For many marketers, the year 2015 has started with a resolution to get acquainted with marketing automation. To help you avoid what usually happens to resolutions, we decided to list five marketing automations that every company should already use.

1. Automate the basic messages in email marketing

Does your company still only send a monthly newsletter – and that's it? The first step in marketing automation often is to automate email marketing into an effective message package. Remember a loyal customer, remind about an event, activate the passive customers or say farewell to the unprofitable ones.

• If you do just one thing, at least do this: welcome a newsletter subscriber with an automatic message.

2. A grade warmer cold calls: turn webpage visitors into leads

The role of marketing in creating concrete profit is increasing all the time: make sure that the marketing processes are at a required level. Marketing automation helps to turn webpage visitors and newsletter subscribers from prospects into leads and move them into the sales funnel at the correct time. A cold call instantly becomes a grade warmer for the sales team.

• If you do just one thing: define the moment with the sales team when a webpage visitor becomes a lead that should be approached. This moment could be looking at technical specifications or visiting the price list. Automate the transfer of information to sales.

3. Drip campaigns: accomplish a goal drip by drip

The greatest advantages of marketing automation are multifaceted campaigns with a specific time frame that, once defined, react to the customer's actions for you, repeatedly as well. Drip campaigns lure the customer message by message - or drip by drip - towards a desired goal, be it an event registration or a whitepaper download. Define all the messages in the campaign and their criteria at once - and enjoy the vast results.

• If you do just one thing: when presetting an event invitation, also preset the reminders that are only sent to the ones that haven't registered to the event yet.

4. Combine existing customer data

We use an enormous amount of time to get customer data to all the different systems that we have. Surprisingly enough, the customer that has been acquired with great efforts to one system, is not used in another. The newsletter subscriber you're after could already be found in the CRM system or the other way round. Now is the time to combine the content of separate systems into richer customer data that is easy to take advantage of in both marketing and sales. Instead of big integration projects, combining different systems nowadays usually happens effortlessly.

• If you do just one thing: transfer new customers automatically from the CRM system to the newsletter mailing list.

5. Update SoMe automatically

Update your content automatically to multiple channels - automate blog posts as an RSS feed to Google+ or LinkedIn, Facebook updates to Twitter as well or Instagram photos to Facebook. Some applications themselves have settings for automatic updates but you can also use social media management tools or multiple free services that combine applications.

• If you do just one thing: automate the updates to the channels that you would otherwise update infrequently.

However, remember to also follow the channels where the messages are automated. LianaSoMeMonitor is a great tool for monitoring and picking up the silent signals.

Do you have other tips? Share them with us! You can also get further acquainted with the subject by downloading our recently published whitepaper: 8 steps to Agile Marketing Automation.