make marketing easier, but it also makes marketing more effective.

Automated marketing, while it may seem impersonal on the surface, is actually a way to launch more personalized marketing campaigns. You can use audience segmentation to identify smaller categories of people within your audience and send them messaging that is more relevant to their wants and needs.

7 Types of Marketing Automation

If you want to implement marketing automation, you have a variety of types of marketing automation to choose from. You can use some of these automation tactics on their own or combine them to get even better results.

#1) Email Marketing

One of the most common types of marketing automation is email marketing. In most cases, all you need to set up email marketing automation campaigns is email marketing software. Most email marketing software offers automation triggers so you can do things like:

Send a welcome email when someone signs up for your list
Send a series of emails if someone clicks on a link in an email
Send a drip campaign if someone requests a specific opt-in on your website

#2) Text Marketing

Text marketing is similar to email marketing in that you only need text marketing software to start running and automating campaigns. You can set up a customer database and invite customers to join by asking them to sign up during brand interactions or texting a phrase to a specified number. Once customers are in your database, you can:

Send up a welcome series when someone join your list
Send reminder emails leading up to an event or appointment
Use location-based marketing to text customers when they are near your business

#3) Social Media

Marketing automation for social media can be as simple as scheduling upcoming posts so you don’t have to constantly stay on top of posting. But you can also utilize more technical types of marketing automation using social media tools and software. You can:

Schedule upcoming posts and content
Set up chatbots in account messengers to answer frequently asked questions
Use digital retargeting to show ads to people who visit your social media profiles or engage with your content

#4) Display Ads

The display ads that you present to audiences can be made more specific and relevant by using marketing automation. Hyper-targeting, retargeting, and programmatic advertising can all trigger actions that enable you to:

Use digital retargeting to show ads to people who visit your website
Choose which ads to display based on the ads already seen by your audience
Present ads for products that customers viewed or put in their cart but didn’t purchase

#5) Geofencing

Geofencing is a type of marketing automation that considers a customer’s location when presenting them with display ads, videos, and native content. You can use geofencing automation to:

Trigger display ads when a person enters a competitor business
Trigger video ads when a person visits your location
Display video ads on connected TV (CTV) a day after a customer visited your business

#6) A/B Testing

Marketing automation can also improve the effectiveness of your marketing messaging. You can use automation to sync with A/B testing so software can identify your messages that are high performing and amplify those messages over ones that are low-performing.

Use programmatic advertising to display two versions of an ad, collect data on which performs best, and boost the better performing ad
Send emails with two variations of subject lines, use automated A/B testing to see which performs better, and then send the remaining emails based on which performed best
Display two versions of a landing page to website visitors, collect data, and remove the lower performing version of the page

#7) Customer Data Platforms

Customer data platforms such as point-of-sale (POS) systems and customer relationship management (CRM) software can help you set up marketing automation. You can use the systems to create profiles for your customers and trigger actions based on how customers engage with your business, website, and online ordering systems. You can use this type of marketing automation to:

Trigger an email if a customer leaves something in their cart
Send a text message if a customer hasn’t visited in a set amount of time
Send emails with offers and coupons related to a customer’s recent purchase
Present related items or previously purchased items on your website while customers are shopping

Which Type of Marketing Automation Is Right For Your Business?

Marketing can take a lot of time and energy. Marketing automation helps take off some of the pressure of constantly triggering marketing campaigns. Businesses can set up marketing campaigns once and allow them to run on their own over and over.

There are many types of marketing automation to choose from. Some require nothing more than email marketing software or social media scheduling tools while other tactics require connections between your customer data platform and marketing tools. Whichever you choose to use, you will see benefits from automating some of your marketing processes.

If you want to see what type of marketing automation is best for your business, contact the team at MyArea Network.

We specialize in using customer data to trigger informed, strategic local marketing campaigns, and we’d love to see how we could set up marketing automation systems for your local brand. Contact us today.

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