In an increasingly competitive environment and facing consumers with a growing level of empowerment in the buying process, modern marketers are turning to marketing automation in throngs. Emerging marketing technologies, including digital marketing and marketing automation, is enabling marketers to engage with customers and prospects as well as support sales efforts.

Marketing automation software has many rewards for users. Four of the most prominent, according to a recent article by marketing automation vendor eTrigue, include:

• Efficiency – automation enables you to send smart, personalized messages to prospects that would otherwise have been neglected.
• Control – you can target specific audiences, time your messages to fit with where they are on the buying cycle and how engaged they are.
• Consistency – automating your marketing messages makes sure that nothing slips through the cracks and that you always follow through with prospects, helping you avoid typical human errors such as forgetting to respond or missing an important email.
• Measurability – an important feature of marketing automation, measurability enables you to keep improving your campaigns, do what works and drop what doesn’t.

Another highly valuable benefit of marketing automation is the level of flexibility it offers end-users in reaching out to and engaging with prospects at different stages of the sales pipeline. Below are five of the most common types of marketing automation campaigns:

Drip
For any new prospect or customer, drip campaigns are the best place to start. Traditionally informational in nature, drip campaigns are used to inform—rather than sell to—targets. eTrigue advises that while this type of campaign creates extra work in terms of content creation, being informational rather than promotional will prevent early opt-outs, and will help you immensely in the long run, since it establishes you as a thought leader in your field.

Nurture
A nurture campaign is still mostly informational, but is more focused on a particular goal – product, market or demographic. Additionally, nurture campaigns are flexible and can accelerate in accordance to an individual prospects’ reactions to your outreach.

Promotion
Promotional campaigns should be used sparingly as they can often result in high opt-out rates. Drip and nurture campaigns, that provide prospects with quality content, are likely to be more successful and better received.

Acceleration
when leads are already primed to buy, but need a little nudge in making a final decision, sales acceleration campaigns can help close the sales process. These campaigns belong in the later stages of the sales process, when you want to move things more rapidly, driving to a final sale. They are often initiated by Sales.

Action Triggered
Campaigns can be triggered by any event you choose, such as a certain number of downloads from your website over a certain period of time.