Utilizing automation marketing in new digital marketing strategy for Vietnamese enterprises

This research would provide the big picture about what digital marketing and automation marketing, are and then go to detail the value and methodology to apply the techniques successfully. The research includes data from recent studies from several organizations who have reliable resources and reputation in implementing automation technologies. It also presents some forecast and fundamental founding from marketing experts all over the world.... Đề tài Hoàn thiện công tác quản trị nhân sự tại Công ty TNHH Mộc Khải Tuyên được nghiên cứu nhằm giúp công ty TNHH Mộc Khải Tuyên làm rõ được thực trạng công tác quản trị nhân sự trong công ty như thế nào từ đó đề ra các giải pháp giúp công ty hoàn thiện công tác quản trị nhân sự tốt hơn trong thời gian tới.

UTILIZING AUTOMATION MARKETING IN NEW DIGITAL MARKETING

STRATEGY FOR VIETNAMESE ENTERPRISES

Dang Huong Giang 1

ABSTRACT: Digital marketing which plays on undeniable role in marketing strategy, after a decade

of development is going to move to the next era The age of automation and personalization

marketing The concept becomes popular due to the demands for internet users for communicating

individually and also thanks to the launching of many innovative automation solutions However,

many enterprises, especially in Vietnam, don’t know about the optimal value of automation and

personalization, as well as lack knowledge about the best practices in building working model and

executing campaigns This research would provide the big picture about what digital marketing and

automation marketing, are and then go to detail the value and methodology to apply the techniques

successfully The research includes data from recent studies from several organizations who have

reliable resources and reputation in implementing automation technologies It also presents some

forecast and fundamental founding from marketing experts all over the world These information

can be considered as principles for automation marketing framework, which would be applied for

Vietnamese enterprises

Keywords: Digital marketing, Automation marketing, personalization, framework

1 INTRODUCTION

Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new - or modify

existing - business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and

market requirements The concept started from the beginning of 21th Century thanks to the rise

of social networks and search engines, which change the behaviours of internet users, as well as

consumers Digital transformation also changes the way enterprises providing their products and

services, from internal corporation structures, working processes to sales and marketing strategies.

After a decade of the digital era, internet users are overwhelmed by tons of information from

brands and are trying to promote their products and services It leads to the demands from internet users

for to be heard and receive personalized conversation In addition, all of digital marketing activities

are executed on digital platforms, and these platforms cannot live without traffic from internet users

Platform owners don’t want their users to suffer from poor experience, so ineffective marketing

1 University of Economics - Technology for Industries Email: dhgiang@uneti.edu.vn, Tel: +84904368086

campaigns, which are disturbing users who would be considered as spam, will be eliminated For

example, Facebook will charge higher for the poorly reached advertising campaign, and Google will

show on top of search result pages and the websites that have the best user experience.

Therefore, brands need to find the friendly way to communicate with consumers individually

However, this mission requests huge efforts if enterprises keep doing marketing in the traditional

way Having conversations with customers nowadays is no longer the responsibility for only

Customer Support Department, it requires Sales and Marketing to get involved at the very beginning

of sale pipeline Then, the problem is how sales and marketing departments have enough resources

to collect and process all customer profiles and send them the personalized message at the right

time and right place.

The circumstance brings the new chance to technology companies to expand the new market,

which is providing solutions that help to execute personalized marketing campaigns automatically,

results in the new age of digital marketing, that is called automation marketing The launching of

automation marketing solutions such as Salesforce, HubSpot, SAP, etc officially change the way

brands interact with their customers, and automation marketing becomes the new trend in the

digital world

2 OVERVIEW OF DIGITAL MARKETING AND AUTOMATION MARKETING

2.1 Overview of digital marketing

Digital marketing is the marketing of products and services using digital technologies,

mainly on the internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital

medium Digital marketing channels are systems based on the internet that can create, accelerate,

and transmit product value from producer to the terminal consumer by digital networks From

2000 - 2001, digital channels become the important part in marketing strategies and the spending

for digital marketing keeps growing in the following years.

Google ads revenue from 2001 to 2018

In 2018, spending for digital advertising worldwide reaches 283.35 billions US dollar, and

experts from eMarketer.com forecast the number will increase to 517.51 billions US dollar in

2023 It means when digital channels are becoming popular and playing significant roles in all

marketing plans, the competition between brands would depend mostly on the efficiency of digital

marketing strategies.

The main purpose of executing digital marketing is to deliver consistent brand experience

to customers through digital channels, which contribute to sales funnel Brand experience is

experiential marketing that incorporates a holistic set of conditions created by a company to

influence the feeling a customer has about a particular product or company name Through a

combination of various modes a consumer uses to interact with a brand, companies attempt to

create a general atmosphere of goodwill, dependence or trust to create an association between the

brand and a specific need or emotion The interactions occur within the sales funnel, as known

as the buying process that companies lead customers through when purchasing products The

definition also refers to the process through which a company finds, qualifies, and sells its products

to buyers.

In other words, the experience of a customer when he or she is interacting with any touchpoint

from the brand such as products, services, websites, content, sales representatives, etc create the

customer journey through sales funnel Therefore, improving the experience by these touchpoints

would help companies to optimize sales funnel, as well as enhance the performance of their digital

marketing campaigns.

