While marketing automation software is a great step for a small business marketing department to take toward improving its marketing email campaign, there are ways that this software can be capitalized on, according to MarketingProfs. The first way is with a good welcome campaign to help welcome new subscribers into the fold.

"Welcome campaigns are completely automated, delivering emails intended to set communication expectations with new prospects, determine what prospects are interested in, and gather information to tailor future messages," the website said. "A welcome campaign will help you gauge each prospect's interest level based on her behavior (e.g., website activity, email clicks), and allow you to pluck sales-ready leads from the bunch and pass them over, thereby removing a large portion of the lead-qualification burden from your plate."

Other steps to help improve the use of the program includes running a lead scoring program, which should help both sales and marketing departments, sending the sales department the website visitor report so they can adjust and running a data cleansing program to keep the subscriber list fresh and active.

Intuit said marketing automation software can help companies monitor clients, segment lists, improve timing of messages and find the best contact method for someone who may prefer social media over email.

Although many companies can line up their CRM and marketing automation software an in effort to help make social media marketing better, Chris Horton, an online marketing expert, writes on Business 2 Community that some companies end up failing when trying out social media marketing. He said many companies don't use social media to build brand advocacy.

"Loyalty and trust play a big part in social media success," Horton said. "Businesses should use social media to build brand advocates. Social media marketing gives companies exponential reach, empowering brands to leverage their content and messaging more efficiently than other marketing channels."

He said two other reasons why social media marketing fail are because companies fail to drive web traffic to the social media accounts and don't do well at generating the right leads, making it harder to get to the right people online.

A past article on Business 2 Community said small business marketing professionals should set a schedule of when they will work on a social media website. This should help them be more on-point when working with websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Companies that have been resisting the move to marketing automation software may want to take a look at the new Q4 2011 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Results from Epsilon and the Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council, which shows that open rates are 96 percent higher when the messages are triggered.

"The percent of triggered messages grew almost 20 percent from 2010 to 2011, with quarter-over-quarter growth throughout 2011," said Judy Loschen, vice president of Digital Analytics at Aspen Marketing Services, a division of Epsilon. "Triggered messages are now a vital component of any email marketing program and clearly outperform business as usual messages that tend to be less targeted."

Loschen went on to say that with triggered messages, small business marketing departments can have an easier time creating relationships with customers and clients based off of their past behavior. This may be a more effective approach than taking stabs in the dark as to when someone checks his or her email.

Other marketing email statistics from the survey show that non-bounce rates stayed strong and increased slightly to 96.3 percent. Open rates increased 12.2 percent on the whole since last year, so it seems small business marketing is doing a better job getting the consumer's attention.

A recent study from an online marketing automation software provider shows that shopping cart abandonment is a big issue, according to Internet Retailer. About 50 to 70 percent of the time, customers abandon filled carts on eCommerce websites rather than completing the purchase, and only 13 percent of companies send marketing emails to help bring these possible customers back. Marketing automation software could help automatically send a message to a shopper as soon as he or she leaves the cart.

Even though only 13 percent send emails back, research shows that more than 20 percent of shoppers may come back and complete the purchase if a company virtually taps them on the shoulder with an email reminder.

"Among the e-retailers in the study that do follow up, they average 30 hours before sending an email to shoppers, with the fastest brand sending a message in 45 minutes and the slowest waiting three days," Internet Retailers said. "Because shoppers are already engaged with the product, they may not need more than a reminder to complete the checkout."

MarketingAutomationSoftware.com said marketing atuomation can help companies with this, but will also help increase open rates and improve list segmentation for small business marketing campaigns.

Small and mid-sized businesses seem to be spending more than ever on technology such as CRM and marketing automation software, and according to a new report by International Data Corporation, 2012 could be a record year for spending.

The report said that there is expected to be $138 billion spent on IT in 2012. The small business segment will be spending twice as much as the mid-size business segment, according to the report, and the client business is expected to be extremely strong with businesses wanting to keep in better touch with leads and increase sales.

"SMBs will account for an increasing share of overall corporate IT spending in the U.S.," said Justin Jaffe, research manager for Small/Medium-Sized Business and Home Business Research at IDC. "Vendors that are sensitive to the changing dynamics in SMB technology requirements as well as the critical differences in the ways SMBs and large enterprises approach IT investment will be best positioned for success in 2012 and beyond."

According to a study by StrongMail earlier this year, 92 percent of the 939 businesses surveyed said they plan to increase their marketing budgets. This should help marketing emails work better and achieve more return on investment for these companies.

Amie Marse, founder of a content generation firm in Kentucky, writes on Business 2 Community that when a company buys marketing automation software, executives need to make sure each point of the program is easy to use so that the company can spend money in a smart way at each point of the lead cycle – a tactic that could lead to increased sales. .

"Don’t try to sell me a $5,000-per-month product with an email marketing campaign that I know you spent less than $30-per-month to use," she said. "I’m not saying I don’t appreciate frugality. I run a lean startup, I understand. Just make sure that your lead cycle makes sense for your target audience."

Marse said a lead cycle campaign should be like a three-day cruise, with marketing materials catered to the correct demographic and in line with each other. This will go a long way toward nurturing leads and not scaring off potential customers.

According to Focus Research, marketing automation has had the fastest growth of any CRM-related field during the last five years. In addition, SiriusDecisions said  the adoption of marketing automation software will increase 50 percent by 2015.

Insights from two recent roundtable discussions indicate that many B2B marketers understand the importance of lead scoring and nurturing and marketing automation, yet they don't know where to begin in terms of implementing them, eConsultancy reported.

Jay Kerr, a consultant from 120 Feet, said while companies are more aware of what automation can do, few are taking advantage due to fear of change, among other reasons.

"Change will always face resistance and de-prioritisation in favour of the day-to-day workload but this must be tackled head-on and a clear timeline for business development laid down," Kerr said, according to the news source. "You may not see the fruits of your labour for up to a year but senior stakeholders must communicate the benefits to operational users and give them the time to learn, adapt their ways of working and retool for more efficient ways of working."

EConsultancy also lists a few key takeaways from the B2B Digital Marketing Trends Briefing, including that marketing automation will help engage the sales team, enable better communication and align the buyer's journey through the sales process.

ClickZ said to get the most out of marketing automation software companies should map out the buying stages to help themselves and define buyer personas to know when people may need that extra push toward a sale.