Which is Better?<\/em><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThere are literally tens of thousands\u00a0(probably hundreds of thousands)<\/em>\u00a0of both free and commercially available tools that you can use within a stack. I\u2019m not even going to begin to go there with that. Suffice to say that unless you have some intermediate to advanced geek skills, a stack might not be the way to go for you. In almost all case you\u2019ll probably be a whole lot better off using a platform. Most of this article will focus on platforms.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nNB:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Be aware that even the best platforms will need additional tools to complete your stack. An example of this would be your website, which in most cases will be built and managed on a completely separate platform, like WordPress or Wix and be located on an entirely different server to your marketing automation tools. All good quality marketing automation platforms can be easily integrated with your website and other commonly used marketing tools, generally by using off-the-shelf API\u2019s.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMarketing Automation – So Much More Than Just Automation<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMarketing automation platforms provide users with a variety of tools that help them automate single processes\u00a0(like the automated email I already mentioned)<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 plus a whole lot more. It\u2019s the\u00a0\u201cwhole lot more\u201d<\/em>\u00a0part where people tend to get bogged-down and outright confused. You may have heard of or even tried one or more marketing automation platforms in the past like Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, Drip or Mautic\u00a0(my personal favourite)<\/em>. There really are a ton of choices out there. We\u2019ll now take a brief look at some of the moving parts within a marketing automation platform.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCRM<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nVirtually all marketing automation platforms provide a CRM\u00a0(Customer Relations Management)<\/em>\u00a0system of sorts. Some are extremely basic, whilst several of the bigger platforms\u00a0(such as Salesforce)<\/em>\u00a0provide an enterprise-level CRM as part of their offering. Many marketing automation CRM\u2019s offer easy integration\u00a0(usually via an API)<\/em>\u00a0that will allow you to push information captured via your marketing automation platform directly to the CRM that you are already using in your business.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe truth is that many\u00a0(or most)<\/em>\u00a0smaller businesses don\u2019t have a CRM of any description and those that do often have little idea about how to maximise its potential. I\u2019m firmly committed to taking a minimalist approach with marketing\u00a0(and most things in life)<\/em>\u00a0and your marketing CRM is no different. Even if you have an existing CRM you may find there is a strong business case for utilising separate CRM\u2019s for your marketing and the rest of your business \u2013 but more on that subject another time! For now, here is an overview of what I see as the basic things you\u2019ll need in a CRM, for marketing automation purposes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nContact Information<\/em><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nContact information fields is a no-brainer. What you\u2019ll need there will depend upon your individual needs. First name, Last name, Email and Telephone would generally be the bare minimum. You may require more information such as delivery or postal addresses, business names, etc. Most decent platforms will also provide for the simple creation of custom fields. Generally, the email address will be the key record that identifies individuals.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Additional Information<\/em><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnce you get into the swing of using a marketing automation platform your appetite for more information is likely to grow. I\u2019d recommend using a platform with some degree of social media integration, where possible. At the very least you\u2019ll want some fields for social network URL\u2019s like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. If you\u2019re dealing in a B2B environment you\u2019ll want fields for websites and maybe items like business registration numbers, etc. Again, the ability to create custom fields is gold.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Categories and Tagging<\/em><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nYou\u2019ll want to be able to categorise the people and\/or companies in your CRM. Categories\u00a0(often called segments)<\/em>\u00a0are how you group your list members at the top level. For example, if you deal with accountants and lawyers, you might want to create a category or segment for each of those groups. Maybe you\u2019d like to sort by gender, or revenue source. Categories can do that. Some systems will also allow you to create tags. Tags might be something like Lead, Customer, Former Customer, Do Not Contact, etc. Using Categories\u00a0(or Segments)<\/em>\u00a0together with tags allows you to sort your data in multiple, highly useful ways.