Any marketing automation solution needs to have at least these five must-haves, or it will not be effective or scalable.
A good marketing automation solution will not only make life easier for you, but will ensure the messages you are pushing out are targeted, trackable and produce the measurable results you are looking to achieve.
If you don’t have a marketing automation solution in place (or maybe you do and it just isn’t working) here are five key features that need to be on your ‘must-have’ list.
CRM Integration
The most critical must-have is integrating with a CRM system. If you don’t have one, then implementing one should be your first priority. Without one you are not going to make marketing automation work.
Integration does not have to be difficult. In fact when we build bespoke marketing automation products for clients, we use the available APIs, which the top brand have, to seamlessly integrate the systems together.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is not dead. In fact, far from it. Using a good email automation tool will reduce the time you spend managing campaigns and follow ups.
By integrating your email marketing tool with your CRM will make sure you keep your database clean as well.
Make sure your email tool is sending from your domain and not that of a service provider. This will improve not only deliverability, but your overall branding.
Lead Nurturing
Not every contact that comes into the CRM is ready to buy or even qualified. A lead nurturing feature within your marketing automation solution is crucial to keeping your brand, products and services in front of your leads and prospects in order to prepare them to purchase.
Web Tracking
You may already have a plethora of marketing assets such as blog posts, testimonials, white papers, case studies, videos and much more. Every page on your website has to be carefully crafted to drive that call to action (CTA) and encourage your prospect to connect.
By utilising web tracking as part of your marketing automation software, you can see where your prospects have been, what they have looked at and when. This allows the sales team to contact them at a time when you know your product or service is on their mind.
Lead Scoring
You have emailed your leads and prospects and set them up on a nurture campaign. How do you know when they are ready to buy in order that you can notify your sales team? By monitoring the web tracking you can see when the have visited the pages you wanted them to, downloaded your white paper, case studies and watched your videos. By giving each CTA a score and setting a desired level, you can measure when they are ready to buy.
Lead scoring is a set it and forget it automated feature that both marketing and sales will love.
Marketing automation solutions are fantastic for gaining efficiencies and expanding your reach to new markets. You can choose an off the shelf product, such as Mission Manager, or a bespoke solution. Whichever approach you choose, I hope that these five features will help you find the best solution for your company.