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It is no news today that Big Data and Analytics are transforming the way different industries function on a day to day basis. A few years ago, companies were using marketing automation for their campaigns with varying degree of success. However, the role of Data Science in marketing automation wasn’t given much consideration. But, in recent years, these two elements are seen to be getting linked, stronger than ever. Together these two create a process to store, manage and analyze a tremendous amount of data which can be used for marketing campaigns.

Marketing automation based on Data Science is relevant and in real time. It takes cognizance of customer’s behavior pattern more pragmatically than without any Data Science. Without Data Science, no amount of marketing automation will deliver the desired results. It is like trying to sell a product to target customers without taking into consideration the buying pattern or preferences of the targeted customers.

Consider a marketing example of a brand’s digital campaign. The company generates a lot of traffic and leads to its social media channels through various content targeted towards customers. Once the campaign is done, the task would be to convert those leads as well as take the audience forward in their journey with the brand. Without Data Science, no understanding of the customer’s content preference would be developed, and the brand’s journey in those targeted customers’ lives would end abruptly. However, with the help of Data Science, the digital marketing team would be able to put several metrics in alignment with the insights developed from previous digital campaigns and target them further.

There are several applications present in the market today which provide a single window to marketing managers to plan and manage their campaigns across various channels. These applications gather marketing data and trigger marketing actions on their own. However, these tools cannot gauge the value of those leads generated from multiple sources like e-mail, social media, etc. The result is a lead that does not convert wasting precious sales hours. Data Science can be of immense help here. It can help analyze the past behavior of the leads and predict their future purchases. E-commerce companies like Amazon are already doing it. This will help sales and marketing teams in giving due attention to the right set of customers and improve sales numbers.

The highlight of the application of Data Science to marketing automation is the simplicity of this process. It merely gives us the tools to get our basics right. The basics lie in getting the customer data segmented based on correct assumptions. The actions taken by an automated marketing process will stay the same, but it is the supporting data evidence that will change. It will become sharp, precise and factually correct. It would not be a work of gut feelings but of verified market insights. As a natural outcome, the conversions from marketing campaigns would improve significantly. Another benefit of applying Data Science to marketing automation lies in the visibility it gives to the monetary returns on marketing investments.

Data Science would bring both accuracy and speed to marketing automation. As more and more companies adopt Data Science in their marketing automation systems, they will not only improve performance but also save costs of commissioning consulting projects for insight mining. Data Science is indeed the harbinger of success for any organization’s marketing automation processes.