All You Need To Know About Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is already a reality in all business models. A necessity for any type of company, whether B2B or B2C, regardless of size, since it not only allows you to automate marketing and sales processes, but it is also an essential support in a strategy of attracting, converting and customer loyalty. the clients.

But how do you know if a marketing automation solution is the most suitable for your business?

We tell you the 10 fundamental aspects when evaluating and selecting your marketing automation platform.

It All Depends On Your Strategy

We will never get tired of saying that much more important than choosing a marketing automation platform well is knowing and having defined what processes, what situations, what communications, or what actions we are going to want to cover or implement.

What is the strategic objective covered by a marketing automation project?

The objective of any marketing automation strategy is to be able to optimize and improve the user/sales/service experience so that we can meet our business objectives.

To do this, there is a range of methodologies and functionalities that technology platforms allow us, such as hyper-segmentation, automation of processes and journeys, multichannel, etc. as a conductive path towards that fundamental objective of knowing the user and improving their experience.

Having a defined strategy gives you most of the keys to know how to identify which technological platform is going to best adapt to the needs of your project.

Where Do We Start From?

Are we starting from scratch or are we migrating from another marketing automation platform?

The choice of the platform can be very conditioned if we start from a previous experience and if we have had or not had deficiencies in certain functionalities. Previous knowledge or due to specific needs will allow us to make the first discards for the final choice.

However, if we start from scratch, there will be more possibilities to contemplate more options since there has been no previous experience to base it on.

What Communication Channels And Processes Are We Going To Use?

Although most marketing automation platforms tout “multi-channel” and even “omni-channel”, the reality is that not all of them cover all channels and, if they do, they do not always achieve it in the right way.

As we have already said in the first point, the strategy is the most important, and if it is defined, you will know which channels you are going to use and which ones you need to be incorporated, or not, into your platform.

The main channels that could be taken into account within a marketing automation platform are:

• email marketing
• SMS Marketing
• PUSH Messaging
• Social audiences
• Site Messaging
• chat
• chat bot
• call center
• Messaging APPs (Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, etc.)

What Team Are We Going To Have to Start Our Project?

In this regard, we can ask ourselves 2 questions:

• Who will participate in choosing the platform to hire?
• Which people/departments will use the platform?

In choosing the platform, it is essential that at least representatives of the main teams participate.

A situation that we find very frequently is that the IT and Management team participate in the election (for example), leaving aside the operational staff that will use it on a day-to-day basis. This does not facilitate the best reception of change, either because of the fear of the unknown or because the needs and opinion of the team that is going to use it the most has not been taken into account.

Therefore, you have to take into account that operating equipment. Not only will it give you clues as to which one is going to be the one that best suits the needs of the project, but it will also detect possible deficiencies in terms of profiles necessary to “move” that platform.

Keep in mind that many of these platforms require an ecosystem of technical profiles and developers that cannot always be covered by the existing team. Therefore, it is essential before choosing the platform, to consider whether it will be necessary to contract these profiles or even outsource this service with the costs that this implies.

Do You Have To Connect With Other Platforms?

A marketing automation project without contemplating integrations is a project at half gas.

The minimum connections required for your new platform are:

• Connection with data sources (forms, CRM, etc.)
• Web tracking (knowledge of user behavior on the web, landings, blog and ecommerce)

And in addition to these, it is common to find integrations with other platforms, such as ERPs, call center tools, apps, data warehouses, etc.

What Licensing Model Am I Interested in?

Marketing automation platforms usually have one of these 2 licensing models:

• Depending on the volume of contacts, the shipments are usually unlimited in this case.
• Depending on the volume of shipments, the contacts to be stored are usually unlimited in this case.

It is necessary to consider both current and future volumes, based on the acquisition strategy and the communication plan that we are going to follow.

Another factor to take into account is the licensing model depending on the type of contract: month to month or annual. There are platforms that only allow annual contracts (you pay for the year in advance), while others offer greater flexibility and permanence for months, although this is usually accompanied by higher rates.