A research commissioned by Salesfusion, a leading platform for sales automation in Atlanta, reveals how marketing automation streamlines sales and marketing in different companies and for individual sales and marketing personnel.

The research was carried out by taking a survey of over 700 marketers involved in B2B marketing. This research focused more on small to medium sized businesses whose revenue is below 100 million dollars.

The findings of the survey indicate that marketers who have a marketing automation software platform have a more effective communication with sales.

According to a statement from Learn Marketing Automation, who executed the survey, the results show that automation made the sales process 3 times more effective for marketers. The detailed findings of the research are contained in an eBook called “The Marketing Automation Blue Book”

Most of the people who participated in the survey pointed out that one of the greatest benefits of having an automated marketing process is the impact it has on leads. Many marketers and sales people find leads are generated much more easily when they use an automated system.

Understanding how marketing automation streamlines sales and marketing is also noted as key in getting business owners to invest in automation software for their marketing teams.

Jerry Sanders, a marketing manager with a top hotel in Atlanta says that it is very convenient to be able to set up a system on the CRM and then just watch how it works like clockwork for the entire team. “Using CRM we are able to know important dates like a client’s birthday and prepare a special message for them” Mr. Sanders explains.

More and more companies are getting into this habit. Communicating with clients and prospective clients on a friendly basis is important. The marketing process has changed from sales people trying to shove products and services at clients, to a friendly relationship that has to be nurtured.

According to the research, this relationship is more effectively natured when marketers use automated marketing tools. 68 percent of the marketers who participated in the research wrote down nurturing relationships with prospects as the most important reason for having automated marketing and sales software.

Other points of interest for the marketers included being able to increase the number of leads using automation. This was chosen by 63 percent of the respondents of the survey while 59 percent consider improving the quality of the leads as an important reason to invest in CRM software.

The research also brings out another way how marketing automation streamlines sales and marketing through providing a way to rank prospects. Using automation, marketers are able to give a score for different prospects and in the end, rank them according to how important they may be towards achieving sales targets and the like.

“We have seen an improvement in the content we share with prospects,” Jerry Sanders says. “content marketing is very important and with automation in place, it is possible to track, create and share contents with prospects which draws them in much easier and smoothly” Sanders elaborates.

This research has provided proof of something that many software experts have been saying but may have been doubted by people who thought they were just out to market their software. This is now concrete evidence of how marketing automation streamlines sales and marketing.