Marketing Automation: Top 9 Tech Trends in 2022

Over the years we have seen how the world of digital marketing has evolved with new business models and the advancement of the technologies such as AI, data-driven marketing, and voice search engine optimization (VSEO). And since it is 2022, marketers around the world are looking for ways to engage with their consumers on all online platforms, with the help of new technological advancements.

There has always been a huge interest in marketing automation and how digital marketing trends change every year. Because of the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic, the marketing industry had to adapt to new virtual and hybrid business landscapes. The need to increase online traffic has put pressure on marketers to come up with cost-effective techniques.

According to a study done by Gartner State of marketing budget report in 2021, the marketing budget dropped to an estimation of 6.4% of company revenue in 2021 from the 11% drop in 2020, this was said to be the lowest recorded level. To make it successful in this fast-paced market you need to be relevant to your target audience.

This is where marketing automation trends can save you time, provide more personalized engagement, increase visibility, drive organic traffic, and grow your social media presence. Now more than ever marketing moved beyond branding and advertising, as companies now want to offer great customer experiences and engage them for long-term relationships.

To remain on top of the competitive online landscape and to get the best possible results for your clients, you need to adapt to the latest innovations and trends in marketing automation.

In this article, we will explain the best practices and tech trends for 2022.

The Top Tech Trends of Marketing Automation

1. The use of AI in Marketing Automation

When we talk about Marketing automation the first thing that comes to our mind is Artificial Intelligence. AI technology is now used in various industries such as retail, banking, and healthcare to strengthen their marketing efforts. Marketers are now using AI technology for predicting customers’ preferences based on their past purchases and browsing history.

There has already been a huge advancement in using AI in marketing including voice search and smart assistants. AI is also the main reason behind chatbots, which are now prevalent on almost every website you see. It has also helped in reducing a lot of simple tasks by converting them into automation, which would otherwise require manmade labor.

This way the companies can now save time and concentrate on strategies, crafting an excellent customer experience. Besides all this, AI has played a main role in helping a company understand the needs of its target audience and provide a personalized customer experience. In 2022, you should focus on the upcoming AI applications with SEO and other digital marketing strategies to increase your website traffic.

2. Increase of Personalisation

One of the top tested and proven marketing trends is personalization because it helps you engage with the customer’s heart. Here is an example for you, imagine you have opened your email; you scroll through the emails and give no more than a split second of attention to any of them. But there is one among the other emails that catch your eye, and that is because the email subject line has your name in it.

Personalization and marketing automation go hand in hand, as it helps companies interact with their target audience and take into consideration the customer’s preferences, needs, likes, and interests. Marketing automation is also responsible to help the company in promoting the right product and experience to the right person at the right time.

The tailored product experiences will make the customer feel heard and will create a meaningful interaction with the company or brand. You can also get an accurate targeted email list that will provide you with all the necessary details for personalizing your emails and making the automation process easier.

3. Video Marketing

Video marketing is another great marketing strategy as it uses videos to promote and tell its target audience about its products and services. People are known to spend a third of their time online watching videos. This is why many MNC companies are now using some of the best video ads and viral videos as a part of their marketing strategies.

Video marketing will help a company or brand in increasing its engagement online and educate its audiences. This new medium is also known to help customers make buying decisions. The B2B companies are already using live videos together with their automation applications. The main advantage of using automating video marketing is that it will promote brand awareness, improve the brand presence on all online platforms, create sales, and build trust.

Marketing automation is leveraged through educational videos to boost engagement and humanize the brand. According to a study done by Cisco, videos account for over 82% of all online traffic. More than 84% of consumers are said to have purchased a product after watching a video in 2021.

However, when we talk about videos it is not limited to YouTube, as there are other platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram that can be used for the live broadcast. You can use marketing automation to effectively send particular videos based on users’ actions on all social media platforms. There are different tools that help you post to Instagram from Mac, schedule Facebook posts, and complete other tasks in a simpler way.

4. Usage of Virtual Assistants like Chatbots

Virtual assistants like Chatbots are software applications that use AI and human language to understand what people want and guide them to their desired outcome or even answer their queries. Everything about chatbots is automated, and that includes conversations with users, suggestions, and answers to their queries.

