How to evaluate marketing automation solutions

Karix Mobile’s Sonia Kaul writes about the marketing automation technologies available today that can help organisations scale their personalisation efforts and target customers with automated messages.

People are increasingly spending more time interacting with the virtual world and carrying out most of their chores from grocery shopping to paying their bills online. Customers today, expect brands to churn out smarter and more personalised communication across channels. The best and most effective way of tapping potential customers and retaining existing ones is by personalising your marketing efforts. And a complete marketing automation solution helps you do just that!

The marketing automation technologies available today can help organisations scale their personalisation efforts and target customers with automated messages across channels like email, websites, social networks, SMS, and even messaging apps like WhatsApp. With a plethora of marketing automation platforms and services available today, how do you zero in on one that will do the job for you?

Here are 10 important considerations:

1. Ground-breaking Analytics

While shopping for a Marketing Automation solution, an intuitive, easy-to-use analytics tool that is highly scalable should be your number one priority. A powerful analytics tool that can provide multiple useful insights will easily help you track your return-on-investment (ROI). You can then use that user data to draw out an effective and spot-on marketing strategy.

While a good analytics tools will be able to track copious amounts of information and provide numerous insights instantly, an excellent analytics tool will also be able to predict future trends based on current and past user activity. This will be your ticket to deliver an impeccable customer experience with a healthy growth in sales.

2. Is It Scalable?

How do you personalize dialogue with millions of potential consumers? Marketing automation has made it possible to manage several campaigns with different segments of customers at scale at a fraction of the cost it would take with employed manpower. And make sure to pick a platform that grows with your business. An ideal solution integrates seamlessly with online businesses, while collecting and analyzing user data at various points which then makes it easy for marketers to personalize campaigns at scale.

3. Lead Generation & Nurturing

A good marketing automation tool will save you time by differentiating prospects at the top of the funnel from hot leads based on your customer profile. This gives you the time to dish out relevant engaging marketing content to tap both these lead types and try and convert them into sales. That way you don’t go down the rabbit hole chasing dead ends.

A good marketing automation suite will paint the bigger picture with details of the customer’s buying journey. Tracking down customer behavior, you can then tailor your marketing campaigns around the current stage of the purchasing lifecycle. 

4. CRM Integration

Optimal use of resources and collaboration between marketing and sales is the way to go in today’s world of digital disruption. The end goal of both the teams is common – establishing meaningful customer relationships and boosting sales. An integrated common platform provides a single source all teams can refer to and track. A unified platform also means consistent messaging and complete control of data management.

5. Campaign Management

Automated campaign management is your answer to managing individual campaigns, cross-channel campaigns and personalized one-to-one customer journeys based on those campaigns, all at the same time. An intuitive and easy to use UI will be your newest best friend, helping you create complex campaigns with communications for each channel in a short timeframe.

Create complex campaigns with communications using Marketing Automation

6. Landing Pages & Forms

The landing page and registration form is an integral part of any marketing campaign. When a prospect clicks on a landing page for a specific product, it displays his interest and possible intent on buying the product or service. The registration form which could possibly be on this landing page is where a customer fills out their details and that then goes in to the database as a lead. Some marketing platforms have the option for a “social sign-on,” which gives you a deeper understanding of the prospect based on their social media profile and activity.

7. Social Media Marketing

Social media is constantly buzzing and a smart automation tool can sniff out the latest trending conversations via social listening and help you segment your prospects and tailor your campaigns around trending buzzwords.

Social media marketing automation also helps you measure the worth of your social campaigns and the impressions you reach. It gives you details on who is sharing your content and how much of it is translating into bottom of the funnel leads.

Manage social media campaigns with Marketing Automation

8. Inbound Mobile Marketing

Although people use multiple devices in today’s day and age, the mobile phone is the go-to device for accessing apps. Regardless of the scale of your business, the best way to connect and build a personalized, long-lasting relationship with the consumer is by connecting directly to customers’ mobile devices.

With automated mobile marketing, it is easy to integrate your messaging with other apps and keep the customer updated on product news and updates via push notifications. Additionally, you can target specific user groups and personalize offers and discounts.

9. Email Marketing

Whether it is a coupon code for an item on a customer’s wishlist or an additional discount for an abandoned online cart; personalized mailers can nurture customer relationships and convert leads into sales. Look for a tool that helps you create quick yet engaging emails using templates, run A/B testing and view rendering reports. However, it is important to make sure your marketing efforts are not going into the trash-can. A good marketing automation platform stays on top of new regulations and is spam compliant.

Create engaging template with a good marketing automation platform

10. Support Online & Offline Business

Synchronizing your marketing efforts across online and offline channels is half the battle won. In a country like India where the use of the internet has not yet spanned across to the masses, a marketing automation tool needs to consider offline business as well. The tool should still deliver a holistic experience based on massive data sets with personalized offers across online and offline channels. 

(Sonia Kaul is Director - Product Marketing at Karix Mobile. Karix Mobile enables 2-way communication across multiple channels through its mobile engagement platform. The company empowers enterprises to use mobile to transform their business at all stages of customer life cycle, from acquisition to retention.)

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