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUpload\/Download<\/em><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nYou may need to upload or download your data for a wide variety of reasons. Some CRM\u2019s do not make this easy \u2013 possibly to try and keep you \u201clocked-in\u201d to using the product. Make sure that data upload and download can be performed quickly and easily – preferably in a .csv format\u00a0(meaning that Microsoft Excel or a simple .txt file can read it)<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nForm Builder<\/strong><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAll marketing automation platforms will offer a form builder. In fact, they\u2019d be fairly useless without one. Form builders provide the mechanism to capture inquiries and push them to your CRM. They do this by \u201cmapping\u201d form fields to the matching fields in your CRM. For example, if your form has four fields, First Name, Last Name, Email and Phone that information will be pushed to the matching fields in your CRM \u2013 and they\u2019ll have the tools to make mapping super easy. Many of the better-developed marketing automation platforms will also offer API\u2019s that allow you to map your CRM fields to several of the most popular website form builders like Contact Form 7 or Gravity Forms.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Landing Page Builder<\/strong><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nLanding pages are like regular website pages, but with a primary focus on capturing leads, rather than just delivering information. Good landing pages will contain a clear call to action \u2013 usually a request to complete the form \u2013 which is why you\u2019ll need a form builder. Good landing page builders will generally offer a variety of landing page templates, drag and drop functionality and WYSIWYG editing capability. One of the beauties of using a platform is the ease with which you can add platform generated forms in the sure knowledge that they\u2019ll be compatible with your landing page. Again, many platforms will offer a high degree of compatibility with commercial page builders like Unbounce or LeadPages, as well as integrations for commercial Themes like Thrive Leads and Divi.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Email Campaign Builder<\/strong><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThis is where marketing automation starts to get exciting. Have you ever entered your contact details on a website and started to get regular emails about whatever it was that you inquired about? Chances are that the website was using marketing automation. An email campaign builder allows you to create an email campaign based upon the interactions of your email recipients. For example, an email goes to a newly captured lead. The recipient opens the email \u2013 which your platform is tracking \u2013 which triggers another email to be sent to them 24 hours later. Another person enters their details on the same landing page but does not open your email – which triggers a second email to go to them after 3 days. This is decision and action based marketing at work.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Most email campaign builders will offer good looking email templates which can be customised via a WYSIWYG editor. They\u2019ll also offer drag and drop functionality that will make building your email campaigns relatively simple \u2013 although it\u2019ll probably take you a while to get your head around exactly how it all works and master the necessary skills.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The possibilities with email campaign builders are endless and go way beyond warming up new prospects. Using your CRM and email campaign builder in tandem, you\u2019ll be able to generate and send emails to your customers, create customer onboarding sequences, create and manage newsletters \u2013 and do a whole lot of other things. The value of a tool like this goes way beyond what you initially see.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Visitor Tracking<\/strong><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nHow would you like to know who\u2019s visited your website, what pages they\u2019ve been to, how long they stayed and how often they\u2019ve returned? Marketing automation platforms can help you to discover all of that and more. All well-developed marketing automation platforms will offer simple integrations for websites built on the most popular CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal \u2013 meaning you\u2019ll be able to track visitation to your pages. Without getting too technical, tracking is achieved by using cookies, which you might want to Google if you don\u2019t know much about them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Anonymous Visitor Tracking<\/em><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAgain, without getting too technical, anonymous visitors\u00a0(i.e. people not yet registered in your system)<\/em>\u00a0are identified by their IP address. Their visitation to your website is tracked anonymously, but when your system identifies them\u00a0(i.e. when they submit a form via one of your landing pages)<\/em>\u00a0their earlier visitation to your website will be attributed to them. In other words, you\u2019ll be able to see a complete history of the pages they visited from their logged IP address in the days or weeks leading up to when they finally gave up their contact information to you!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nKnown Visitor Tracking<\/em><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nNow we\u2019re moving into really exciting territory, once again. Once your marketing automation platform has identified a visitor, you\u2019ll be able to go into super stalker\u00a0(and marketer)<\/em>\u00a0mode \u2013 and you can automate a heap of that. I\u2019ll cover both of these topics in more detail, but you\u2019ll be able to automatically switch visitors to new campaigns based upon their behaviour on your website, as well as \u201cpoint score\u201d their state of preparedness to become a customer. More often than not that information is displayed in an easy to understand, graphic form via your marketing automation interface.