Marketing Automation – Which Processes to Implement First

You want to check which leads from last week are ready for contact with sales. You ask a colleague who maintains the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is waiting for an export from the CRM. The CRM is waiting for a campaign update. Meanwhile, the competition sends a personalized message at 2 AM – automatically, in response to a user spending five minutes on the pricing page. Marketing automation – also known as marketing automation – puts an end to this way of working. The system itself tracks contact behavior, segments them, triggers the right messages at the right time, and measures every step without manual work. In this article, we show which marketing automation processes to implement first, which tools to use, and how marketing automation connects with broader business process automation in your company.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is the replacement of manual, repetitive marketing activities with a system that responds to user behavior in real time. Instead of manually sending messages, segmenting contact lists, or creating advertising campaigns for each group separately – the system does this automatically, according to defined rules and based on data about what contacts actually do: which pages they visit, which emails they open, what they download, and when they are ready to talk to a salesperson.

It is worth distinguishing marketing automation from a simple mass email sending tool. Mass mailing is one message for everyone. Marketing automation is hundreds of different communication paths triggered individually – in response to a specific action by a specific person. Someone downloaded an e-book? They receive an educational series. Someone visited the pricing page three times in a week? The system notifies the sales rep and simultaneously sends the contact a message with an offer. No one manually monitors this.

In practice, marketing automation rests on three layers: data collection (tracking behavior on the website, in emails, in ads, and on social media), segmentation and scoring (grouping contacts by profile and behavior, scoring purchase readiness), and automated communication (triggering appropriate email campaigns, SMS, push notifications, chatbots, and ads based on data from the previous layers). The better the data, the more accurate and effective the marketing activity automation.

Which marketing processes should you implement first?

Not all marketing automation processes have the same return on investment. Companies that successfully implement marketing automation usually start with areas where time savings and conversion growth are visible fastest. Here are five processes that deliver results first:

1. Email marketing automation and lead nurturing

Email marketing automation is the foundation of any marketing automation implementation. This is about more than just a newsletter – it is about building automated sequences that guide a potential customer through the sales funnel step by step, without human involvement at every stage.

Classic lead nurturing looks like this: a new contact downloads material from your site → automatically receives a welcome email → after two days – a first educational question → after a week – a case study from their industry → after two weeks – an invitation to a webinar or a free consultation. Each step triggers without manual intervention, and the sequence adapts based on whether the contact opened previous messages and what they clicked. Tools such as GetResponse, ActiveCampaign, and HubSpot allow building such sequences even without technical experience.

For many companies, email campaign automation reduces the time to prepare a monthly communication cycle from several working days to a few hours of upfront setup – and then the system runs on its own, for months.

2. User segmentation and lead scoring

User segmentation is the division of a contact database into groups according to criteria that matter for your sales process: industry, job title, company size, website behavior, stage in the funnel. Segmentation automation means a contact is dynamically assigned to the right segment based on current data – without manual tagging.

Lead scoring automation is a layer on top of segmentation: every contact action (email open: +2 points, pricing page visit: +10 points, technical specification download: +5 points, opening a proposal: +20 points) adds up to a purchase readiness score. When a contact exceeds the set threshold, the salesperson gets a notification. This eliminates one of the biggest problems in B2B: sales reps do not call everyone in order – they call those who are genuinely signaling readiness. Lead management stops being guesswork and becomes a data-driven process.

3. Ad campaign automation and retargeting

Ad campaign automation and retargeting is the area where marketing automation meets paid advertising. The system automatically creates audience segments based on website behavior (who viewed a specific page, who abandoned a form, who entered the funnel from an e-book) and triggers different advertising messages for each segment on Google, Meta, or LinkedIn.

Ad campaign creation automation and budget management rules (automatically pausing low-ROAS campaigns, automatically scaling high-return ones) reduce campaign management time by 30–50%, while eliminating errors resulting from manual monitoring. The marketing automation tool knows that the same contact opened three emails from an educational series – and shows them a different banner than a completely new person visiting the site for the first time.

