10 Emerging Marketing Automation Trends for 2024

By Intelligent Relations Team

September 27, 2023

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Marketing automation is like having a personal assistant who can handle all your marketing tasks. It can streamline your processes and boost efficiency.

But keeping up with it can be challenging, especially for busy marketers. That’s because marketing automation technologies and strategies are always evolving. 

It’s becoming more AI-centric and focused on delivering personalized experiences. Plus, marketing automation is integrated across a variety of digital platforms. 

Brands that embrace these innovations stay ahead of the curve. They leverage marketing automation trends to drive growth, improve customer experiences, and achieve their marketing goals.

How can you do the same?

By staying updated on the latest marketing automation trends, you could be one of those brands. To help you understand what’s relevant in this field, we’ve compiled 10 key trends for 2024.

Read on to find out how to evolve with the latest marketing automation updates. 

Our Marketing Automation Trends 2024

• User-Quality Data
• Account-Based Marketing
• Use of AI and Machine Learning
• Value-Based Marketing
• Lead Capture
• Omnichannel Marketing
• Marketing Funnel Automation
• Personalized Content
• Chatbots
• Automated Social Media Marketing

1. User-Quality Data

User-quality data is one of the top marketing automation trends because it can take your marketing decision-making to a whole new level. What is it? It’s data about users that gives you insight into their behavior, preferences, and characteristics. 

You can leverage user-quality data to enhance marketing strategies and improve overall business performance. To do so, select tools that align with your data analysis needs. Some of the most popular ones include Google Analytics, Amplitude, and Optimizely. 

Here are three reasons why user-quality data is among the leading marketing automation trends of 2024:

• Personalization: User-quality data enables you to create highly personalized marketing campaigns and experiences. This will help you tailor your messages and offers to specific customer segments.
• Targeted Marketing: You can identify and target your marketing efforts towards the most relevant audience. This allows you to segment your customer base and deliver targeted messages and promotions. 
• Performance Optimization: User-quality data provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. This allows you to identify trends, identify areas for improvement, and optimize your marketing strategies accordingly.

Pro Tip: Automating the collection of performance data is also one of the top marketing automation trends. Set goals and metrics, then collect data across your SEO, PR, social media, and other marketing campaigns. Set up visualized reporting in tools like Google’s Looker Studio, Hubspot, Ahrefs, or other marketing tool dashboards for info in a glance.

Want to automate data collection for your PR and marketing campaigns? Not sure where to start? Check out our article: 10 PR Metrics You Must Measure to Gauge Success

2. Account-Based Marketing

Focusing on a broader audience doesn’t always work. That’s why account-based marketing (ABM) is one of the top marketing automation trends for 2024. It targets specific high-value accounts, allowing you to allocate your marketing efforts effectively. 

Once you’ve identified high-value accounts, personalize your messages and content for them. Consider using email automation to nurture and track engagement with key accounts. 

Here’s why ABM is one of the top marketing automation trends:

• Personalized Approach: ABM allows you to create personalized experiences for individual accounts. Understanding specific needs and pain points can help you deliver relevant content. 
• Increased ROI: Since ABM focuses on accounts that have a higher likelihood of conversion, it often leads to better ROI. This can help optimize your marketing efforts and allocate your budget more effectively. 
• Alignment with Sales: ABM promotes closer alignment between marketing and sales teams. This allows marketing and sales to work hand in hand towards a common goal.

Pro Tip: While ABM isn’t exactly marketing automation, it can have the same benefits and results as all other marketing automation trends. By selecting targeted, high-quality leads to focus on, you waste less time and instead spend it on nurturing real potential customers. 

3. Use of AI and Machine Learning

AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning have revolutionized marketing automation. In fact, over 61% of marketers have used AI for marketing automation purposes.

Plus, it’s not just one of the top marketing automation trends. AI is a general marketing trend that can help you improve your PR, content, email, and social media marketing campaigns.

