You know the conversations. During the commercial meeting when someone says, “Marketing needs to generate more leads” and “Sales isn’t closing enough deals.” Marketing automation might not be the first solution that comes to mind, but a well-implemented automation system can significantly improve both marketing and sales efficiency. However, what exactly do you want to achieve, which tool should you choose, and how do you prevent this from becoming a never-ending project with unclear goals? No worries—when done right, marketing automation makes your workday easier, not harder.

Let’s start with the basics. Marketing automation is the use of software tools to automate and personalize marketing tasks. Think of email campaigns, lead nurturing, segmentation, and integrating marketing and sales processes. The goal? Reaching the right person at the right time with the right message throughout the entire journey—without marketing and sales having to manually chase every lead.

For B2B companies, and especially for tech companies, marketing automation is a game-changer. Here’s why:

• Visibility: Leads and accounts are collected and qualified efficiently.
• Sales funnel insights: Get real-time visibility into how leads move through the entire sales funnel and where attention is needed.
• Sales and marketing alignment: Warm leads are passed on and followed up properly, preventing valuable contacts from slipping through the cracks.
• Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Targeted and personalized marketing and sales actions per account become easier and more effective.
• Analytics and reporting: Performance becomes measurable and can be optimized continuously.
• Better engagement: You reach prospects and customers at the right moment with the right message, increasing conversion rates.

We’ve seen it before. Investments in fancy marketing tools only to use them for basic email blasts. But personalized email automation is just a tiny piece of the puzzle. Once you start diving deeper, you realize the same tool can track the entire customer journey, measure success and provide real-time insights. An example we see often is the collaboration with sales. We’ve been in plenty of meetings where marketing presents the list of Marketing Qualified Leads and asking sales where they are with the follow up. But with the right automations, sales and marketing don’t just exchange numbers, but they can analyze the entire funnel together. Sales knows when and how to reach out, and marketing gets feedback on what really works to create the right touch points.

And then there’s events. No more final final_v2 versions of spreadsheets, forgotten follow-ups or trying to remember who actually showed up. We’ve seen entire event workflows in an automation tool, from the first invite to registration forms, follow-up, and nurture flows, all in one place. This way, the entire commercial team takes ownership of the event success.

With hundreds of options available, selecting the right tool can be overwhelming. Not every platform fits your company’s needs. Here are the key factors to consider:

• Users: Who will use the tool? Which modules are necessary for them?
• Features: Do you need an all-in-one platform, or just specific functionalities like email automation or lead scoring?
• Integrations: Does the tool integrate well with other systems you’re using?
• Cost: Does it fit your budget, and is it scalable as your business grows?
• Management: Who will manage the tool? Do you need internal expertise, or will you rely on external support?

Gartner provides a great overview of B2B marketing automation platforms.

And here’s the real challenge: the tool is just one part of the equation. Many companies underestimate the effort required for implementation. Aligning Sales and marketing, cleaning up data, structuring processes, and multiple departments need to work with the tool. Without the right approach, marketing automation remains just an expensive tool with little real impact.

Curious to find out what marketing automation can do for you?
At Tech to Market, we understand what it takes to sync Sales & Marketing by implementing and leveraging a marketing automation tool. Feel free to reach out to discuss marketing automation possibilities for your business.

 – Written by our Marketing Automation know-it-all Bregje Steeg