By Reagan Cook
There are over 200 different
marketing automation solutions on
the market.
Most are operating as vendors to large
B2B brands.
53% of B2B Fortune 500 companies use marketing
automation technology, which is around 5 times the
adoption rate of companies overall. (Pardot)
Why is Marketing Automation so
popular in the B2B space?
The short answer: Marketing
automation was purpose-built
for B2B marketers.
Pioneered by Toronto-based start-up Eloqua
in 1999, marketing automation was created
to:
• Help generate and qualify sales leads,
• Shorten sales cycles,
• Demonstrate marketing accountability.
B2B marketing automation expanded
quickly in the early 2000s, but saw little
cross-over into the B2C realm.
The main reason being that, despite B2C
marketers possessing larger budgets and
greater advertising tools, they were held back
by an inability to capture detailed customer
profiles at scale.
Thankfully this paradigm is shifting.
Advances in technology have opened
the door for B2C brands and helped
unify the marketing community around a
shared vision of one-to-one
communication.
That’s not to say there aren’t still
important differences…
What’s the difference between B2B and
B2C marketing automation?
Many of the world’s largest consumer
facing brands are leading the charge
towards B2C marketing automation.
In 2013, Microsoft began using automated
nurturing campaigns to sell their software
products.
This was an important milestone for B2C
marketing automation, because it proved
that the platform was valuable for even the
world’s largest consumer brands.
And Microsoft is not alone. In fact, most large tech companies
are using marketing automation (approximately 76% of SaaS
brands in 2013).
Other early adopters include the telecommunications and
electronics industries.
What is the value of B2C
Marketing Automation?
B2C brands have different set of
requirements than their B2B
counterparts since conversions are
done without sales assistance.
Rather than ‘scoring’ leads, consumer-
facing-automation focuses on building
detailed customer segments to help
brands better communicate on a more
personal level.
At Bridg we help enterprise brands
understand their customers so that they
can build loyal, long-term relationships.
With our platform you can keep up with the
individual preferences of your audience,
regardless of scale.
You can track who reads the most emails,
who engages the most on Twitter, and
who spends the most time on your
website.
From there, they can send personal
messaging to each behavior segment;
disengaged customers, brand promoters,
unhappy VIPs, etc.
If you have a great email campaign idea
but don’t know who to send it to, B2C
marketing automation will provide you
with an answer.