Try using AI and Machine Learning for content recommendations and personalized messaging. You can also it for A/B testing. Some popular tools include Google Optimize and Adobe Target. 

And what about tools like ChatGPT4?

Yes, you can also use generative AI tools like ChatGPT4 to help automate some content writing processes. The crucial thing to keep in mind is that they still produce inferior content. While it may help your writers speed up their work in some cases, editing AI content can also slow them down in others. 

For example, ChatGPT4 is great at generating outlines, doing small copywriting jobs, or helping writers brainstorm. What it doesn’t do is create original, valuable long-form content. Your writers still need to do that themselves.

Here are three reasons why AI and Machine Learning have become one of the most important marketing automation trends of 2024:

• Enhanced Personalization: AI and Machine Learning algorithms enable you to gather and analyze large amounts of customer data. This works great for developing targeted and personalized marketing campaigns.
• Efficient Lead Scoring and Nurturing: You can automate lead scoring, which helps prioritize leads based on their likelihood to convert. This involves analyzing multiple data points, such as demographics, engagement levels, and interactions.
• Predictive Analytics and Forecasting: AI and Machine Learning algorithms can analyze historical data and identify patterns and trends. You can use these to make accurate predictions about customer behavior. This enables you to make data-driven decisions, anticipate customer needs, and optimize your marketing strategies.

Pro Tip: Automate repetitive tasks to free up your time to focus on strategy and creative initiatives. These tasks include email marketing, lead nurturing, and social media scheduling. You can find plenty of AI tools that can help with this. Don’t use AI to take over creative work.

4. Value-based Marketing

How did value-based marketing make our list of marketing automation trends?

Well, value-based marketing is all about getting more bang for your buck. It helps you deliver value and meet your customers’ needs. So, pairing it with other marketing automation trends is how you get next-level results. 

Plus, value-based marketing aims to establish long-term relationships by providing meaningful and personalized experiences. Return and long-term customers are essentially automated customers, allowing you to make sales and continue to focus your marketing efforts elsewhere.

You can devise a value-based marketing strategy from customer feedback and surveys. Plus, you can address customer pain points and nurture leads with automated content distribution that targets a specific audience. 

To incorporate value-based marketing into your strategy, align your marketing efforts with your audience’s values and needs. Also, create content and campaigns that emphasize the value of your products and services. 

What makes value-based marketing one of the top marketing automation trends? Here are a few reasons:

• Enhanced Customer Engagement: Value-based marketing allows you to understand your customers’ needs, preferences, and pain points. This can help you segment your customers and deliver personalized content. 
• Streamlined Lead Nurturing: Marketing automation platforms enable you to automate lead nurturing processes. This allows you to deliver targeted and relevant content to prospects at every stage of the buyer’s journey. 
• Improved Customer Retention: Value-based marketing focuses on delivering value and addressing customers’ needs. This significantly improves customer retention and enables you to create automated campaigns that nurture existing customers.

5. Automated Lead Capture

Lead capture involves collecting contact information from potential customers who have shown interest in your products or services. This enables you to effectively nurture and engage with your prospects. 

To automate lead capturing, try implementing automated lead capture forms on your website and landing pages. Use lead scoring to prioritize and segment leads based on their engagement and fit.

Here are a few reasons why lead capture remains one of the leading marketing automation trends:

• Efficient Lead Generation: Automatic lead capture allows you to efficiently generate leads by collecting relevant information from interested prospects. This enables you to build a database of potential customers. You can target these prospects with personalized marketing campaigns.
• Streamlined Nurturing Process: Once you have captured leads, you can automate the nurturing process through targeted email campaigns, personalized content, and automated follow-ups. This helps to build relationships, educate prospects about your offerings, and guide them toward making a purchase.
• Data-driven Decision Making: Lead capture provides valuable insights and data about your potential customers. You can analyze this data to understand their audience better. Plus, you can identify trends and make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing strategies.

