Companies that use marketing automation see more web traffic, more buyers, and spur greater retention and loyalty.

Coupled with personalization engines, marketing automation engages prospects and customers through highly relevant content that, in turn, converts them into loyal customers.

By streamlining this process, you’re able to build personalized, one-to-one connections with a seemingly endless number of customers, at scale.

Before we jump into the juicy details, let’s first look at some key stats related to marketing automation.

Here are a few statistics from the latest research that can help you think about automation.

91% of marketing automation users say that it’s “very important” to their overall online marketing efforts (Demand Gen Report, 2018).

Spending on marketing automation tools is expected to reach $25.1 billion annually by 2023. (Martech Today, 2018)

79% of high-performing companies have been using marketing automation for three or more years. (Venture Harbour, 2017)

Marketing technology spend is now higher than advertising spend for companies. (Gartner, 2016)

74% of marketers say that “saving time” is the biggest benefit they see from automation (Demand Gen Report).

67% of marketing leaders currently use a marketing automation platform. (Salesforce, 2017)

The continued growth and evolution of marketing automation has made it a non- negotiable for e-commerce teams.

However, there are still some businesses that have yet to fully embrace automation due to a few myths surrounding the idea. Let’s clear those up.

Myth #1: Marketing automation is only relevant for email

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels as well as one of the easiest operations to automate. However, social media, lead generation, management activities, landing pages, and others can all also be automated to varying degrees.

Automation touches and improves almost every overarching metric of your marketing… not just email.

Once you realize the benefits that automation provides for other channels(such as quicker and simpler processes and conversion optimization), it’ll become clear how marketing automation can save your business both time and money across numerous channels.

Myth #2: Marketing automation is just another form of spam

Often times, spam is considered any message that shows up “without warning” in

your inbox. The reality is that spam is really based mostly on irrelevancy. If the content you’re sending to your audience doesn’t reach them in a personalized way, it most likely isn’t worth sending at all.

Marketing automation allows you to send relevant content and information to your audience based on who they are, their interests, and even how they discovered your business. Automation presents an opportunity to engage with potential customers conversationally while guiding them step-by-step through the customer lifecycle.

Related Content: How to Combat 4 Major AI Myths & Misconceptions [Plus Expert Insights]

For retailers, automation means more chances to get in front of the right consumers for higher conversion rates and increased revenue. But how exactly can marketing automation platforms help you do more with less?

Data shows marketers are going to spend more on automation technology that helps them do through-channel work, real-time communications, resource management, pre-purchase nurturing, and more.

Global marketing automation technology forecast 2017 to 2023

From a retail perspective, let’s take a look at some tangible benefits.

Reduce cart abandonment rates Abandoned carts continue to haunt us.

The average abandoned cart rate, as of 2017, actually sits around 79%.

By automatically sending triggered emails to those who left unpurchased items in their cart, marketers can help reduce cart abandonment rates. Marketing automation can help determine how long after logout to send reminder emails, and even help generate the most compelling subject lines to ensure the emails are opened.

Increase email open rates

e-Commerce brands can increase overall email open rates by utilizing A/B testing across all email components. Automation tools store historical consumer data, which, in turn, increases the optimization of email open rates. Whether through subject line optimization or ensuring an email is populated with the right content and sent at just the right time, these solutions result in data-driven decisions and results.

Boost revenue through up-sells

Nowadays, it’s become almost standard that emails include a section that showcases “others also bought” or “similar customers looked at.”

These recommendation emails can be automated and tailored to individual consumer buying preferences or previous browsing history, which is a powerful personalization component.

Gone are the days of manually breaking apart every inch of data. With the right automation in place, you can analyze consumer purchase data while simultaneously sending out up-sell emails that are far more likely to drive conversions.

Automate loyalty programs

Automated solutions can register customer loyalty information and send real- time, customized deals and incentives through multiple channels, regardless of whether a shopper is in a brick-and-mortar store, on a website, or even perusing social media. Loyalty programs can also help reduce customer churn, create advocates, and grow a true culture of retention.

Trigger email offers

At its core, marketing automation is a solution comprised of actions and results.

Consumers’ actions trigger these campaigns, which then turn the wheel and create a non-stop circle of engagement between customer and brand. Email marketing has long been the bread and butter of every B2C marketing strategy, but when partnered with the right solution, it becomes easier than ever to reach maximum results and drive greater ROI.

Automation is one part of the journey for customers, the key part is ensuring the marketing message you are delivering is persuasive and moves your prospects through the journey to buy from you

One of the insights of persuasion marketing is that customers’ sensitivity to persuasive arguments varies according to a number of factors, including their immediate emotional state. Therefore, in order to increase the chances of converting a customer, a salesperson or marketer needs to look for a “persuasion window,” open one if they can, and make the deal before it closes again.

