According to IDC, the overall market for automating marketing will grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $4.8 billion in 2015.Moreover, they predict that over the next 4 years, marketing automation is the only segment that is expected to grow faster than any other segment of CRM.

1. Shorten Sales Cycle and Boost Revenue with Marketing Automation Software
According to IDC, the overall market for automating marketing will grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $4.8 billion in
2015. Moreover, they predict that over the next 4 years, marketing automation is the only segment that is
expected to grow faster than any other segment of CRM. This definitely shows that marketing automation is here
to stay. However, before delving further into it, let’s first understand the term marketing automation.
Marketing automation is a technology that makes use of software to automate marketing management and
customer engagement. An integral component of customer relationship management (CRM), marketing
automation helps in customer segmentation, customer data integration (CDI) and campaign management.
Marketing automation helps to streamline marketing and sales activities by automating the processes that have
been traditionally performed manually. Thus, marketing automation allows enterprises to:
Develop and analyze marketing campaigns and customers
Manage marketing campaigns
Appropriate customer data organization and storage
Review traffic statistics
Measure conversions
Interact with customers
Evaluate customer data
Provide marketing content
Marketing automation software provides information across all phases of the marketing process and this includes:
Marketing intelligence
Workflow management
Web-based archive and real-time traffic analysis
Lead management, scoring and nurturing
Marketing campaign creation and monitoring
Built-in or integrated CRM
Landing page development/management
Blogging
Data orchestration
Email marketing
Social marketing
Marketing analytics
Enterprises need to deploy best of the breed marketing automation software to create and manage effective
marketing campaigns. Here is a look at some of the important features and benefits of the best of the breed
marketing automation software.
Builds a pipeline of qualified leads
Tracks visitor intent in real time
Aligns marketing and sales goals
Creates, manages and tracks campaign elements (emails, landing pages, workflow, social media, etc.)
using built-in tools
Enhance lead nurturing using campaign triggers from website interactions, social media activities, forms-
fills, etc.
Tracks and correlates disparate prospect interactions with social media
Converts anonymous website visits into sales opportunities by correlating all related online activities

2. Identifies and qualifies sales opportunities by measuring the online behavior of prospects
Delivers an unprecedented level of intelligence about prospect intent and his/her purchasing proclivities
Separates the high-intent, ready-to-buy leads from the low-intent, just-looking-for-info leads
Provides complete lead data from company details to decision maker contact data
Integrates easily with sales CRM system thereby ensuring a smooth transition of leads from marketing to
sales
With today’s business environment becoming highly competitive, investing in marketing automation software that
shortens sales cycles and boosts revenue can help enterprises in understanding their customers’ intent clearly and
respond to them effectively.
Also read more on - lead generation, marketing funnel, Demand Generation