Enterprise Marketing Automation: The Complete Guide [2024]
Enterprise marketing automation used to be about one thing: email. Over the years, its scope has broadened, first to social media and later to omnichannel personalization.
But now, with AI-powered technologies like predictive analytics and sophisticated chatbots, enterprise marketing automation is only becoming more essential—and more disruptive.
In this article, I’ll explore what sets enterprise marketing automation platforms apart from automation tools for smaller businesses. I’ll also explain how to choose enterprise automation software, which essential features to seek out—and which types of tools you’ll want to add to your martech stack to keep up with the competition.
What is Enterprise Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation focuses on automating repetitive marketing tasks and streamlining workflows, whether for enterprises or small businesses. The end result is higher productivity and efficiency.
Greater profitability often follows, too, since businesses are freed up to focus their human resources on higher-value tasks—marketing automation has a return on investment of over 400%.
So what is it, exactly, that sets marketing automation apart for enterprise users?
General-purpose marketing automation tends to be lightweight and easy to use to appeal to a wide audience (Mailchimp and Omnisend are good examples).
Enterprise organizations, on the other hand, are more focused on return on investment and productivity impact; if the software is complex, they can (and often do) hire consultants or specialists to implement it and provide training (Salesforce, Oracle Eloqua, and Adobe Marketo Engage are examples of enterprise marketing automation platforms).
There are other differences, too: enterprise marketing automation is tailored to the needs of large-scale organizations, with features facilitating:
- Cross-departmental coordination
- Omnichannel campaigns
- And hyper-personalized marketing.
Enterprise marketing tools are also highly customizable and scalable, more focused on security and regulatory compliance, and can be integrated with various platforms.
Benefits of enterprise marketing automation include:
- Sales automation: Streamline lead generation, nurturing, and conversion.
- Customer data centralization: Create a unified view of interactions across all customer touchpoints.
- Hyper-personalization: Deliver personalized, timely, and relevant communications at scale.
- Enhanced productivity: Free up sales and marketing teams to focus on strategic initiatives.
- Real-time analytics: Instant reporting and insights into campaign effectiveness.
6 Must-Have Components of Enterprise Marketing Automation
Enterprise automation platforms are complex, and comparing features can be overwhelming. To cut through the noise, focus first on these six key capabilities.
1. Customer Retargeting
Most customers who land on your website never come back. (A staggering 97% of them, in fact).
That’s why customer retargeting is crucial to any enterprise marketing campaign. Without it, any campaign fits the classic “leaky bucket” definition of ineffective marketing efforts (i.e., paying for your target audience’s attention only to quickly lose it).
Retargeting allows you to boost ROI by re-engaging with prospects who would have turned into missed opportunities otherwise.
Enterprise marketing automation uses sophisticated data on customer behavior and demographics to deliver highly targeted cross-platform retargeting ads. The end result is more conversions and a more efficient use of marketing resources.
2. Customer and Market Segmentation
Hyper-personalization is a core element of effective enterprise marketing automation. But to personalize relevant content for each customer, you need to carefully segment them based on their demographics, interests, and behavior.
Enterprise platforms make this easy, using AI and other technologies to automatically sort prospects and customers into relevant categories.
Once you’ve sufficiently segmented your audience, any personalization activities you undertake—like A/B testing, tailored offers, personalized communication, and customer journey mapping—will be more effective.
3. Promotions
At every stage of the customer journey, there are opportunities for conversion.
But in many cases, customers have no reason to act with urgency. An automated promotions campaign changes that dynamic: from the moment prospects enter your CRM, you can drip-feed them offers at opportune moments in the customer lifecycle.
Common automated promotions include abandoned cart emails, behavior-based offers, and birthday and anniversary discounts. You can also add promotions to the welcome series, which will nudge customers to take action while your brand is still fresh in their minds.
Enterprise marketing automation platforms can coordinate personalized promotions across multiple channels while tracking their performance.
4. Event Marketing and Management
While digital marketing has vacuumed up an enormous percentage of marketing dollars, many old-fashioned marketing channels remain relevant.