6. Omnichannel Marketing Automation

You leave no stone unturned in your marketing efforts with omnichannel marketing. But why is it one of the top marketing automation trends? 

By automating omnichannel marketing, you can create a seamless customer experience across multiple channels and touchpoints. Plus, it involves aligning all marketing efforts to ensure consistent messaging. 

Use automation to schedule and manage content distribution across multiple channels. Ensure a consistent brand message and user experience across all marketing channels.

Here are three reasons why omnichannel marketing is one of our marketing automation trends:

• Enhanced Customer Experience: Omnichannel marketing allows you to provide a consistent and personalized journey across various channels. You can collect and analyze customer data to deliver targeted and relevant messages at each stage of the customer journey. 
• Increased Engagement and Brand Loyalty: With omnichannel marketing automation, you can maintain a continuous presence across multiple channels. This helps ensure that customers stay engaged and connected. 
• Improved Marketing Efficiency and ROI: Automating the omnichannel marketing process streamlines workflows. It also reduces manual efforts and improves overall marketing efficiency. You can easily manage and track campaigns, analyze data, and optimize strategies in real time.

7. Marketing Funnel Automation

Say goodbye to tedious marketing tasks. Marketing funnel automation can do the leg work for you. Plus, focusing on marketing funnel automation is one of the easiest ways to start implementing marketing automation trends into your PR and marketing mix.

It involves automating and streamlining the various marketing funnel stages. And it involves adding things like CTAs, forms, and email drip campaigns that automatically take the user deeper into the sales funnel.  

The end result is enhanced customer engagement and better overall conversions. 

To make this work, start by implementing marketing automation workflows to move leads through the sales funnel. Use triggered emails and messages based on user behavior and stage in the funnel.

Here’s what makes marketing funnel automation one of the best marketing automation trends:

• Enhanced Efficiency: Marketing funnel automation allows you to automate repetitive tasks. This includes lead generation, nurturing, and scoring. You can use market funnel automation to save time and effort and focus on other strategic initiatives. 
• Personalized Customer Journeys: You can create highly personalized customer journeys based on individual preferences, behaviors, and interactions. This helps you deliver targeted content and offers at each stage of the funnel. 
• Improved Sales Alignment: Marketing funnel automation allows for better tracking, measurement, and attribution of marketing efforts. Customer relationship management systems can help you gain insights into which marketing activities are driving the most revenue. Plus, you can align your sales and marketing efforts more effectively. 

8. Personalized Content

Personalized content targets individual users based on their preferences, behaviors, and demographics. Many brands use it because of its effectiveness in engaging and converting customers. 

But how do you automate it? Creating personalized content takes more work than creating general content, right?

Start by leveraging that user-quality data mentioned above to create personalized content for different audience segments. That’s where the bulk of the upfront work will go. As you collect more data on your users, you can begin to create highly personalized content.

Later, use automation to deliver these highly personalized email campaigns, product recommendations, and website experiences. Plus, you can A/B test personalized content to refine messaging.

Here are three reasons why personalized content is still one of the top marketing automation trends and one of the top content marketing trends in general:

• Enhanced Customer Experience: Personalized content allows you to create a more customized and relevant experience for your audience. You can deliver content that aligns with each individual’s needs and interests. This helps you foster a stronger connection and loyalty with your customers.
• Increased Engagement and Conversion Rates: Personalized content has been proven to boost engagement and conversion rates. It speaks directly to customers and addresses their pain points. This makes them more likely to take action.
• Improved Marketing ROI: You can optimize your marketing efforts and achieve a higher ROI. Personalized content increases the chances of reaching the right people with the right message at the right time. This leads to better results and cost-effectiveness.

Pro Tip: To create personalized marketing content, start by understanding your target audience’s needs and interests. Tailor your messaging and language specifically to resonate with them. You can also incorporate personalization elements such as dynamic content and personalized recommendations.