Consider a visitor who has just registered for a newsletter or promotion on a website and lands on a “thank you” page. Since that visitor has already engaged with the website and is in an “interactive state”, additional offers on “thank you” pages typically earn a 39% conversion rate.

Another way to generate persuasive windows is to “alarm clock” a website. Many marketers design pages in a way that people have reasons to regularly check it to avoid “missing out” on opportunities or offers. When people visit a website on their own time, they arrive already open to persuasion.

There are four primary elements of persuasion marketing: structured communication, storytelling, copywriting, and neuromarketing.

Structured communication, like the “planned conversation” of interpersonal sales, is about controlling the order of the dialogue, or how information is presented to the consumer. The goal is to move a customer along his or her “impulse curve,” initially encouraging a customer’s impulse, and making a call to action after that impulse level has been raised to its highest point. In website design, it means that the first page the customer sees does not immediately seek a sale, but instead presents the initial message and encourages further exploration of the website.

Storytelling uses a narrative framework to invoke a customer’s emotional and subconscious responses, so that they join—or dominate—their more analytical responses. Use of particular words and images evoke habitual emotional responses, such as affection, familiarity, empathy, and desire for triumph/resolution.

Copywriting is using the right words and phrases for headings, captions, product descriptions, and other text. For example, when people scan material (and most Internet pages are scanned before they’re read), questions stand out more than statements, so “What is the best way to capture attention?” catches more attention than “How to capture attention.” The persuasion marketer field-tests different kinds of copy, in order to determine which is most likely to produce the emotion or answer he or she’s looking for.

Different words describing the same thing can have very different connotation. “Choices,” for example, produces a positive emotional response, but “trade-offs” produces a negative one. Additionally, the copywriter and marketer must remember that the fear of loss is more motivating for most people than the promise of gain. Thus “don’t miss out” has more impact than “this can be yours.”

Neuromarketing is perhaps the most important component of persuasion marketing, applying psychology to the marketing message. Psychological research reveals information about the diverse factors that contribute to a decision—and as much as 90 percent of that all takes place beyond our conscious reasoning. For example, research demonstrates that visual and olfactory cues are important for “priming” a particular mood; therefore, grocery stores display flowers in the front in order to “prime” customers with the image of freshness. In terms of website design, it means using color scheme and particular visual imagery to improve visitors’ response to the website.

Another major feature is testimony from other people. Businesses typically display customer testimony on their websites, developing a “wall of social proof” approach. Businesses post photos of happy—and attractive—customers, so new customers are comfortable being associated with them.

Too often we hear how businesses have tried email marketing, used a basic automation platform and they haven’t had much success.

This is reinforced by previous experiences of advertising on Facebook, and trying different type so marketing approaches over the years – nothing works!

With persuasive marketing – this is the fundamental aspect of all your marketing Imitation is the most sincere forms of flattery, at least, according to advocates of the “mirror technique.”

By mirroring a target’s physical posture and gestures (while maintaining casual conversation), you can develop an unspoken bond with that target, making them feel that you two are “in sync.” Then, introduce a gesture of your own—if the target copies your gesture, you know you’ve gone from following to leading. Only now can you interject your own ideas in conversation, hopefully extracting a response of “That’s just what I was thinking.”

So much of communication and decision-making occurs at the subconscious level, requiring marketers to consider the psychological underpinnings of purchasing behavior. By understanding the factors that apply at this level, they can be far more effective at persuading people to choose what they want them to choose (and buy).

Persuasion marketing applies what we know about human psychology to develop techniques to market products or services. In this case, it specifically applies to the promotions aspect of the marketing mix, and builds on a customer’s impulsive behavior to lead them to purchase.

In terms of Internet commerce, persuasion marketing includes how a web page is designed. Again, applying human psychology to web design—focusing on the part of the decision-making process that’s not consciously controlled—elements such as layout, copy, and typography, combined with the right promotional messages, encourage website visitors to follow pre-planned pathways on the website, and take specific actions, rather than giving them free reign of choice in how they interact with the website.

Salespeople have been using persuasive techniques for as long as they have been around, and now work to translate these techniques on the web. Persuasion marketing, in fact, was a top subject discussed by keynote speaker Susan Bratton at the 2011 SES (Search Engine Strategies) San Francisco convention, attended by more than 1,000 marketing and advertising professionals. It’s a topic, and a strategic approach, that appeals to marketers in a variety of industries. If you have an e-commerce website, then you want to convert visits to sales—and persuasion marketing techniques ease that process. (See also E-Commerce Marketing)