Chief among them is event marketing, which 77% of marketers say is their single most effective marketing channel.
Event marketing comes with plenty of activities: promoting the event before it happens, engaging attendees during the event, and following up with leads afterward. Enterprise marketing automation can help with all of this.
You can use event marketing platforms to schedule event-related social media posts, create event chatbots for prospects to interact with, automatically follow up with leads, and track event analytics.
5. Customer Support
Customer support is one of the areas most impacted by marketing automation, especially now that technologies like artificial intelligence are making automation even more powerful.
It’s an area of business that’s uniquely suited for automation since many customers would rather resolve support issues on their own; for example, 38% of Gen Z and millennial customers say that if they can’t resolve an issue using self-service, they’re likely to simply give up.
Businesses also stand to save significant costs by automating customer support: interactions with a live customer support rep cost $5.60 or more, depending on the length of the interaction, while self-service tools often cost pennies per interaction.
Using enterprise automation tools to power customer self-service can reduce costs dramatically while boosting customer satisfaction and turning support interactions into marketing opportunities.
6. Loyalty Programs
Business is about customer relationships, but customers also need to feel like their loyalty is being rewarded; otherwise, they’re likely to eventually jump ship.
Fortunately, there’s a simple solution: loyalty programs. 72% of customers will stay loyal if a brand offers them discounts and rewards.
The problem is these programs can be fiendishly hard to manage at scale. Enterprise marketing automation tools can monitor customer actions, assign and track points, distribute rewards, and personalize the entire experience—leading to higher retention and customer lifetime value.
How to Choose the Best Enterprise Marketing Automation Software
When reviewing marketing automation software options, do an audit of your current marketing operations to find areas where your team is spending time on routine manual tasks. These should be your first targets for automation, so you’ll need to identify software that handles those tasks. Once you’ve done that, ask the following questions about each enterprise marketing automation tool you’re considering:
- Does it integrate across platforms? Ultimately, your goal should be a single unified view of your marketing activities. That means your marketing tools should easily integrate with your existing enterprise tech stack, including CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, and analytics tools. Check the number of native integrations and the availability of APIs.
- Is it scalable? Your tool will need to be able to handle large volumes of data, users, and campaigns. Look specifically at your platform’s support for multi-region marketing and its ability to handle large contact databases.
- Does it have reliable customer support? Eventually, every piece of software needs support. This is doubly true for enterprise tools, which often rely on a web of integrations and can require complex custom solutions. Look for providers that offer a dedicated customer success manager, 24/7 technical support, and comprehensive onboarding and training programs.
- Does it have data analytics and reporting? You’ll find reporting tools in nearly any piece of automation software. The key is to look for features that make it easier to make data-driven decisions, like automated insights, real-time reporting, predictive analytics, and customizable dashboards. Another plus is the ability to design reports with ROI-focused reporting.
- Is it user-friendly? While ease of use isn’t always the first priority for enterprise software buyers, it matters. That’s because if the software isn’t intuitive, it doesn’t get used; in fact, 85% of B2B marketers say they aren’t using their marketing automation software to its full potential.
Keep in mind that all of the above also play a part in the pricing of marketing software when budgeting.
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6 Key Categories Of Enterprise Marketing Automation Tools
With over 14,000 marketing technology products—and more martech startups launching all the time—it can be hard to know which tools you need in your stack. Here are six categories to consider.
1. CRM Platforms
Your customer relationship management platform is the foundation of your automation efforts. It’s where you’ll track customer behavior and actions, orchestrate sales processes, and gather detailed contact data. Look for features like contact management, lead scoring, sales forecasting, and customer segmentation.
Some well-known enterprise-focused CRM platforms include:
| Tool | Description |
| Salesforce | Known for its extensive customization options and large app ecosystem |
| Microsoft Dynamics 365 | Offers seamless integration with other Microsoft products |
| HubSpot CRM | Provides a user-friendly interface and strong inbound marketing features |
2. Email Marketing
The first martech tools—back in the 1990s—were email-based. Today, email automation is still as powerful as ever. Enterprise tools offer features like dynamic content personalization, A/B testing, automated workflows, omnichannel marketing campaigns, including SMS and in-app notifications, and advanced segmentation.