Need some tips on writing personalized content for PR or marketing campaigns? See our guide: PR Writing – Crafting Convincing PR Content for Enhanced Results [+7 Examples]

9. Chatbots

Chatbots are intelligent computer programs that simulate human conversation. They typically use text-based interactions. You can use chatbots to save you time, money, and round-the-clock personnel. 

While chatbots mostly serve a customer service function, they can improve your overall marketing and sales results by answering frequently asked questions and qualifying leads. That’s why chatbots still fall under the top marketing automation trends. 

You can install AI-driven chatbots like Zowie’s AI Chatbot or LiveChat within a few clicks. They come with dashboards where you can further automate and track your messaging. This allows you to provide real-time customer support and engagement, as well as nurture leads.

Chatbots have become one of the most popular customer service and marketing automation trends for 3 main reasons:

• Enhanced Customer Engagement: Chatbots provide a personalized and interactive customer experience. They can answer questions, provide recommendations, and assist with purchasing decisions.
• 24/7 Availability: Unlike human agents who have limited availability, chatbots can be available round the clock. This means that potential customers can receive immediate assistance. This leads to increased customer satisfaction and conversion rates.
• Cost and Time Efficiency: Implementing chatbots can significantly reduce operational costs. Once developed and deployed, chatbots can handle multiple customer interactions simultaneously. There’s no need for additional human resources. This saves you time and money.

Pro Tip: Again, it’s worth it to repeat that AI chatbots aren’t meant to replace humans but to assist them. They can answer the repetitive questions that customers ask, while freeing up your people to answer the more complex questions that need a human touch. 

10. Automated Social Media Marketing

Automated social media marketing is like having a social media assistant who never sleeps. It leverages technology and algorithms to streamline social media marketing. 

Statistics show that 50% of social media marketing channels worldwide use automation. 

How do you get behind this trend?

Schedule and automate social media posts to maintain a consistent online presence. You can use tools such as Sprout Social or HootSuite to accomplish this. Also, consider using social media listening tools to track brand mentions and engage with users.

Here are three reasons why it has become and remains one of he most prominent marketing automation trends:

• Enhanced Efficiency: Automated social media marketing eliminates the need for manual posting and monitoring. With automated scheduling and posting, you can save time and effort. This enables consistent and timely content delivery.
• Targeted Audience Reach: Automation tools provide advanced targeting options. You can customize your content to specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. This precision targeting maximizes the impact of social media campaigns.
• Real-time Analytics and Insights: Automated social media marketing platforms offer comprehensive analytics and reporting features. These tools provide valuable insights into audience engagement, social media performance, and campaign effectiveness. You can monitor impressions, click-through rates, and conversions. This can help you refine your marketing strategies and optimize content.

Pro Tip: To automate your social media marketing, try tools such as Hootsuite or Buffer. These tools help you save time and ensure a consistent online presence. 

Want to know how to blend your social media and PR strategies? Check out our comprehensive guide: Social Media PR – 6 Easy Ways to Connect with Your Target Audience

Key Takeaways on Marketing Automation Trends

Marketing automation streamlines repetitive tasks and workflows. When you stay in the loop on the latest marketing automation trends, you learn how to save time and resources. Plus, you’ll know how to take advantage of new technologies that help you automate email campaigns, lead nurturing, and social media scheduling.

Marketing automation also allows you to deliver tailored messages and content to customers at the right time. By using data-driven insights and segmentation, you can create personalized campaigns that resonate with individual preferences and behaviors. As a result, you can experience higher engagement and conversions.

Overall, engaging in marketing automation and staying current with marketing automation trends helps you effectively identify, manage and nurture leads in a cost-effective way. At the end of the day that will enable you to optimize your strategies and drive better results.

Still not sure how to incorporate marketing automation trends into your PR and marketing mix? Let us help! Simply book a free consultation and we’ll help you get started.