4. Chatbots and customer communication automation

A chatbot on the website is one of the faster-to-implement and more visible elements of marketing automation. A well-designed chatbot takes over the first line of communication: it answers FAQ questions, qualifies leads (asking about industry, budget, and timeline), schedules meetings with the sales rep, and collects contact data – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with zero response time.

Customer communication automation and notifications after form submission, after placing an order, after a chatbot conversation, or after contact via a form – this is post-sale communication automation that builds the customer experience in places where manual responses would be impossible or too costly. AI agents go a step further – they not only respond to questions according to a script, but interpret user intent and conduct a natural conversation capable of closing simple transactions without human involvement.

5. Abandoned carts, cross-selling, and post-sale communication

Abandoned cart analysis automation is one of the fastest-returning implementations for e-commerce. A contact added a product to the cart but did not complete the purchase? The system automatically sends a reminder sequence – an email after an hour, an email with a discount after a day, an SMS after three days. Industry data shows it effectively recovers 5–15% of abandoned transactions. Tools like Klaviyo were built with exactly this scenario in mind.

Cross-selling automation, product recommendation automation, and purchase reminder automation are the next layer: after purchasing product A, the system automatically suggests product B, which 40% of customers who bought A also purchase. No manual work, no forgetting, no "maybe someone will reply this week." Marketing automation in e-commerce is a direct revenue generator, not just a time-saving tool.

Marketing automation tools – comparison

The choice of marketing automation tools depends on the business model (B2B vs B2C/e-commerce), the size of the contact database, integration needs, and budget. Here is a comparison of the most popular platforms:

Tool	Best for	Key features	Price (from)
GetResponse	SMEs, e-commerce, Polish market	Email, landing pages, webinars, sequence automation	approx. €20/mo.
SALESmanago	Mid-size and large companies, e-commerce	CDP, AI personalization, lead scoring, omnichannel	from approx. PLN 1,500/mo.
HubSpot	B2B, companies wanting full CRM	Marketing Hub, CRM, sales pipeline, reporting	from 0 (free tier)
ActiveCampaign	SMEs needing advanced workflows	Email automations, CRM, split testing	from approx. $15/mo.
Klaviyo	E-commerce (Shopify, WooCommerce)	Email, SMS, segmentation, abandoned carts	from $20/mo.
Make / Zapier	Any company needing integrations	Connecting tools, automated data flows between systems	from $10/mo.

It is worth emphasizing that tools like GetResponse or ActiveCampaign work well as standalone platforms, but their full potential is only seen after connecting them to a CRM, e-commerce system, and analytics. HubSpot is attractive for its free tier, but costs rise sharply with larger databases and advanced features. SALESmanago is the choice for companies that want enterprise-level personalization and have the data to power it. For e-commerce with Shopify or WooCommerce platforms, Klaviyo stands out for its depth of integration with transaction data.

Regardless of the chosen platform, the integration element is key: the marketing automation tool must communicate with the CRM, analytics system, and – if it is e-commerce – the store platform. Here, well-designed systems integration determines whether marketing automation works smoothly as part of an ecosystem, or remains a data island isolated from the rest of the company.

Marketing automation and business process automation – how to connect them?

Marketing automation is most often implemented as a marketing department tool, separate from the rest of the company's systems. This approach works, but has its ceiling: leads collected by the marketing platform often enter the CRM manually or with a delay, reporting campaign results requires combining data from multiple places, and the sales team still does not know what the marketing department actually did with the leads this month.

Mature marketing automation implementations look different: the marketing automation platform is one element of a larger system in which data flows automatically. A lead goes through the nurturing path and exceeds the scoring threshold → automatically enters the CRM pipeline with a full activity history → the salesperson receives a notification → after the deal is closed, data returns to the marketing automation platform so the segmentation for the next year is more accurate. None of these steps require manual work.

The key element of this ecosystem is business process automation, which connects marketing, sales, and customer service into one cohesive flow. Where the marketing automation platform does not have a ready-made integration with an ERP system, an older CRM database, or specialized industry software, RPA process robotization steps in – a software robot logs into the system, retrieves or enters data, and passes it on, exactly as an employee would, but without breaks or errors.

