How to Use Marketing Automation Far Beyond Just Email

marketing automation

For years, marketing teams have relied on automation systems — including Marketo, Pardot and Eloqua — as the driving force of email marketing campaigns. And for good reason. These systems bring ease and efficiencies, allowing marketing teams to produce customized, targeted emails for their numerous customer segments.

But with today’s tightening CAN-SPAM regulations — which are strengthening email compliance standards in content, sending behavior and unsubscribe features — and the oversaturation of email marketing, it’s time we stop looking at marketing automation systems solely as a tool for email, and instead celebrate and employ them for what they are: comprehensive marketing platforms.

Moving beyond email: What else you can do

The true value of marketing automation systems comes from their ability to accurately and automatically handle numerous marketing practices with minimal human effort. From web forms to landing pages and even website tracking, automation systems are rich with functionalities that go beyond simply scheduling emails.

If you’ve found yourself relying on your marketing automation system solely as an email tool, it’s time to expand your horizons. Here are three ways to help you get started.

Track asset downloads

From white papers to case studies, automation systems allow you to accurately track and monitor who has been accessing your marketing assets. And because they sync directly with CRMs, when tracked to sales prospects, this information can empower the sales team with a prospect’s full interaction history.

The beauty of storing marketing assets within an automation system is the ability, though IP address identification, to track downloads even when assets are not stored behind a required form completion. Assets can be open to the public while you still receive the valuable data you need to close sales.

Build customized landing pages

The same dynamic fields that are regularly applied to email campaigns can also be used to build landing pages within your automation system. Having access to this capability provides sales and marketing teams with a means of quickly developing personalized, customized landing pages for high-value targets.

Create custom, trackable URLs

Lastly, automation systems provide a powerful tool in their ability to create custom URL redirects to further track engagement. While this may seem like something you already take advantage of through email marketing, you need to look outside the realm of email — to social ads, PPC ads, landing pages and more — to take full advantage of this feature.

Far too often, we measure the success of these approaches based on form completions. By utilizing custom URL tools, you now have more insights into those that have clicked a link but may not have further engaged following the click.

Armed with this data, marketing teams can better evaluate their programs to see how they can improve web and landing pages to encourage more engagement, while also empowering sales with high-level data on a prospect’s potential interests.

As you can see, automation systems bring a wealth of functionalities that ease daily marketing operations as well as provide data-driven insights to propel your marketing efforts forward.

In addition to the items laid out in this article, I encourage you to visit the user forum of your marketing automation platform to learn more about the ways your industry peers are maximizing these systems.

Catch more advice on using email marketing to grow your business from Dan Earle here.


Dan Earle is a Senior Account Executive at Arketi Group, an Atlanta-based B2B technology marketing agency. Throughout his career, he has led lead demand and nurturing campaigns for clients ranging from start-ups and large enterprises. A seasoned marketing automation professional, he has also helped clients through the implementation process of numerous automation platforms.