According to a Deloitte Global RPA Survey, more than half the companies (53%) included in the study have already started their RPA journey, while 19% of respondents plan to implement RPA in the next two years. And this is not all.
78% of those who have already adopted RPA expect to significantly increase their investment over the next three years. What does this mean? That RPA is expected to achieve “near universal adoption” within five years, if the current growth trend persists.
The main reason for this impressive growth is that many business leaders across industries like insurance, banking, healthcare, accounting, media, government, human resources etc. have started to acknowledge the fact that software robots do indeed help them save the most important resources (i.e., time and money), improve accuracy, and take productivity to the next level in a wide range of routine, monotonous tasks.
The same benefits support the claim that RPA will be a cornerstone of innovation in marketing as well.
As the founder of both Canopy and Aggranda, I’ve been constantly searching for groundbreaking tools that can uphold the fast paced evolution of the marketing industry. In fact, when one takes seriously the high expectations of lean operations from marketing departments and agencies, the strong need for RPA in marketing starts to make a lot of sense.
This is because automation means less repetitive, time-consuming and nerve-wrecking tasks hanging over marketers’ shoulders, which translates into doing more with less. From a human-centered perspective, the use of RPA in marketing amounts to talent augmentation.
Thus, Rosy the marketing software robot was born. Rosy is so skilled that she literally became a member of the Canopy team; you can watch her here ‘in action’. Rosy can login to Google Ads or Smart Bill accounts using her own credentials, download invoices or performance reports from Google Ads, create invoices from the invoicing platform, save reports in Excel format and make requisite changes (e.g., creating new sheets, adding cells and formulas on particular sheets), attach invoices or reports to emails for the clients.
And she’s not alone. Clara is another software robot that we created for the marketing team of the Growth Marketing Conference. It assists the team in constantly updating the database of potential customers, and in keeping it clean and easy to manage.
How can RPA help your organisation?
Software robots manipulate data and access applications just like humans do, which is why RPA is best understood as a tool for automating specific clerical tasks.
What kind of tasks? Those rule based activities that do not require much thought, rather – jumping from application to application, and painstaking attention to details. Consider data collection for market research, collecting customers’ feedback, etc.
In fact, rule based processes can typically be up to 80% automated, allowing your employees to focus on more creative, exciting and value-added things. By passing the back-office jobs on to bots, the rate of human error in marketing departments will be drastically cut down, while business productivity will follow an ascending trend.
Currently, it is highly important to acknowledge that robotic process automation offers significant support during this difficult pandemic, minimising business disruption due to the COVID-19-related restrictions. A boost in data security, or increased support for remote work are some examples of concrete ways in which RPA can assist companies. We kindly invite you to read more about this here.
Robotic process automation use cases in marketing
Pricing and competition monitoring
Software robots can perform thorough web searches for information on prospects and competitors. They can gather relevant data about your organisation’s online presence against your competitors across multiple sites, and even track performance over time. The job is completed in a matter of seconds, in contrast to several hours for a person. You can then use the accurate results provided by bots in your quarterly reports.
Storing customer information
Manually entering various categories of customer-related data, classifying it according to relevant features, and making it easily visible across the company is time consuming and prone to errors. RPA allows systematised data storage about new and existing customers; it also enables easy access to data.
Regular accurate reviews of old customers’ contact information from incoming correspondence, and the subsequent database updates, ensure staying in touch with current customers. Corroborated with requisite attention to information about new customers, this robotic process automation use case in marketing makes a significant contribution to increasing sales.
Data management
Capturing data from many sources and in multiple formats is a rather common issue of concern for marketers due to the many things that can go wrong with manual processing.
What can happen when data gathering is marred by employees fatigue- or boredom-related errors? Duplicate (excel) files, loss of data (since it can be saved in a multitude of locations), to name but a few. This is why data management is among the top-priority RPA use cases in marketing.
Social media monitoring
In 2021, no one can deny the tremendous importance of closely monitoring trends and finding relevant content on social media. It has the capacity to improve the effectiveness of your company’s own content, and to promote action on relevant real time events without missing potential opportunities.
But the continuously growing information overload on social media makes these tasks even more challenging for marketers. Deployment of robotic process automation in marketing not only reduces the burden of these meticulous activities, but also boosts efficiency.
Facilitating the transition from legacy systems to new technologies
Consider the task of taking data from a CRM solution (a paradigmatic case of legacy system) and manually entering it to a newer system. I’m sure that simply acknowledging the amount of time it typically calls for, as well as the risk of errors, has made you sigh and eager to find a more effective alternative.
This is precisely the role of RPA solutions. Software robots can easily (i.e., fast and with minimal business disruption) move data from old to new systems, and you can have all the confidence in results’ accuracy.
Conclusion
More and more companies are starting to take seriously the promises of RPA: increased efficiency and productivity, financial gains, freeing up employees to work on higher-value projects, all without the deep, complex infrastructure integration required by other kinds of AI.
Passing the mundane, rule-based, repetitive, day-to-day processes on to software robots is part and parcel of the move forward in digital transformation. This list of RPA use cases in marketing is meant to give you a glimpse of how it can speed up and improve a large scope of processes, from the initiation of consumer interest to customer experience – from someone who’s been in the seat of both an RPA service provider and UiPath partner, and ‘the client‘.
If you’d like to find out more about how to start or improve your RPA journey, contact us to schedule a POC (proof of concept) by filling in the form below.