In this article we cover the ins and outs of marketing automation for B2B. From eye-catching use cases to engaging examples, learn the ways it can benefit your business. Uncover how marketing automation examples, such as lead scoring, chatbots, and trigger marketing, can boost your B2B marketing initiatives.

What is marketing automation for B2B marketing, and how can it benefit you?

Marketing automation for B2B marketing is streamlining and scaling your marketing initiatives and managing a range of workflows, such as email, social media and much more. 

Choosing the right software for your business can depend on multiple factors. For example, your marketing goals, business size, and the blueprint of your customer journey.  

Why should you use marketing automation? – Marketing automation for B2B marketing can help reduce manual error and save you time, whilst managing a range of time-consuming and complex tasks such as SEO management, social media engagement, email marketing, content planning and ad campaign management.

How many B2B companies use marketing automation?

 

Marketing automation has become a popular trend among many B2B companies to help them execute their marketing goals and objectives. Below are a few eye-catching marketing automation trend statistics:

• Over 50% of B2B companies are using marketing automation. 
• The marketing automation market size is predicted to expand and scale. 
• Investment for marketing automation will continue to grow
• Over 40% of B2B companies are beginning to adopt marketing automation

5 great marketing automation for B2B use cases to inspire you

 

Below are 5 excellent B2B marketing automation examples to help you streamline and scale your marketing initiatives. 

1. Lead scoring

 

Lead scoring is an approach of identifying the value of each lead by different factors, such as email open rate, web page visits, and more. An effective approach to help you identify the hottest leads that you should keep tabs on and direct your marketing efforts with. Below are two diagrams of how lead scoring works.

There are several innovative marketing automation tools that have a built-in lead scoring feature such as Hubspot, Platformly, Pipeliner CRM and more to help you optimise your lead scoring initiative and boost conversions.  

2. Automated email sequences

 

An effective initiative that can help you send content through email at the right time and perfect your outreach. For example, you can automatically send engaging and informative content to a prospect who has recently signed up for your newsletter. 

3. Chatbots

 

Keep up to date with customer queries consistently with automated chatbots. Chatbots can help direct your customers and prospects to the relevant services or resources they require, helping you boost customer experience and brand credibility. 

4. Self-nurturing content

 

New prospects and leads will have an interest in your product and your service. This may include the features, benefits, reviews, testimonials and more before they decide to buy from your business. An effective way to stay on top of this and keep your leads informed with the latest information is by creating self-nurturing content. 

5. Trigger marketing

 

Trigger marketing can help you create relevant and on-time content based on customer and prospect behaviour, such as viewing your web page, newsletter sign ups or account creation. An effective approach that can help you streamline your sales funnel and maintain high customer engagement. 

The top 3 B2B marketing automation examples to help your business

 

1. Boost lead generation 

 

CentricsIT could not effectively manage, track or nurture their leads. This was because they were sending blast emails like the one shown below:

The company could introduce their own marketing automation tool that’s adaptable to their marketing goals and needs. This effective approach helped them send emails that were based on their user’s website activity, helping to boost their lead generation initiatives. Below is an example of how their email looks after using a marketing automation tool. 

What could be better

CentricsIT could optimise their email approach and generate more leads by using a marketing automation tool that has a built-in lead scoring system to help them identify the hottest leads. 

2. Increase lead volume

 

SmartBear Software identified a dramatic increase in lead volume however, manually could not manage all their leads at once. With introducing a marketing automation tool, the company could nurture leads at scale and manage their expected growth, resulting in a 200% growth in lead volume. 

To nurture all their leads proactively, SmartBear Software had created individual nurture paths for each product group. This allowed them to prioritise each lead and maintain engagement. 

What could be better

An excellent approach to optimise their lead nurturing and generate more lead volume growth is by introducing a range of different lead management initiatives such as gated content, segmented lists, streamline outreach and much more. 

3. Dramatic rise in online registrations

 

Brainshark had difficulties in converting their users into buyers, so ran an analysis and discovered:

• Users signed up for the free product were not always using it. 
• Users never used the product.
• Users were not sharing their presentations. 

To fix this problem, the company implemented marketing automation to create marketing pipelines and help their users reach the buying stage. 

Below is an image of how Brainshark could guide users from uploading their presentation to scheduling a walkthrough and becoming a paying customer. They could introduce informative and engaging tips and tricks to keep their users engaged with their services.

Brainshark optimised their website by personalising their messages based on key customer data, such as time spent on their webpage and pages clicked on. As a result, this effective approach optimised the customer’s shopping experience and boosted customer engagement. 

What could be better

Alongside personalised messaging, Brainshark could have optimised their website and skyrocket their online registrations by introducing effective and personalised drip messaging to maintain engagement across all their channels.