Popular enterprise-focused email marketing automation platforms include:
| Tool | Description |
| Klaviyo | Data-driven email marketing automation with advanced segmentation and personalization capabilities |
| HubSpot | Enterprise email marketing platform with integrated analytics and campaign management |
| Pardot | Salesforce-powered B2B marketing automation with email marketing campaigns, lead nurturing, and analytics |
3. Customer Support and Chatbot Tools
Given the massive cost reductions possible with customer service automation tools, even the pricier platforms in this category can pay for themselves relatively quickly.
Look for enterprise tools that automatically handle routine inquiries—ideally with a sophisticated chatbot that can learn from your knowledge base and support docs. And present that information dynamically to customers. (You’ll also want to make sure your chatbot knows when it’s necessary to escalate to human agents).
Some of the popular enterprise-focused customer support platforms include:
| Tool | Description |
| Salesforce Service Cloud | Comprehensive CRM-integrated customer support platform with advanced AI and automation capabilities |
| Genesys Cloud CX | All-in-one contact center solution with omnichannel support and sophisticated AI integration |
| Nuance | AI-powered customer engagement platform with advanced natural language understanding and personalized interactions |
4. Event Management Tools
If you’ve ever staffed a booth at a trade show or event, you know how exhausting it can be.
Event management tools can make it easier by automating the planning, promoting, and follow-up. They’re ideal not only for in-person events but also for remote events like webinars and virtual conferences. Look for features like registration management, email reminders, automated post-event communication workflows, and analytics.
Well-known enterprise-focused event management platforms include:
| Tool | Description |
| Cvent | Comprehensive event management platform with robust analytics and reporting capabilities |
| Bizzabo | Advanced event marketing and management tools with personalized attendee experiences |
| Whova | All-in-one event management solution offering extensive attendee engagement features and real-time event analytics |
5. Social Media Management Software
Most brands optimize their social media workflows by scheduling posts ahead of time.
But the best enterprise-focused social media tools go much deeper than scheduling: they offer social listening, audience insights, social media advertising tools, sentiment analysis, and multi-platform performance analytics.
Some well-known enterprise-focused social media management platforms include:
| Tool | Description |
| Sprout Social | Strong analytics and customer engagement tools for enterprises |
| Emplifi | Advanced social media analytics and audience insights for large businesses |
| Brandwatch | Comprehensive social media management, advertising, and analytics for enterprises |
6. Sales and Marketing Software
From the moment a lead enters your CRM, it’s possible to plan their entire end-to-end customer journey: everything from the first welcome series they receive to post-purchase retention emails.
Enterprise sales and marketing software offers features like customer journey mapping, funnel optimization, lead management, campaign automation, and sales forecasting.
Some popular enterprise-focused sales and marketing platforms include:
| Tool | Description |
| HubSpot | Offers an all-in-one marketing, sales, and service platform |
| Marketo (Adobe) | Provides advanced B2B marketing automation features |
| Salesforce Marketing Cloud | Specializes in B2B marketing automation with strong Salesforce integration |
Join for More Enterprise Marketing Insights
Marketing automation has the potential to cut costs, boost productivity, and improve the customer experience. But while every automation tool focuses on these outcomes, only enterprise-focused tools have the capability to do it at scale—all while running complex multi-region omnichannel campaigns with carefully personalized messaging.
Not just any enterprise platform will work. To choose the ideal tools for your marketing automation stack, you’ll need to review your marketing operations thoroughly.
After finding inefficiencies and time-wasting manual marketing processes, you’ll be in a better position to pick platforms that fix those specific problems. Putting in serious effort during the software selection stage can pay off big time, driving ROI and accelerating your business growth for years to come.
Looking for more on enterprise marketing? Check out our Definitive Guide to Account-Based Marketing—and make sure to subscribe to The CMO newsletter for enterprise marketing strategies and leadership insights.