2.2 Automation marketing

Automation marketing, or Marketing automation, is all about using software to automate

marketing activities Many marketing departments automate repetitive tasks such as email

marketing, social media content producing, and even ad campaigns, not just for the sake of efficiency,

but so they can provide a more personalized experience for their customers The technology of

marketing automation makes these tasks easier, and automatically manages marketing processes

and multifunctional campaigns, across multiple channels.

Marketing budget that is spent for automation marketing will reaches 25.1 billion US dollars

in 2023, according to the forecast from emailmonday.com, and most of the budget is for real-time

interaction management solutions and cross-channel campaign management software It shows the

primary goals for applying automation solutions is to deliver real-time interactions via multiple

channels, which is not possible to be fulfilled by manual efforts.

3 ROLE OF AUTOMATION MARKETING

3.1 Executing automation means executing personalization

Survey from emailmonday.com in 2018 describes the fact that far beyond the primary

goal, which is to replace manual workforce, automation marketing has the mission to deliver

personalized interactions to improve customer experience 53% of marketing experts believe

the most effective tactics to optimize automation marketing is customer experience mapping In

addition, personalized and dynamic content is the second best choice for utilizing automation

solutions, voted by 51% of marketing experts

As mentioned at the beginning of this research, providing personalized experience is

significant in executing digital marketing campaigns, due to the demand from customer to

interact with content individually That’s the reason for the relationship between personalization

and the improvement of brand experience, or the optimization of sales funnel Therefore, the

performance of automation marketing would be evaluated in the similar way with measuring

the conversions in customer journey The principle is supported by the results of the following

study from emailmonday.com.

Most of the marketing experts who took part in the survey agreed that numbers related to

conversion funnel such as conversion rate, revenue generated, lead generated, and engagement

rate are the most significant metrics to evaluate the automation marketing activities In other

words, measuring the performance of automation marketing is considering how effective the

personalization is in delivering brand experience through sales funnel.

3.2 How automation, or personalization, improves digital marketing

Recent studies from DemandGen, Annuitas Group, and Nucleus Research present the

numbers to indicate that automation marketing would be a crucial part of marketing strategies

Enterprises are able to raise sales opportunities by 20%, as well as gain more than four times of

their qualified leads They can also increase 14.5% of sales productivity and reduce 12.2% in

marketing overhead

Moreover, automation marketing not only shows the convincing capabilities in improving

digital marketing activities, but also clears the most concern that any marketing department has, it

is return on investment (ROI) Data from SalesForce, the leader of automation solution providers,

says that 25% of marketing ROI would be added if their clients execute automatic marketing

activities.

4 METHODOLOGIES OF LEVERAGING AUTOMATION MARKETING FOR VIETNAMESE ENTERPRISES

4.1 Automation Marketing framework

Marketing Automation can be implemented in every step of the Marketing & Sales Funnel to

increase personalization, efficiency and optimize the results As can be seen in the chart, technical

infrastructure is mandatory and includes four main parts: data capture architecture, delivering

channels, customer relationship management (CRM), and data analysis.

Conversion funnel is like a skeleton to implement the framework and executing campaigns, as

well as collecting data to evaluate and optimize the performance The real structures of automation

marketing would be simple like an automatic email pushing platform, or be complicated as a

detailed personalization in content delivery campaigns through websites, social channels and

applications However, all of them are built on this fundamental framework, to make sure that the

following process is completed.

Therefore, Vietnamese enterprises are able to learn from these methodologies to apply in

both small capabilities and big capabilities Automation solutions are flexible in scaling, so they

can serve wide range of business size Nowadays, small brands don’t have to worry in competing

with big brands in the digital world, and it’s absolutely the same with Vietnamese market.

4.2 Segmentation is the most significant stage

Segmentation is the very first stage in automation marketing process, which decides the

efficiency of personalization ability of the content delivery system That’s why three of four

main parts of the automation marketing framework, including data capture architecture, customer

relationship management (CRM), and data analysis would take part in this stage Therefore, in

order to build effective automation and personalization marketing system, marketing departments

should spend 80% of their effort implementing strong technical infrastructure for audience data

analysis and management and creating logical customer classification, according to their business

objectives.

In Vietnam, collecting user data is a sensitive term, and the government is still building

the regulation to manage the huge information of about 30 million people on the internet Keep

updating and follow the restriction would prevent Vietnamese enterprises from unexpected risks.

In addition, segmentation as well as creating an automation marketing system is not a one

time job The best practice for it is an agile model, which starts from consultation, then goes to

execution, data analysis, optimization, and goes back to consultation with the new insights and

directions for optimization.

5 CONCLUSION

Vietnamese enterprises are facing the great chances to take advantages in the new digital

competition Whoever adapts the trend and be agile and innovative enough to utilize modern

technologies for automation marketing will be a leader in the certain market Moreover, the 5G

networks would become more popular in the upcoming years, which empower big data, machine

learning, and of course artificial intelligence The development will bring even more powerful

automation solutions to help enterprises to deliver much more impressive personalization on

digital channels, and take the remarkable steps forward on their markets One of the advantages of

internet is that it enables businesses to reach a worldwide customer population, so that customers

can survey, select, and purchase products and services from businesses around the world.

For online businesses, traditional marketing is both ineffective and expensive, and to achieve

powerful business results new and effective internet marketing strategies have to be employed

The concept of digital inbound marketing might seem difficult and daunting But by tackling each

internet marketing tactic step by step, businesses can make internet marketing more manageable

and start generating results.

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