October 29, 2021

7 marketing automation trends of 2022

Learn the marketing automation trends that will make an impact in the coming year and help make your automation workflow even more convenient.

Christopher Jan Benitez

Reading time: 6 minutes

Marketing automation has simplified life for marketers who are responsible for juggling multiple tasks at once.

By combining different marketing tasks and activities into a single automated workflow, you can focus your attention on the results and find ways to optimize subsequent campaigns.

As marketing automation is still relatively new, some trends sprout up every year and seem to further break down the complexities of your marketing efforts. Some of these trends die before they pick up steam, while others stay and become staples of one’s marketing strategy and campaigns.

That said, what are some trends you should look out for in the coming year?

Fret not as in this article, we check out the top 7 marketing automation trends for 2022 so that you can incorporate them into your marketing strategy and reap the benefits.

7 Marketing Automation trends for 2022

1. AI-Assisted automation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been the focal point of marketing automation for some time now.

Tools like HubSpot allow you to create outreach or sequence campaigns that resonate with your target audience. This feature lets you focus less on implementing the campaign from the ground up and more on getting the process right and refining it as you see fit.

That said, new AI tools help make the marketing process even more convenient for you than ever before.

For instance, instead of writing marketing copy for your blog or email, you can use Jarvis to write the content for you based on the brief you provide. The software does the writing for you — all you need is to make sure that it generates the right copy according to your specifications.

If you’re into video marketing, Renderforest is a video animation software that lets you create videos on the go without any technical knowledge. All you need to do is choose a template and edit as you see fit before exporting the custom 2D or 3D video.

Also, if you need help with making a logo, BrandCrowd’s logo maker creates one for you in a flash. You just need to type certain keywords related to your brand and it will generate specific designs tailored to your business.

Keep in mind that these tools are meant to assist you in your marketing efforts. Using the creative automation features of these tools without putting any thought into them could result in lower conversions and ROI.

Therefore, you still need to oversee things and ensure that each part of your marketing workflow is doing what it’s designed to do.

2. Personalized content

In today’s complex marketing landscape, you must consider the reason why each of your subscribers joined your mailing list in the first place. They could be at different stages of the sales cycle, and therefore, you can’t send the same emails to all subscribers and expect to achieve the same response from each one.

If you disregard why they joined, expect them to leave your email list faster than you can send your next email.

To prevent this from happening, you need to create tailor-made content for each of your subscribers. By creating personalized content, you can increase your engagement with subscribers and help you achieve your marketing goals.

One way to segment these subscribers and find out more about them is to create online forms. You can ask questions such as ‘How did you find out about us?’ and ‘What’s your budget?’ to segment these subscribers.

If you already have an existing list, you need to organize them into segments using your marketing automation tool. You can even score your leads automatically based on your corresponding with each of them. This way, you can determine which are qualified leads.

From these segments, you can create different campaigns targeted at each group. Creating personalized content for each allows you to move them down your sales funnel more efficiently without worrying about launching the campaign manually.

3. Conversational marketing

One of the biggest challenges marketers face is directly communicating with their target audience in the hopes of turning them into customers. While the process is straightforward if you have a strategy in place, the difficulty lies in being present for them at all times.

Some of your audience will be reaching out to you or your customer support during times when you’re unavailable. And if they don’t receive a reply soon, they’ll leave your site and forget about your brand altogether.

A solution to this is to automate the process. Chatbots and chat widgets have provided leads and site visitors with a channel to communicate with site owners and marketers. However, as effective as these tools are, their success or lack thereof depends on how you implement them as part of your marketing strategy.

Therefore, you must develop conversational marketing to put these tools to significant effect, which is the next logical step to personalized content. This approach turns communication between you and your audience into a conversation and negotiation.

You can set up chatbots to offer help to visitors and lead them to a path of performing a specific action, such as signing up to your page or buying a product from your site. You can also configure your chatbot to answer frequently asked questions or give product recommendations.

4. Augmented reality

With COVID-19 seemingly here to stay, brands are scrambling for ways to continue operations and make the most out of the situation. Augmented reality (AR) provides the best and most convenient solution in these trying times.

AR refers to the trend of providing customers with a unique brand experience via their mobile devices. A perfect example of AR is simulating the experience of choosing items in a grocery store or testing makeup.

The process helps customers visualize the product and allows them to make an informed decision based on how AR shows them the products. As mentioned, it is the best alternative for people who can’t visit physical stores due to the pandemic.

You can incorporate AR into your creative automation strategy, preferably as part of the decision stage in your sales funnel. It should help them decide whether to purchase your items sooner than later.

5. Product information management

Most brands craft their marketing strategy to immediately target their prospects and sell their products or services to them. However, it’s crucial to understand that the consumer journey is not linear anymore.

To help them make a purchasing decision, consumers research for information about the products. Online reviews now help consumers shape their opinion.

Therefore, to gain an edge in today’s market, you need to create a single point of reference as part of your marketing automation efforts with the help of product information management (PIM).

This refers to providing your team with solid product data management that allows them to pull information about your products from a single place.

The great thing about PIM is that you can also repurpose the information used in the different online channels in your marketing automation campaign. For instance, your team can pull data or use the same source from the PIM to create your drip campaigns or marketing messages sent directly to leads and subscribers.

Using collaboration tools like PIM allows everybody in the organization to work together in developing product information. This way, you build a contextual information database to make it easier for prospective customers to shape their purchasing decisions.

6. Next-level social media automation

Back then, scheduling social media posts in advance was social media automation at its peak.

However, times have changed.

Tools such as social listening help to monitor and gather mentions of your brand. This allows you to interact with them automatically to improve engagement and authenticity.

Automatically publishing relevant content on your social channels using tools like ContentStudio allows you to focus on developing a content strategy that will complement your editorial calendar on social media. From here, you can scale the performance of the automated posts published by your tool of choice and see how you can hike up engagement and conversions.

Finally, the volume of social channels to join and engage with your audience continues to grow and won’t be stopping anytime soon. Therefore, using a social media analytics dashboard will greatly help you monitor and scale the performance of your campaigns in a single place. This way, you don’t have to jump from one social platform to another just to review the campaign results.

7. Continued digital transformation

As more innovations are made available to businesses and companies, the need to adapt to the changes is more crucial than ever.

Aside from building an online presence with a website and social media, businesses need to embrace the incoming trends with open arms as part of their marketing process.

By showing their propensity to embrace digital transformation as a critical component in their growth — which includes marketing automation in the mix — they get to display their willingness to up their game and do whatever it takes to succeed.

For instance, instead of requiring clients or business partners for their “wet signature” on documents, you can use online signatures instead to help hasten the process and not take too much time on menial work.

What’s next?

We hope that this article has given you a better understanding of the upcoming marketing automation trends. While some of the trends listed have already been practiced, AR and conversational marketing have yet to be adopted by many.

Remember, the customer journey is ever-changing, and businesses have to keep up with it to stay ahead of the game.

If you don’t know where to begin your journey towards this transformation, you can enlist the help of marketing agencies so you can slowly but surely transition your business to the next phase.

Christopher Jan Benitez

Christopher is a freelance writer for hire who specializes in the digital marketing field. His work has been published on SEO and affiliate marketing-specific niches.

Discover more