The premier marketing automation company Marketo has defined it as “a category of software that streamlines, automates, and measures marketing tasks and workflows so that companies like yours can increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster.” WTF does that mean??
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. – Albert Einstein
Marketing automation simply put allows you to display certain emails or advertisements in front of a specific prospect at very specific times. These are the possible automated triggers with most marketing automation platforms:
- When a new lead comes into the CRM
- Lead status change in CRM
- Opens email
- Clicks on a link
- Tag updates in the CRM
- Based on dates
- Replies/forwards/shares specific emails
- Submits a form
- Visits your website (or specific web pages)
You can build a customer journey as such inside marketing automation platforms:
Here’s an example: let’s say you’re a school who is hosting an Open House for prospective students for a specific curriculum. If they registered but didn’t end up coming then you can send them a targeted follow up email informed them of what happened during the Open House and nudge them to schedule a call with admissions. We’ve helped a premier accredited college 2.5x admission calls after the Open House with these kind of automated customer journeys
There are many different tools out there but these are the best marketing automation platforms:
- ActiveCampaign.com: starts at $15/month (easy to use + can handle most businesses)
- Infusionsoft: starts at $199/month (good for intermediate skilled marketers)
- Hubspot Marketing: starts at $800/month (great for medium sized businesses)
- Salesforce Marketing Cloud: $1,250/month (great for larger businesses, $10M+ in revenue)
