Choosing The Most Effective Marketing Automation For Your Business

A marketing automation program can do wonders for your business. It can help your marketing and sales team track and target customers who are more likely to buy from you. There are over 161 marketing automation tools out there – with great features and overlapping capabilities that makes choosing one system quite a task. Now auto responder software has been around for long time and it’s an integral component of any marketing automation platform so if you’re using auto responders you’re on your way with automating your marketing.

Before trialling the software first, write down your requirements and build a story board of how your business will use a marketing automation tool. Gather information on the following:

• Who will use it in your business and how many users will be online simultaneously.
• Total amount of emails sent out
• Projected growth in the number of email contacts and emails delivered
• What must have features do your team want
• Integration requirements – what’s this system talking to automatically.
• Measurement and analysis features your team needs and wants.
• Must have and nice to have customised features

Knowing what you need is always a great starting when reviewing the suitability of systems for your business. A marketing automation tool will need to meet your budget plus your team will need to report back on how the systems compare on ease of use or intuitiveness, scalability and the provider’s support of their system – i.e. how responsive they are to your enquiries.

Usability

Most systems offer a free trial period, select a group of users whom will to try out all the systems on offer and document their experience. There will be the obvious feedback but also get intel. on the following:

• How easy was it for your team to learn and master the platform?
• Does the program have an intuitive, user-friendly interface
• How long will it take to implement the solution?
• Is the platform accessible using mobile devices?
• Can it integrate seamlessly with your already existing programs?
• Are there features that restrict users and information based on job function?

Scalability

It is important that the platform you choose is scalable to accomodate your business as it grows. If your business is a startup it is likely to grow very fast – so you don’t want to be stuck with a tool that inhibits your growth or one that needs ongoing customisation.

Tech Support

Remember to find out how responsive the vendor’s support team is. You don’t want to be held up for hours before someone attends to your support enquiries.

An effective marketing automation tool can greatly assist your marketing effect and it should be put to use with the goal of multiplying the sales revenue. Who is going to use it and how they do it is essentially the most important focus when deciding on which system to use. If you’ve not used any form of marketing automation the staring point is an email marketing auto responder solution.