How to Pick a Marketing Automation Solution
Whether you’re attracting customers, donors, or constituents, simply gaining an individual’s attention and engaging them with your content is a huge challenge. There are so many organizations and so much content vying for our attention that it’s tough to stand out. How do you attract an audience and keep them coming back for more?
The answer lies in providing meaningful resources for a targeted audience. Traditional marketing uses interruptive methods such as cold calls, mass mailers, and commercials to find customers.
In today’s tech environment, these methods are expensive and ineffective. On the contrary, inbound marketing is about empowering potential customers by focusing on providing resources. By creating content that’s focused on meeting your audience’s needs, you’re creating a safe space, signifying yourself as a resource and an ally, and encouraging them to turn to you for future solutions.
Wondering how you can do this? Afraid that it sounds like a lot of work? Well, it does takes time and research, but marketing automation solutions are here to help.
By using the right tool, you’ll be able to plan out your strategy, create your content, and measure impact for your target audience. Leveraging the 360 degree view provided by Salesforce in combination with marketing automation, you will be able to see your constituents for what they are and give them what they need.
First things first: Who can benefit from a marketing automation solution?
Generally speaking, here is the type of organization that can benefit most from marketing automation solutions:
-
over $2 million in annual revenue
-
over 5,000 contacts
-
one or two staff dedicated to monitoring, maintaining, and creating content
If your revenue is less or you have fewer contacts, the solutions may be cost prohibitive and too robust for your use cases.
Dedicated staff are equally critical: these are the people who will read the reports and consult the analytics to continually modify your marketing strategy. These are the same people who have been feeling the pain that comes from cobbling together ten different systems (Hootsuite, Google Analytics, MailChimp, landing page builders, form builders, etc.) to achieve a similar goal.
If you’re not sure if you’re ready yet, the marketing automation included in Campaign Monitor or Predictive Response may be a viable first step. Both have solutions with Salesforce integrations that include basic email triggers and list segmentation. It’s not a full marketing automation package but provides some helpful tools for you to start with automated messaging, which will give you a strong foundation when you’re ready to scale up.
Are you ready? Check out our Marketing Automation Comparison Report.
Not ready yet? Consider a next level Email Marketing tool.
Set Yourself Up for Success
It is virtually impossible to create a grid comparing these solutions to each other since each approaches features like email, forms, and workflows in unique ways. You will undoubtedly uncover many more features and details about each solution as you delve in yourself, with your own use case and pain points in mind.
Therefore, rather than tell you that you should always go with one specific solution, we will leave you with some tips on how you can set yourself up for success regardless of the solution you choose:
-
Set annual goals to make sure your marketing automation system is helping you achieve what you had hoped it would. For example, if you are measured based on the number of leads or donors generated or converted, track this in your marketing automation software each month and make sure you get support from the solution or a consultant if you are falling short. Check out this article on finding the right marketing metrics for more.
-
Pick several key priorities to get great at, and then expand. It is easy to get overwhelmed when you first dive into a new marketing automation system. Rather than trying to use every feature a little, pick several (such as emails, workflows, and lead scoring) to really make the most of, then expand your use gradually. Read our 8 tips for marketing automation beginners.
Do you need help with creating a plan, or are you wondering if your organization is ready to implement a marketing automation solution? We can help you.