Today consumers have high expectations and to match that, marketing and sales teams use virtual assistants to increase engagement with their customers. Chatbots are known to increase the conversation rates on your websites and generate more qualified leads. They are also the perfect solution to ever-increasing inquiries.

This software application helps with online chat conversations through text or text-to-speech on messaging applications, websites, mobile apps, or through the telephone. It has been estimated that by the end of 2022, the market value of voice search shopping will hit an astonishing amount of $40 billion.

We can see how most companies already use chatbots to communicate with their leads and turn them into their prospective customers. The virtual assistant is now considered to be crucial for a positive customer experience.

5. Conversational Marketing being used in marketing automation

Conversational marketing in simple words is marketing by talking to their customers. This strategy has gained popularity over the years because it has been successful in driving customer engagement, improving customer experience, and growing revenue.

This dialogue-driven approach can be done through live chat, chatbots, voice assistants, etc. Conversational marketing can be seen on websites, social media channels, and even in physical stores. Conversational marketing allows you to make marketing more interactive and build relations with customers. This method usually helps in converting leads into prospective customers through dialogue-driven activities.

The main goal of conversational marketing is to increase interaction with leads and build trust through meaningful conversations. This form of marketing also revolves around other marketing trends such as personalization and more human-centered interactions.

6. Automation of Social media marketing

Social media automation is one of the most popular marketing automation tech trends as it includes using automated tools to improve your social media presence through various types of curated content. The main goal of using automation in social media marketing is scheduling social media posts in advance via a free social media scheduler or republishing popular articles to reduce simpler tasks performed by marketers.

In 2020, the social media budget of brands saw an increase of 20% - which will increase even more in 2022. Another advantage of using automation in social media marketing is to reduce the amount of time spent on posting the posts and spend more time increasing engagement with your target audience. With this, the marketing team can allocate resources toward meeting other strategic goals.

7. Account-Based Marketing

Account-based marketing is another highly popular tech trend that focuses on B2B marketing wherein the marketing teams target the best accounts and turn them into customers. This strategic approach creates personalized messages to target customer accounts with the information they need to solve specific problems.

Account-based marketing is said to yield a higher ROI than compared to other types of marketing. Marketing automation helps you personalize your marketing strategies, with the help of cookies it can track down the targeted individuals.

Besides that, automation can identify high-value accounts and their interests and then automate the flow of messages to those accounts to get their attention. Many MNC companies are now using account-based marketing to reach their target audiences and generate more sales. This type of marketing strategy requires you to locate, engage, and close deals with high-value accounts.

You may be surprised if we say that Account-based marketing is not a new concept, however, due to its ability to improve ROI, and generate more conversions and qualified leads, it has resurfaced in the ever-evolving marketing industry. The upcoming technology has also helped ABM to drive high-value outcomes.

8. Mobile marketing comes first

Mobile marketing has noticed steady growth in the ever-changing tech world. Mobile Marketing has now become a driving factor and the main medium for many small and medium businesses, as it helps them drive their sales.

By using automation, you can send numerous push and web notifications, SMS, mobile wallet, and in-app notifications effectively and these can be set up by the marketers based on certain actions of the customers. Automation also helps make their campaigns accurate and work cohesively at scale.

Companies spend more on coming up with mobile ads than compared to desktop ads as it is more responsive. Their teams were assigned just to create an exclusive mobile engagement strategy and mobile-specific personalized content for their target audience. The reason behind mobile marketing’s popularity is that it increases your engagement rates and gets more traffic.

9. Use automation tools

You can use automation tools like monitor solution that will help clean your email lists. All you will have to do is put your list cleaning on autopilot and let Monitor do the work for you. This will help you protect your reputation by not getting blacklisted, remove invalid emails and increase ROI.

With these kinds of tools, you will definitely have higher efficiency in your email campaigns. Tools like the monitor solutions can be customized to your requirements and will also integrate with the email marketing tools you already use.

Final thoughts

Marketers are constantly evolving along with the world around them. And with the Covid 19 pandemic still looming overhead, marketers had to come up with new and exciting marketing strategies along with trends to drive sales or traffic. This is why Marketing Automation will play a key role in business.

In a post-pandemic world, it was automation that helped marketers to engage, target, and create a personalized experience for their users. Due to technological advances and ever-changing customer preferences, marketing automation trends have changed and evolved over the years.

Hope these marketing automation tools help you increase your leads.