Having marketing automation software is not a matter of choice anymore.
The online consumer has a highly demanding attitude nowadays, and due to this, every business is required to serve them in a relatively more personalized manner and on a highly consistent basis.
This is something that is impossible for the human marketer.
Therefore every business, whether large or small, is going for a marketing automation software primarily for their e-mail and social media campaigns.
If you are one of them, here are a few points that you should consider before purchasing your automation software.
(1) Workflow Management
Workflows in automation tools are generally created using the IF/Then Proposition.
The if/then proposition refers to evaluating and anticipating the specific behavioral elements and preferences of a firm’s target customer base.
It’s through this that marketing automation tools can generate pre-determined and tailor-made e-mails that can create prolonged amounts of engagement for a firm’s customer base.
Generally, software providers provide numerous user-friendly templates and drag and drop options for building such workflows.
Subsequently, automation tool providers also offer firms with the ability to build unlimited and intricate sequences that allow firms to create long term engagement with their customers and on a progressively more personalized level.
Other than this, workflow management also entails controlling which contacts are added to a workflow’s list and how those contacts are moved from one list to the next.
The nature of your business and the industry it belongs to should be the major deciding factors when it comes to choosing your automation software based on workflow management.
(2) Social media
A good automation software should never be limited to just mechanizing your e-mail and push notification campaigns.
Nowadays, social media has become highly important in influencing a firm’s brand image and lead generation rates:
And therefore, you should always look for automation software that lets you run and analyze your social media campaigns.
Here are three such features your Marketing automation software should ideally possess when it comes to social media.
- Allowing you to browse your target customer’s social media activity so that you can ascertain the best ways to reach out to them and thus increase your following.
- Posting and Scheduling social media content on different platforms and providing insights regarding customer engagement like comments, shares link clicks, etc.
- A relatively advanced and rare feature would be to let you analyze your rival’s social media performance and provide you with updates regarding certain threads that are relevant to your business.
(3) Form Creation
The list/ form building feature is one such core functionality that is the primary driving factor behind firms going for automation software.
Check out whether your chosen automation software provides you with sufficient variety and flexibility when it comes to creating different forms:
As these forms influence the type of customer data, you gather for your database.
The more dynamic your sign up forms are, the more diverse is the customer database that you manage to create.
This would finally allow you to target your database on a more personalized basis.
(4) Integration with Other Automation Tools
This is something that you should check on a priority basis.
It’s necessary that your new automation software smoothly integrates with the other facets of your organization.
Such an integration is necessary for increasing and maintaining the current productivity of the organization:
The most important facet that your automation software needs to integrate with is the organization’s CRM software.
Not every integration between automation and a CRM tool is pre-existing or native.
You need to find out from your provider regarding what integrations their plans currently include, the integrations that can be specially customized for you, and the ones that will require further technical support.
Wrapping Up
The above-mentioned points can be regarded as highly generic guidelines to choosing marketing automation software.
Other than considering the above factors, you need to carefully analyze the micro factors like your business type/industry, size of the business, choices, and preferences of your target customer, etc.
Author Bio- Hi There, I am Shaun Williams, a content writer with Goodfirms, a research platform for DevOps and App Development among many others. I enjoy communicating ideas and knowledge creatively and also ensure that the readers never suffer from boredom while reading my posts.