What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation uses technology to manage and execute various marketing tasks, including complex yet repetitive or complex activities such as:

Marketing automation saves you time, effort, and resources. Instead of performing these tasks manually, you can focus on strategy-level activities and ultimately make more money for your brand.

How to get started with marketing automation

Marketing automation helps marketers and business owners deliver personalized messages at scale. Here’s how to begin your marketing automation journey:

1. Gather customer data

Successful marketing automation starts with understanding your audience. The more data you have about their preferences and behavior, the more personalized your marketing messages will be.

Marketing automation platforms (such as Klaviyo) help you collect and store key audience data, including:

  • Engagement data: Track how your audience interacts with your brand across channels (email opens, website visits, social media activity).
  • Purchase history: Analyze purchase behavior (past purchases, frequency, spending habits, etc.).
  • Demographic data: Learn where your audience is from, their age, their income bracket, etc.
  • Behavioral data: Analyze how your audience interacts with your website and content (clicks, sign-ups, abandoned carts, etc.).

2. Segment your audience

Use your marketing automation platform to separate your audience into distinct groups according to relevant criteria. Customer segmentation can be based on:

  1. Purchase behavior: Segment by purchase history, frequency, or lifetime value.
  2. Engagement level: Group customers based on how often they interact with your brand.
  3. Demographics: Segment by age, location, or income to tailor messaging.
  4. Website behavior: Group customers based on how they interact with your website

3. Personalize your marketing messages

Create messages tailored to each audience segment. Use customer data to personalize content that resonates with customer demographics and behaviors.

Here are 3 examples of how you can personalize messages on different marketing channels:

  • Email: Send personalized emails where you recommend products based on the customer’s purchase history or browsing behavior. For example, “Hi Jess, we noticed you recently purchased our Dreamy floral sundress. Check out these similar items you might like.”
  • SMS: Send SMS messages with exclusive discounts or promotions tailored to the customer’s preferences. For example, “Hey Jess, enjoy 15% off your next sundress order with code SMMR24! Offer ends August 31st.”
  • Push notifications: Send personalized push notifications to keep customers informed about their order status. For example, “Your Dreamy floral dress is on its way! Track your order here.”

4. Set up your automated workflows

With your marketing automation platform, set criteria that trigger subsequent events. For example, design a workflow that sends a welcome email series to new subscribers over a certain period of time or trigger a follow-up email when a customer abandons their cart.

You can set criteria to automate actions such as:

5. Track your performance and analyze results

Use analytics to monitor key metrics such as:

Set up dashboards to visualize data, generate reports, and track performance regularly. Identify trends and patterns to understand what’s working and what needs improvement. Use these insights to refine your workflows, messaging, and targeting.

3 benefits of marketing automation

1. Personalization at scale

Rather than relying on generic messaging, use marketing automation to make sure each subscriber and customer receives relevant, personalized messages at the right time.

Personalization boosts engagement, prevents your messages from landing in spam folders, and improves conversion rates.

2. More output with fewer resources

Marketing automation tackles a universal challenge—achieving better results without burning through your resources. Automating repetitive tasks frees up your marketing team’s valuable time, so you can focus on high-impact activities like strategic planning and creative development.

3. Increased profits

Marketing automation can boost your organization’s financial performance. Automated email flows like abandoned cart or post-purchase messages) generate up to 30x more revenue per recipient than one-off email campaigns.

Marketing automation can yield a positive return on investment (ROI), with a potential return of $5.44 for every dollar spent over the first 3 years.

Automate your marketing with Klaviyo

Klaviyo automates every aspect of email and SMS marketing, from data collection to sending engaging messages.

With Klaviyo, get:

  • A fast start on email creation: Choose from 60+ pre-built flow templates.
  • Simplified automation: Use the drag-and-drop flow builder to save time and visualize your flow.
  • Cross-channel reach: Engage customers across email, SMS, and push notifications through one platform.
  • Segmentation: Create dynamic segments that populate automatically when a someone fits the criteria you set.

Use Klaviyo AI for:

  • Predictive analytics: Forecast a customer’s next order date, lifetime value, churn risk, and more.
  • Sign-up form display optimization: AI will test different versions of your sign-up forms to find the highest-converting display time.
  • Improving your subject lines: Klaviyo AI’s subject line assistant will help you craft compelling subject lines.

Ready to automate your marketing program? Sign up for Klaviyo today.

Additional resources