Top 6 Marketing Automation Trends to Watch Out For In 2021

Top 6 marketing automation trends for 2021

The marketing automation industry is projected to grow to $6.4 Billion by 2024. A 2019 survey indicates that 75 percent of companies worldwide use at least one automation tool for their business operations. Keeping in mind that marketing automation boosts sales by 14.5 percent and reduces marketing costs by 12.2 percent, 63 percent of the marketers say they will soon increase the marketing automation budgets. 

While lead generation is the prime objective of implementing marketing automation, it also serves as the opportunity to upsell, cross-sell, and reinforce branding for businesses. 

Owing to the massive potential that can disrupt the online business ecosystem and e-commerce, marketing automation is here to stay. So, what should businesses expect out of it in the upcoming year?

Top 6 Marketing Automation Trends To Watch Out For In 2021 

Personalization Through AI

Personalization Through Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will be at the heart of marketing automation in 2021 and the years to follow. Marketers have already started using intelligent tools that score leads based on multiple data-points, reveal deep audience insights, and enable hyper-personalization. 

‘Data is the new oil’ – and building upon this foundation; it is only the machine that can make effective and actionable decisions by crunching the numbers. Through smart segmentation and audience clustering, marketers will provide exceptionally personalized and contextual content to the customers. In essence, AI & ML will be the core marketing automation trends to boost customer engagements and retention.  

Email Automation Will Be Popular

Email Automation Will Be Popular

Email marketing automation is already gaining traction for e-commerce brands. 75% of the marketers already consider it a highly-suitable channel for automation to increase engagements and sales. 

An email has an open-rate of 15-25 percent with CTR between 2-3.5 percent. Email leads are high-intent, and it is a reliable revenue & campaign channel for most businesses. Email automation will be a popular trend for B2C as well as B2B business segments in 2021. 

Event-driven and custom email engagement workflows already help brands optimize customer communication, onboarding, and sales journey. For instance, AI-based marketing automation tools like Wigzo allow marketers to create tailored email trigger workflows to enhance sales and customer retention. 

Social Media Automation for Branding & Engagement

Social Media Automation & Brand Engagement

For brands that offer personalized content for their audience, social media engagement stands at the top. Social media channels are crucial for brands to engage in 1:1 conversations with their customers, discover their aspirations, problems, and viable solutions. No wonder social media automation will dominate e-commerce brands in 2021. 

Presently, marketers consider social media post scheduling as the most suitable process for marketing automation. This automation trend is expected to expand its footprints into PR outreach and branding campaigns for e-commerce brands in the upcoming year.  

Omnichannel Marketing Automation Will Skyrocket

Omnichannel Marketing Automation Will Skyrocket

Omnichannel personalization is simply a data-driven marketing effort. It is about providing a personalized experience to your customers via a given channel based on the data collected from the users’ behavior on other channels. Thus, e-retail brands can collect user-data from anywhere and leverage it to provide a personalized experience to their customers via different touchpoints. 

Omnichannel Marketing Automation opens up new doors for digital retail brands, especially when providing a personalized experience to their customers at scale across all the touchpoints. Automation serves two crucial purposes for an omnichannel marketing strategy – reliability & scalability. For instance, AI-powered e-commerce marketing tools like Wigzo help brands provide an omnichannel experience to their customers. Be it Email, push notifications, SMS, banners, or even WhatsApp, automation helps digital retailers try, test, and implement their offers at scale for a much higher ROI. 

Data Privacy Will Impact Audience Targeting

Data Privacy Impact on Audience Targeting

72 Percent of shoppers want personalized engagements and experience. On the other hand, 86 percent of the customers are worried about their privacy. This is a bit of a conundrum, isn’t it? This catch-22 results from customers’ want of a personalized experience and worry about their data privacy. Customers do not want to share too much personal information but expect brands to understand and engage personally with them. This can only be bypassed through marketers’ creativity and modern marketing automation tech.

E.g., Data privacy and the need for personalization have made push notifications a massive hit for the brands. Users can opt-in without any information exchange and still receive personalized updates from their favorite brands. 

Only Hyper-Relevant Paid Ads Will Work

Hyper-Relevant Paid Ads

There is just too much noise in the digital world! Thousands of ads and promotions are bombarded to users every single day. The result? Many great brands and their offers get lost in the noise. The simple trick here is not to be a part of the mainstream ‘noisy’ ads. Only hyper-relevant targeting and optimized user journeys will be able to bring in the desired ROI for businesses. 

For paid campaigns, it is not just the creativity that will count, but high relevancy scores and precision targeting for the audience that will make an impact.

What’s more?

2021 will yield many surprises – ups and downs for the digital retail world. The key to prevailing in such a situation is remaining agile, making accurate projections with CRM and in-hand market data, and letting marketing automation take the driving seat while you strategize the way forward. 

Happy New Year 2021 and Happy Selling! 🙂

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Winay Bari

Winay Bari

Winay Bari is a passionate Digital Marketing Enthusiast with over 8+ years of experience in B2C, B2B SaaS Marketing. Currently working as Sr. Marketing Manager for Wigzo Technologies, Winay is an avid Chai Lover, Dreamer & Hustler!

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