How Marketing Automation Can Save Your Company 20 Hours Per Week by Streamlining Lead Management and

TLDR: Marketing automation streamlines repetitive marketing tasks such as lead capture, segmentation, scoring, follow-up, multi-channel campaigns, sales routing, and reporting. By implementing a system built on these seven pillars, companies can save at least 20 hours per week, improve lead nurturing, and scale efficiently without burnout. This article explains each pillar and the benefits of automation in marketing workflows.

Marketing companies often struggle with inefficient processes such as copying and pasting emails, leads falling through the cracks, slow follow-up, sales reps doing administrative work instead of selling, and a lack of clarity on which leads are ready to buy. These challenges can lead to lost opportunities and wasted time.

Marketing automation offers a solution by handling repetitive tasks, follow-up, segmentation, lead qualification, and customer nurturing automatically and intelligently. This allows companies to scale their marketing efforts without burning out their teams.

## What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is not just a single tool but a system built on seven key pillars that work together to optimize marketing workflows. These pillars help capture leads, organize and score them, automate follow-up, manage multi-channel campaigns, route sales leads efficiently, and provide reporting for optimization.

## The Seven Pillars of Marketing Automation

### 1. Lead Capture

Lead capture involves collecting lead data through forms, landing pages, and chatbots. Marketing automation integrates with these tools to pull lead information into a central hub, ensuring no lead is lost.

### 2. Lead Organization and Segmentation

Once leads are captured, they are organized based on behavior, industry, or interest. This segmentation or lead enrichment campaign helps tailor marketing efforts to specific groups.

### 3. Lead Scoring

Lead scoring assigns points to leads based on their behavior, such as clicking links, filling out forms, or visiting pages. This scoring system identifies which leads are hot, warm, or need nurturing, enabling the sales team to prioritize effectively.

### 4. Automated Follow-Up

Automated follow-up sends immediate emails, texts, or welcome messages without human intervention. This saves the sales team time and ensures new leads receive prompt communication.

### 5. Multi-Channel Automation

Marketing automation platforms combine emails, text messages, paid ads, and retargeting campaigns into one central hub. This integration ensures consistent messaging across multiple channels.

### 6. Sales Routing

Qualified leads are instantly routed to the appropriate sales representative based on the product or lead behavior. This prevents mismatches and streamlines the sales process.

### 7. Reporting and Optimization

Tools like Marketo, Salesforce, and HubSpot provide dashboards that show revenue sources and areas for scaling. This data-driven approach helps optimize marketing strategies.

## Building an Automated Workflow

Creating a marketing automation workflow, especially within a CRM like Marketo, is straightforward if assets such as emails, forms, and landing pages are ready. Setting up a nurture campaign can take less than an hour and can save at least 20 hours per week.

Without automation, manual processes require someone to send emails, notify sales reps, and track lead information, which is inefficient and prone to errors. Automation eliminates these issues by ensuring instant follow-up, proper lead routing, and continuous nurturing.

Download our workflow blueprint here

## Benefits of Marketing Automation

– Instant follow-up with new leads
– No leads fall through the cracks
– Automatic nurturing of prospects
– Correct routing to the right sales reps
– Faster closing of deals
– Scalable marketing efforts without added stress

## Conclusion

Marketing automation transforms how companies manage leads and sales processes. By implementing a system based on the seven pillars, businesses can save significant time, improve lead conversion, and scale efficiently.

For those interested in building such a system, tutorials and downloadable blueprints are available to guide you through the process.

Embracing marketing automation means running your business on systems, not stress, and unlocking the full potential of your marketing efforts.