A few years back, I was creating leads through billboards and radio commercials as well as designing printed marketing materials.

This was also the era of all-denim-everything, drinking juice from Garfield cups, and AOL messenger.

The customer journey has changed. Customers are more interested in experiences than products.

73 percent of users consider customer experience an important factor.

Only 49% of customers say they have a great customer experience.

Modern marketers must react to customer journey changes.

Modern marketers integrate automation into their MarTech stack because of the seemingly limitless number of marketing automation tools.

So I have officially joined the 80 percent of marketers using automation software for more leads.

The good news is?

After switching to automated systems, 77% of marketers with similar goals saw an increase in conversions.

We are not the only ones. Marketing automation was viewed as a worthwhile investment by the majority of respondents from enterprise businesses.

Marketo generated 2,500+ conversation-qualified leads using automation.

Capterra Marketing Manager Kate Hollar saw almost 4x more sales leads through automation.

Automation’s potential power has a downside: it places more pressure on small businesses with limited resources.

A lack of resources is the greatest obstacle for 61% of marketers who work on B2B lead generation.

Technology is getting cheaper and easier to use.

There are many other factors to consider, even with the best automation software, when creating email campaigns, personalizing websites, and using chatbots.

Let’s look deeper at the four methods to generate high-quality leads through automation.

These are four ways to automate lead generation

These are the four most attractive automated lead generation strategies I found on the internet.

1. Automated cold emails

Ever felt this way after you received an automated email that was poorly written?

According to Content Marketing Institute, 83% of B2B marketers still use emails as part of their content marketing strategy.

28 percent of customers prefer to receive regular promotional emails.

Email is essential for generating B2B leads. There will be a 3 percent increase in email use per year.

Email marketing remains the most effective lead-generation strategy in 2019.

Automated email systems can improve your bottom line.

Don’t believe my words?

Tools such as Mailshake will help you scale your leads via automated email marketing.

Growthscore generated 500 leads in 72 hours by using automated email marketing.

Campaign Monitor reports that automated HTML emails increase open rates and generate 320 percent more revenue than traditional email.

You can increase your revenue by as much as 760 percent by personalizing your emails.

Aaron Ross, CEO of Predictable Revenue, has 16 new customers just by personalizing his email template.

Companies in B2B around the globe dream of automating their email processes. However, harnessing the power and potential of email automation is difficult.

How will you make your company successful in this new era of customer expectations and high-quality service?

2. Automate your life with personalized website experiences

Personalization for B2B is often misunderstood as being vastly different from B2C.

What is the common denominator?

You still have a human behind your product or service.

Brian Solis is the author and principal analyst at Altimeter.

Business buyers aren’t just there to do work. A new normal has emerged that blurs the lines between B2B sales and B2C. They want personalized services.

Salesforce reports that 75% of business buyers believe that companies will be able, by 2020, to anticipate customers’ needs and offer relevant suggestions, before ever making contact.

It works.

Nuxeo customized its blog post recommendations so that each reader could be personalized.

They experienced a 34% increase in blog engagement (measured by views of 2+ blog posts) and a 24% decrease in bounce rates.

Nuxeo isn’t the only one.

After personalizing elements on Dynamic Yield, a 111 percent increase was recorded in demo requests.

Customer behavior can be used to create personalized leads. Customer behavior should be divided based on marketing personas when looking at customers.

Behavior-based data can be used to track how customers use your website and then divide them into groups according to their actions.

RightMessage is a new market that is targeted at small businesses.

You can create a welcome bar with RightBar that changes the message based on who is viewing it.

No matter how you decide to create customer behavior groups, once a customer is identified, you must establish rules.

Although many data points can help you make decisions about the type of personalization you want, it is still necessary to manually make decisions, create content, and set triggers.

3. Chatbots for automation

Social media can be a great source of leads.

Pinpoint Market Research found that 64 percent of B2B marketers generate leads via LinkedIn, 49% via Facebook, and 36% Twitter.

Social media is more than just a tool to generate leads.

These platforms are also customer service channels where people can expect instant responses, regardless of their time zone.

Kobe Digital has, for example, its own Facebook Group.

Another way that automation technology can help is this: Chatbots can manage the complexity of language thanks to massive advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning systems, and other innovations.

The 2018 State of Chatbots Report asked users why they would use chatbots.

35 percent of respondents said that they would use the bot for resolving a problem or complaint. 22 percent stated they would add themselves to a mailing list. 13 percent indicated they would use the bot to purchase an expensive item.

Drift shows how chatbots are used by their customers to generate leads.

SalesRabbit experienced a 40% increase in the number of meetings requested and a 50% increase in qualified leads following the use of Drift.

MobileMonkey founder Larry Kim lowered their cost per acquisition to 97 Percent.

Kobe Digital uses Intercom’s answer bot to assist our Customer Success team while we are away from the office.

A chatbot cannot communicate with customers in all situations. 

However, chatbots are still useful tool for consumers as they are accessible 24/7.

Chatbots are a great option if you don’t have the resources to hire employees who can provide 24/7 customer support.

Even if you don’t have the answer immediately, you can gather enough information to generate leads.

4. Lead automation tools using your website data

Many automated tools can generate leads based on who visits your site, such as Kobe Digital.

Kobe Digital is different from other lead generation tools.

Kobe Digital will identify the companies that visit your website and help you decide which visitors to contact.

You can also set up Slack alerts to be notified when certain companies visit your website.

You can even link such tools to your CRM to create a central database of information to follow up with all leads, regardless of how they were initially connected.

Final thoughts: How automation can help you generate high-quality leads

Relevance is key to both lead generation and leads nurturing success.

Relevance can be achieved by personalizing content and prompt responses or by combining them through automated email campaigns.

Automating your lead generation process makes it faster and more efficient. It also eliminates repetitive and low-value tasks from your day.

Automation will not only be faster, but it will also produce better results.