How to Choose the Marketing Automation Software Relevant to your Campaigns

These days, there’s an app for almost everything. From banking to casual dating, there’s something digital to help us make things easier. The same goes for Marketing. Marketo says that two out of three best-in-class marketers use a marketing automation platform to increase sales revenue.

Marketing automation is a software platform that streamlines, automates, and tracks marketing-related workflows. Many modern marketing tasks can improve productivity and efficiency by minimizing manual actions. It would free your marketing team to focus on creative development, analysis, and strategic tasks to increase overall efficiency further.

What are the popular marketing automation software features?

You can improve many of your tasks by using these marketing automation tools.

• Email marketing – These are software that you can use to create, send, test, optimize, and track your email marketing campaigns.
• Landing-page creation – Landing-page builder software can help create custom-landing pages, pop-ups, stick bars, and other widgets to gather leads and data. These can be used by teams with minimal programming skills.
• Cross-channel marketing campaigns – One of the biggest challenges of modern marketing is tracking which marketing campaigns, running in parallel with each other, is having an impact on your bottom line. Cross-channel marketing management tools weed out the performers and the popular from those who get lukewarm or very little responses.
• Lead generation and nurturing – Gathering leads is half the battle. Tracking their buyer’s journey and retaining them to be lifetime customers is a continuous task. There are marketing technology applications that can help you keep track of each and every lead, grouped by campaigns, demographics, and other factors for analysis and optimization.
• Segmentation – Searching for customer common denominators for cluster analysis is a challenge, even for experienced marketers. Marketing technology tools with built-in analysis functions or aAI and predictive capabilities can highlight those denominators with a few clicks of a button.
• Lead scoring – Nothing frustrates the sales team more than a long list of irrelevant leads. Determining if a lead is “warm” enough to move to the next stage of the sales funnel is the responsibility of a modern marketer. Lead-scoring tools automate this task to let the marketing team focus on their main job, promoting the brand.
• Cross-sell and up-sell – Top growth guru Jay Abraham says there are only three ways to grow a business:  Increase the number of clients; increase the average transaction value; and increase the frequency of transactions for the same client. The last two means you have to continue marketing to your current customers. Cross-sell/Up-sell Martech tools leverage these strategies and automate them.
• Retention – It’s a fast-paced world; brand management and loyalty are starting to become a thing of the past. Ensuring that customers continue to buy your product lines is a constant challenge. Customer retention campaigns and tools help you maintain your client base as you grow it.
• Measuring ROI – All business activities ultimately lead to making a profit. Auditing activities that discern which projects are making money are the responsibility of a marketer. Martech tools keep track of marketing expenditures, and their contribution to gross revenues.
• Website personalization – Websites are no longer a “build it and they will come activity” as it was 20 years ago. The battle for site traffic and SEO requires a lot of research and monitoring. Website personalization tools keep your content fresh and your design up-to-date, attracting users and clients. 

How to find the right marketing technology (MarTech) software for you?

Now that we know it can be done, the question remains: out of the many options in the market, what is the right marketing technology for my business? Which of these marketing technology tools will help my business instead of complicating it? 

Following this process can increase your chances of making the right choice:  

The Scorecard – Knowing your capabilities as a company and what you want to achieve are the first steps. 

•  Objective – Think about the specific needs of your marketing campaigns and your business. Do you need more leads? Do you need to increase the quality of your leads? Do you need to promote an event? Do you need to track the results of your campaign?
•  Continuance – Do you need this tool for one campaign, or all your campaigns? For the next five years or just for one project?
•  Compatibility – Some software are cloud-based, others are mobile apps, while a few more are for desktop use. Some programs do not work with older OS. Choosing an application that you can’t use due to a technical issue is a concern. You might have to find an earlier model of that app, or invest in an upgrade of your IT structure.
•  Budget – SaaS services are usually charged per user. Is it within your budget? Do you want to make a one-time upfront purchase, or would you rather pay for a license per user/workstation?
•  Core functionality – Does the software do all or most of what you need? Does it have additional bells and whistles that you may find useful in the future? 
• Customer support – Does the software have an extensive knowledge base and a responsive after-sales support team?  
•  Brand reputation and reviews – Is the software generally reliable, based on third-party and expert reviews? Is the user experience seamless, or does it involve a steep learning curve?

List the criteria that you need and list them in order of your priority. Grade them in scores of 1-10 with the lowest priority factored by 1. The higher the priority, the higher the weighted average factor. 

Sourcing and selection

Sourcing – Searching for the right software means looking through numerous review sites of the top marketing technology tools for that category. List the top 10 in each of the websites that you find, then note the applications that come out repeatedly.

Select the top five that were mentioned the most by third-party review sites and reputable bloggers. 

Selection – Test the demos or watch videos of the application. Contact their customer support and check their response time and the relevancy of their answers. Prepare the same set of questions for all of them. 

Repeat the process until you have completed your scorecard. Select the top three marketing software with the highest scores and discuss it with your team.

Justifying the process

Econsultancy cites case studies that showed the impact of implementing a marketing automation software. One of them recorded revenue growth of 178%. Another’s lead conversion rates increased by four times. A third company’s website traffic increased by 80 percent, while a fourth one’s social media sites increased by 2,500 percent.

Those are pretty impressive results.

Sales and marketing compose the backbone of your company. Revenue and cash flow are directly dependent on it. Implementing marketing automation tools to streamline the lifeblood of your company makes sense anytime, anywhere. It’s all about using the right tool for the right job.