Every business is on a journey to grow and increase revenue. But in order to achieve these goals along the way, you need to align your people, process, and technology.  And how do you get there? Marketing automation technology can help.

In this post, I’ll share some of the basics about this important technology. If you’re new to our blog, read on; if you’ve been around a while, consider checking out one of our more advanced posts such as The ROI of Marketing Automation.

Marketing Automation Enables Modern Business Processes

Marketing has changed significantly over the past few years, and you have to do a lot more with less. Marketing automation helps you achieve success in 4 key ways:

1. You’re able to nurture relationships with customers who are not ready to buy. Typically, only one-fifth of your leads are ready to make a purchase the first time they come in. Nurturing those who are not ready to buy on the first go-round can increase your sales leads by 50%.

2. You are able retain and extend customer relationships. Over time, those relationships become deeper, which builds customer loyalty and keeps them coming back again and again. With a deeper relationship, you’ll also be able to up-sell and cross-sell to your customers, boosting revenue.

3. You are able to align marketing with sales to track leads properly. Your marketing will integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) software, so you can make sure you’re following up with “hot” leads, right when you know they’re ready to buy. The sales team will be able to automate processes such as lead recycling, service level agreements, and alerts. – href="http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2013/02/the-magic-behind-the-curtain-marketing-automation-will-make-it-all-happen.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+modernb2bmarketing+%28Marketo+B2B+Marketing+and+Sales+Blogs%29&utm_content=Google+Reader">Marketing Automation 101 by Jon Miller

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