An important element of mature marketing automation is also measurability. How does the CFO know that campaigns deliver a return? Data from the marketing automation platform must reach management reports – together with sales, financial, and operational data. If every report is still created manually, the time savings achieved in marketing still "come out" through hours of analytical work. Reporting automation closes this loop: the system itself collects data from all sources – including from the marketing automation platform – and delivers a ready report where it needs to go, without manual work at any stage.

How to measure the effects of marketing automation?

One of the most common problems after implementing marketing automation is that companies struggle to assess whether the investment was truly worthwhile. This is usually due to the lack of clearly defined metrics before implementation. It is worth measuring results at several levels:

Email marketing and lead nurturing metrics

Email marketing automation is relatively easy to measure: open rate, CTR (link clicks), conversion rate after click, unsubscribe rate. In lead nurturing, the more important metrics are business ones: how many contacts from the nurturing sequence became MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead), how many MQL progressed to SQL (Sales Qualified Lead), how many SQL closed as transactions. This shows whether marketing automation is actually feeding the sales pipeline.

Ad campaign and retargeting metrics

Ad campaign automation and retargeting is measured by CPL (cost per lead), CPA (cost per acquisition), ROAS (return on ad spend), and – most important in B2B – pipeline influenced: what percentage of closed deals had contact with an automated remarketing campaign in their history. The last requires connecting data from the ad platform, CRM, and invoicing system – which is exactly why systems integration is a prerequisite for meaningful reporting of marketing automation results.

Chatbot and automated communication metrics

For chatbots, you measure the conversation-to-lead conversion rate (how many conversations end with the contact leaving their details), contact scoring after going through the chatbot path, and first contact speed (time-to-first-response). A good chatbot should handle 60–80% of standard queries without escalation to a human.

Overall marketing automation ROI

The total return on marketing automation investment is calculated as the difference between revenue generated by contacts in automated paths and the cost of the platform, implementation, and maintenance. According to industry data, mature marketing automation implementations achieve a 4–8x return on investment, but only after 6–12 months from implementation, when the databases are well-built and sequences are optimized. The first measurable effects – time savings and improved open rates – are visible within the first weeks.

How much does marketing automation implementation cost?

The cost of marketing automation implementation depends on several variables: the chosen platform, the quality and size of the database, the number of integrations with other systems, and whether the company implements independently or with a partner.

Tools for marketing automation start from free or very inexpensive starter plans (HubSpot free up to a certain limit, GetResponse from a few dozen euros per month, ActiveCampaign from $15). The cost grows with the number of contacts, features, and scale of personalization. Enterprise platforms like SALESmanago represent an investment of several thousand PLN per month, but are aimed at companies with large databases and complex segmentation requirements.

In addition to the tool cost comes the implementation cost: platform configuration, database import and cleansing, integration with CRM and other systems, building nurturing sequences and templates. Simple implementations – one platform, a few sequences, existing integrations – are projects measured in weeks. Full implementation with CRM, ERP integration, and custom flows is a project measured in months. The largest hidden cost is data cleansing: a database with chaotic tags and duplicates may require several weeks of cleanup before marketing automation can operate sensibly on it.

If you want to know how much implementing marketing automation in your company would cost and which process to start with, we invite you for a free consultation – we will assess the scope and estimate the real return on investment.

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FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions about Marketing Automation

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation is the replacement of manual, repetitive marketing activities – segmenting databases, sending emails, launching retargeting campaigns, responding to user behavior – with a system that performs them automatically based on data and defined rules. The system tracks contact behavior (which pages they visit, what they click, what they download), assigns them profiles and purchase readiness scores, and then triggers appropriate messages at the right time – without human involvement at every stage. The result: marketing works 24/7, is personalized and measurable.

Which marketing processes should you automate first?

Companies that achieve the fastest return from marketing automation implementation usually start with: (1) email marketing automation and lead nurturing – automated welcome and educational sequences leading leads through the funnel; (2) user segmentation and lead scoring – automatic contact grouping and scoring their purchase readiness; (3) retargeting campaign automation – dynamic audience segments based on website behavior; (4) chatbots for first contact handling and lead qualification; (5) abandoned cart automation – particularly valuable for e-commerce. The order should depend on where your company loses the most time or has the greatest conversion potential.

