Tips for marketing automation platform selection, covering key factors, common mistakes, and finding a user-friendly, scalable solution for your business.
Marketing automation is a tool that automates all the repetitive marketing tasks, it manages your processes and campaigns across multiple channels. From lead qualification, workflows, and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to reporting and analytics; Marketing automation helps improve the efficiency of your team and amplifies the results and ROI of your business. It also helps you streamline all the processes, identifying and eliminating any junk and redundancies in your processes and system.
It can boost productivity by stepping up your marketing and sales alignment like nothing else. Using marketing automation their communication and collaboration are enhanced since their goals and KPIs are shared resulting in efficient data management. With all of this enablement, marketing automation can be the boost you need for the growth of your business.
When on the lookout for a marketing automation platform, there are many factors to consider before finalizing your decision. It is one of the major decisions for a business and has the capability of backtracking your business if gone wrong. The following are the key factors to consider when choosing marketing automation software:
When looking for a marketing automation tool, user-friendliness and intuitive design should be among the most important factors you should consider.
There are many marketing automation tools out there and many of them are very fancy and appealing but many users do not find them intuitive. Businesses can end up wasting their time and resources in getting their team to acclimate to those tools. A tool can have a broad range of options that would be great for your business but all of those features end up being of no use if your team can not adapt to its user interface.
Your goals and objectives should be clear and defined before making this decision. You should know what you are looking to aim for when implementing marketing automation within your business. Therefore, make sure the tool you select aligns with your goals and objectives and is not only rich in features.
Lead generation and nurturing, revenue growth and scalability, sales enablement and alignment, or customer retention; your goal can be either of these, some of these, or maybe all of these. Based on your goal, your options to choose from can change. Outlining your goals is foundational to this step. A right and aligned choice can pivot your business to good growth and vice versa.
You should have a well-defined budget before making this decision since it will narrow down your options. Marketing automation platforms offer different models with varied features, users, contacts, and usage limits.
There can be hidden or additional costs as well like onboarding, training, and support. In selection, you should evaluate and analyze all of these factors while keeping your budget in mind so you do not end up with a financial strain.
Scalability is a very important factor that you should consider when making this decision. Your needs will not always remain the same. As your business grows, you will need the tool to grow with it as well. If it does not you will have to shift to another platform in the future. I should be able to handle an increase in data and workloads. Tools such as HubSpot can be really helpful in cases when business is expanding and so is their automation needs.
Integrations should be considered when selecting a marketing automation platform. Access and analyze all the platforms’ integration capabilities that offer integrations of the systems and tools you currently use or custom integrations for the ones that they do not have along with third-party connectors.
It is a very important aspect which should not be overlooked. Integrating all of your systems creates cohesion and gives you detailed insights with enhanced and streamlined data flow.
Source: HubSpot
Free trials and demos offered by these tools are very useful in narrowing your options and filtering the irrelevant ones. It gives you a good opportunity to test out the platform and most of its features along with the user experience and intuitivity of the tool.
You get an opportunity to test the ease of use, access its scalability and use for daily operations, and if the features fulfill your business needs. This is definitely one of the key steps as it gives you an option to test it out on your business and assess if it will be feasible for your current and future business needs. It will also help you in deciding the right pricing plan and features you need.
Data is an asset and currency of the digital world especially when data breaches are so prevalent. Ensure that the platform you are moving onto protects all of your organizational and customer data and adheres to all the relevant laws and standards.
Once you have purchased a tool you will need help in initial setup, configuration, and migration of your data from previous tools. You need to evaluate several factors like customizations needed, smooth integrations, and time needed for setup and migration and weigh the options accordingly when making the decision.
For that, you will need guided setups and tutorials, training, and other assistance. Make sure that the platform comes with all of the required assistance and resources.
Weigh all of the features and their functionalities that a tool offers. Access the extent of functionalities of each of the features and if it meets your needs. You should consider the following features in your selection:
Workflow automation, triggering, and scheduling
Lead generation
Lead segmentation
Lead qualification and management
Default and custom integration capabilities
Social media campaign management
Email campaign management
Reporting and analytics
Prospecting
Segmentation and personalization
User reviews will be a gold mine for you. There are many famous and credible review platforms where you can see real user experiences and reviews. You will be able to weigh the pros and cons of the platforms based on the experiences of others and even of similar businesses. It can give you good insights and help you in evaluating the quality of resources, training, and support that a platform provides. You should not skip this step.
Source: HubSpot
Here are some common mistakes businesses end up making in the selection of the right automation platform for their businesses that you should be wary of.
Budgeting is crucial but selecting a tool just based on the price and not evaluating and weighing its features, functionalities, and limits with your business needs will create inefficiencies and gaps in your processes.
A tool can have all the features that you need but if your team can not use it easily, those features are of no use. People find even slight technicalities hard to get acquainted with. Companies have diverse teams and a lot of people can be from non-tech backgrounds.
For a tool to be effective and maximize your ROI, it needs to be intuitive and easy to use. If you end up selecting a tool your team finds hard to use, it will cost you a lot of money and time.
If you ignore the aspect of support and resources a tool comes with, it can cause you many obstacles in the normal day-to-day operations of your business. When using a new tool, it can take a lot of time to get acquainted with all of its features. You should have support and resources to turn to at any point and time the need arises. This can cause hurdles in the flow of your daily operations.
If you do not consider this factor during the selection of a marketing automation platform and if you end up selecting one that can not grow as your business and its needs grow. Your business will outgrow it and then there will be issues in data management and flow of your work.
If you have overlooked integrations, you will be creating data silos among teams leading to inconsistencies and extra work for the team. It can also ruin customer experience for your customers if your setup has flaws which can cost you a lot.
Do not rush this decision since a wrong decision will not only waste your resources but also your time and will enhance data management issues in the future. In a sea of options, it's easy to get overwhelmed and end up choosing an option that might seem a good fit apparently but can have limited functionalities or is not appropriate for your needs. This is a crucial decision hence it should not be made in haste.
Summing it all up, selecting a marketing automation platform for your business is a very crucial decision. To ensure the right decision, you should take all of the above factors into consideration.
This decision can enhance your ROI, business growth, and customer experience. All the steps, from outlining your goals to weighing them out with the features of platforms aligning with your budget and needs, and taking input from user reviews and experiences are necessary for an informed decision.
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