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nPoint Scoring<\/strong><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nPoint scoring is one of the most awesome features of marketing automation. It\u2019s also one of the more difficult things to get right, but that\u2019s certainly a topic for another day. Right now, you just need to know what point scoring is.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Imagine a prospect opens your first automated email after they submit a form on your landing page \u2013 and you give them one point for doing that. They then click a link from that email and visit a blog post that\u2019s all about what they\u2019ve expressed interest in \u2013 so you give them another point for that. They then click onto a related blog post \u2013 so you give them another point. They then download a white paper about your product \u2013 so you give them another two points. That is point scoring and it can provide you with a lot of valuable information, especially if you have an elongated sales cycle.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The general idea behind point scoring is to put some objectivity into determining the right moment to reach out to a prospect, which is usually when they are warm enough to buy. Marketing automation can track many more behaviours than what I\u2019ve mentioned here, which you can also point score, but you\u2019ll get the point\u00a0(pardon the pun)<\/em>. Point scoring is all about knowing when the right moment is to reach out to a new prospect and marketing automation can make you look like a pro at this.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCampaign Switching<\/strong><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAlthough I don\u2019t consider this to be an essential feature of marketing automation, it can be killer for some businesses. Campaign switching allows you to automatically switch known visitors to your website from one kind of campaign to another.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Let\u2019s say that you sell refrigerators and a visitor initially indicated interest in a small bar fridge and gave up their contact details to you. They are getting regular emails from you\u00a0(and maybe seeing remarketing campaigns)<\/em>\u00a0about bar fridges. Suddenly, their main refrigerator breaks down and they are now spending all of their time on your website looking at two-door fridge-freezers. Set up correctly, your marketing automation platform can detect that shift in interest and will automatically switch them to your fridge-freezer campaign.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCampaign switching is an advanced feature of marketing automation and it\u2019ll take a bit of practice to know how to use it \u2013 but it\u2019s clearly got potential for many types of businesses.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Putting it all Together<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nBy now, you should have a clearer picture of the various components\u00a0(or tools)<\/em>\u00a0that make up a marketing automation stack or platform and have some idea of what they do. In isolation, each one of these tools can be extremely powerful and will make an incredible difference to your marketing. Make these tools talk to each other and work together towards a set of desired outcomes and the whole is far greater than the sum of the individual parts. Marketing automation isn’t one technology. It’s a variety of technologies working in unison.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMy Final Thoughts\u2026<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nI know from experience that most people who start using marketing automation give up and walk away. In most cases, that\u2019s because they are trying to do far too much at once. Marketing automation isn\u2019t easy to master. You\u2019ll need a variety of skills to get it working for you and you\u2019ll need to invest quite a bit of time in understanding and mastering the various tools. I\u2019ve talked about those skills in depth, in a variety of other articles. Don\u2019t try to do it all at once or you\u2019ll get frustrated and you\u2019ll walk away too! Master the tools one at a time, use them in the real world, then move on to the next.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
For those with the tenacity to stick with it or the resources to pay an expert to help them, marketing automation can be a major game-changer. If you\u2019re using marketing automation now, or plan to in the near future comment below and tell me about your experiences.<\/p>\r\n
This article was originally published on tonygavin.com<\/em><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I often get asked to explain what marketing automation is. I can still recall the great excitement I felt when I first discovered marketing automation, having immediately grasped its enormous…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268,269,290,291],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content-marketing","category-crm","category-marketing-automation","category-mautic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agenticus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agenticus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agenticus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agenticus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agenticus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30293"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/agenticus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30467,"href":"https:\/\/agenticus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30293\/revisions\/30467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agenticus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agenticus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agenticus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agenticus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}