What are the most popular marketing automation tools?

The most popular marketing automation tools are: HubSpot (full B2B platform with a free tier and built-in CRM), GetResponse (Polish tool, great for SMEs and e-commerce), ActiveCampaign (advanced email automations with CRM), SALESmanago (Polish enterprise tool with AI and CDP), Klaviyo (e-commerce, deep integration with Shopify and WooCommerce). Make or Zapier is often used for integrations and connecting tools into flows. Tool selection should depend on the business model (B2B vs e-commerce), the size of the contact database, and the need for integration with existing systems.

How does marketing automation work step by step?

Marketing automation works in four steps. Step 1 – data collection: the system tracks user behavior on the site (pixels, forms, emails) and creates contact profiles. Step 2 – segmentation and scoring: contacts are grouped by profile and behavior, and the system assigns them purchase readiness points (lead scoring). Step 3 – triggering messages: after a threshold is crossed or a condition is met, the system automatically sends an email, SMS, push notification, triggers a chatbot, or creates a task for the salesperson. Step 4 – measurement and optimization: the system measures the results of each automation (open rate, conversion, revenue) and allows testing variants. Each step works automatically but requires one-time configuration of rules, sequences, and integrations.

How do you measure the effects of marketing automation?

The effects of marketing automation are measured at several levels: (1) email marketing metrics – open rate, CTR, conversion from email to lead and customer; (2) sales funnel metrics – number of MQL, SQL, and closed deals from marketing automation channels; (3) campaign ROI – CPL, CPA, ROAS, revenue attributed to automation paths; (4) chatbot metrics – conversation-to-lead conversion rate, % of queries handled automatically. A key condition for meaningful measurement is integrating the marketing automation platform with CRM and the reporting system – so marketing data meets sales data in one view.

How much do marketing automation tools cost?

Marketing automation tools are available at very different prices: HubSpot offers a free plan with basic features, ActiveCampaign and GetResponse start from $15–20/mo. for small databases, Klaviyo from $20/mo. for e-commerce. Enterprise platforms like SALESmanago cost several thousand PLN per month. In addition to the tool cost comes implementation: configuration, integrations, building sequences, and database cleansing – from a few weeks for simple projects to several months for complex implementations with multiple systems. The total investment should be compared with measurable gains: team time saved, lead conversion improvement, and revenue generated by automated paths.

How does marketing automation connect with business process automation?

Marketing automation is most effective when it works as part of a larger ecosystem: leads from the marketing automation platform automatically enter the CRM, CRM data feeds segmentation in the marketing automation platform, campaign results land in the reporting system together with financial and sales data. Each of these integrations can be built via API or – where there is no API – through process robotization (RPA). The result is that marketing, sales, and reporting stop being separate islands and become one cohesive flow of data and processes. This is exactly the difference between "an email sending tool" and mature marketing activity automation built into the company's operational strategy.

Marketing automation – where to start?

Manual work in marketing – manual segmentation, manual campaign sending, manual tracking of which lead is ready for a conversation – costs more than it appears at first glance: both in working hours and in leads that "fall out" of the funnel because no one responded in time. Marketing automation does not require a revolution – a well-chosen first process is enough to see how much time and conversions can be recovered.

At OmniTask, we help companies build cohesive automation ecosystems where marketing automation works together with business process automation, CRM, ERP systems, and reporting. We start every project with an analysis of current processes and an estimate of the real return on investment – rather than selling a tool that will sit unused after six months.

Want to know which marketing automation process to implement first in your company and how much it realistically costs? Contact us – we will conduct a free analysis and identify the areas with the greatest potential.

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Sources

1. HubSpot, State of Marketing Report 2024, HubSpot Research 2024. Available: hubspot.com

2. Salesforce, State of Marketing – 8th Edition, Salesforce Research 2024. Available: salesforce.com

3. Email Monday, The Ultimate Marketing Automation Statistics Overview, Email Monday 2024. Available: emailmonday.com

4. Gartner, Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms, Gartner Research 2023. Available: gartner.com

5. Forrester, The Forrester Wave: B2B Marketing Automation Platforms, Q3 2023, Forrester Research 2023. Available: forrester.com