Marketing automation is one way for savvy businesses to cut down on the number of repetitive marketing tasks that must be completed. The result is more time and resources to focus on satisfying individual customers who are ready to commit. If it sounds too good to be true, here are five ways you can use marketing automation right now.

1. Welcome New Leads Fast

A good website design will ensure that visitors to your site make their way down the funnel until they fill out a form or otherwise reach out to you. Those new leads want to know that they are important to you, and they want immediate results from their action. By having an automated response ready, the nurturing process begins instantly.

2. Speaking of Lead Nurturing...

Gently walking potential customers down the path to conversion is important, but it can also be automated. Depending on where the lead jumped in, having a drip campaign in place to slowly draw that lead in will accomplish the task of nurturing without taking up resources. That way, you can save your power sales players for the close.

3. Recapture Lost Leads

From abandoned shopping carts to leads that don't seem to respond to a drip campaign, recapturing these people is an important part of boosting your sales. Keeping up with who is dropping out, why they dropped, and for how long they have been gone is a time-consuming task for a person--but not for your automation software. Set up the information, and you can do things like offer a shipping discount to someone who abandoned a shopping cart to reel them back in.

4. Boost the Potential of Past Purchases

What do you do with a satisfied customer? Try to keep up the momentum! You are the expert on your products and services; use that expertise to give your customers a heads-up when a similar or companion product is on sale, or offer similar products that you think they might like based on past purchase history. The key here is to link up your products ahead of time and have an automated schedule for delivering these notifications.

5. Impress the Boss

Whether you have to report to a single owner or a table full of the board of directors, having accurate, up-to-date metrics is the only way to survive that meeting. When you use marketing automation, you'll also have highly trackable information to compile and report. Not only will you make an impression with your reporting capabilities, but also with the great results that automation brings!

Smart Marketing

Marketing automation is more than just an easier way to complete tasks. It is also more efficient and more effective. Stop combing through lists of customers and purchases, and let machines handle the busywork. Your personal efforts will be better spent working with real people when they are ready to make the leap from lead to customer.