Google released quite a few updates and features in the year 2020 for over 1 billion users. Most of these updates are directed toward improving the user experience, security and privacy. In case you missed out on some of Google’s key announcements, here’s a quick summary for you.
Key highlights from Google in 2022
Android 13
Google wants to take the OEM customisation experience to the next level in Android 13. The users will be able to customise the looks of the UI with ready-made colour variants that can be applied throughout the OS and reflected in wallpapers and themes.
As for multilingual users, the Android 13 will give a variety of options to select different languages for different apps through phone settings.
Security and privacy update
With the transformation to remote work and using devices outside of security, office networks have become more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. To enable users to navigate online in a more secure manner Google is launching Account Safety Status for apps.
If an account is not fully secure, a yellow alert icon will appear on the profile pic and recommend actions that the users can take to secure the app.
Latest pixel devices
As many of us expected, Google has announced a new mid-range smartphone Pixel 6A. It will be using Google’s Tensor chip and have a 6.1-inch OLED screen with a blazing 60Hz refresh rate.
It also supports 5G and is equipped with dual cameras. Not only Google has also given a sneak into the design of Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro smartphones.
Expanding search experience
Google has announced that it is growing the scope of what users can do with the latest multi-search feature launched to help users search with images. Users can now search by taking a picture or screenshot of local businesses, retailers, and other goods and adding “near me” while exploring.
Google is also putting together another feature called “scene exploration,” which will allow users to pan the camera in multi-search so that they can get more information on multiple objects in a scene.
We hope you found our summation of Google’s latest updates helpful and in case you have any questions, simply drop us a line and we’d love to help you out.
The way your brand collects customer information determines how your marketing, sales and service teams interact with them. And this determines whether your business can make long-lasting relationships with or lose to your competitors.
This is why it is important how you collect, store and use the customer for your communication with your prospects and customers. The way you do that will help your brand deliver highly personalised interactions that can be scaled.
Now the question is, how to collect, store and make use of the information so that all your teams can make the best use of it? In case you’re wondering that same then keep reading we are going to be discussing just that.
Let’s get started, shall we!!
Customer Data for Marketing
Marketing is always at the forefront when it comes to interacting with new audiences. Drawing attention to your brand, using strategies like forms and other lead gen tools to convert that audience to contacts, and nurturing them to become sales-ready leads.
1) Website Engagement
At the initial stages of a new lead’s engagement with your business, it’s important to make sure your website analytics is well built to help you understand how they are interacting and how you can streamline their user experience.
Let’s say you have an e-commerce business website, for example, you could utilise your website activity to recommend other likely products that each person might prefer via email or retargeting ads on social media.
2) Segmentation Inforrmation
The data that lets you compartment wise a contact’s info into groups and lists is one of the most useful types of customer information that you can collect early on. This can include data such as team size, industry, and individual roles.
Not only can this data gives rise to the most personalised messaging and marketing automation but it also helps you calculate the lead score.
3) Lead Scoring
Lead qualification data such as lead scoring is one of the most powerful ways for marketers to assist their sales colleagues. With automated lead scoring in place, points are given for positive interactions and behaviour and removed in the case of negative indicators.
It’s the quickest way to instantly analyse how likely is the prospect going to purchase your product, and ideally starts as soon as a visitor converts to a lead. Here are some examples of lead scoring metrics.
Value of the market or industry
Identification as decision-maker
Adequate budget
Amount of time spent on your website
Customer Data for Sales
The sales create and boost the bridge for interested leads to convert them into happy customers, and nurture each prospect to the right product or service. Here is the customer information necessary for your salesperson.
1) Information About Decision-Makers
Your sales team gets a granular view of how each client’s company operates. One of the key components included in this is identifying and recording who is involved in the decision-making process.
This helps you to avoid the unpleasant scenario of them remembering you while you look anxiously at a blank record, or giving the deal to a colleague who has even lesser background information.
2) Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
Estimation of a customer’s lifetime value is a really useful metric to forecast long-term and repetitive business.
You can calculate this by multiplying their purchase value by purchase frequency over your average customer lifespan. When you use the right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Customer Data Platform (CDP) that has calculation properties, you can keep this up to date automatically for your active customers.
Lastly…
All this information can be efficiently tracked and stored in a CRM or CDP platform so that your marketing and sales teams can make the best use of and effectively convert your leads into your customers.
However, there are so many Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Customer Data Platform (CDP) available in the market it’s difficult to choose the right one that is suitable for your business needs. In case you have any questions regarding CRM or CDP systems or need some assistance in setting up and their customisation, please feel free to contact us anytime and we’d love to help you out.
Customers are tired of having random interactions with businesses. This leads them in a constant lookout for brands that understand their needs, concerns and challenges. They love to bring their business to companies that care.
Despite this fact, it is obvious that marketing automation isn’t going anywhere given the convenience and economical advantage. So the only logical conclusion is for businesses to figure out how to add that personalised touch to their automated marketing strategies.
In this article, we’re going to discuss a few things your business could implement to inculcate personalisation in all their marketing tactics. These will allow all your business to gain an edge in this competitive market.
1. Convert with a personalized homepage
Your homepage is the first point of contact with your target audience. Therefore it goes without saying that it is made as engagement-centric as possible. If a landing page interests a possible lead, they’re going to enter their details and there could be a couple of checkboxes for them to pick before submission. for instance, users can select which topics they’re curious about, share where they’re located, or disclose their gender.
New customers that visit your company’s website could be prompted to enter in their email for an opportunity to receive some complimentary newsletters, a reduction on your products, or something else useful to them.
Once a user has visited your website and you’ve got some data on them, you’ll start sending emails that are customized for them. The received email marketing messages or newsletters, the automated email system will keep track of whether email messages from your company are opened, and which links are clicked. This adds even more data to your marketing campaign to supply a customised experience
2. Get more data to enhance personalisation
Companies that get their brand message exactly right, and understand their customers’ wants and wishes, are the kinds of companies which will achieve the longer term. that’s why having data about your customers is so integral to understanding their habits.
Automating marketing campaigns for your business, like email campaigns, goes to enable you to proportion your email marketing efforts during a way you’ve never seen before. This leads to reaching a drastically larger audience and provides you with large amounts of valuable data about all of your different customer segments.
It is only by analysing customer data that your company can take things to the subsequent level in terms of sales, and it might be an enormous setback for any company to lose access to data that it takes an extended time to accumulate, segment and organise.
3. Leverage your segmented data
Once you’ve got someone’s email address and you’ve segmented it into the right list, now the work begins. Now you’ve got to make and curate content specifically for that segment. Offering an evidence email may be a good way to answer customer questions while still engaging them personally. you’ll also send email reminders for them to end fixing an account.
If someone signed up for a campaign supported interest. They could want content that interest only. during which case, you would possibly send a triggered email if they unsubscribe from your campaign. This enables you to recapture that subscriber, or, at the very least, understand why they left.
Triggered emails like this are particularly good for segmentation. Because they need a 152% higher open rate compared to non-segmented emails.
4. Few more things you can do to personalise marketing automation
Aside from a newsletter or company updates, another effective method to spice up user engagement on your website is to supply a freebie or a reduction on your product or services. This helps you improve your customer segmentation and creates valuable leads, and builds rapport among potential customers by offering them something for free of charge before they even make a sale.
While personalization is vital, there’s a careful line that has got to be drawn to avoid making assumptions about your customer and revealing what proportion data you’ve got on them. It’s also important to not make assumptions supported a demographic.
It is suggested to supply targeted offers and messages to people who check in on your website supported the info you’ve got, and wait until more is understood about the actual customer and their needs before sending an email that’s more personalised.
And Lastly…
An automated email campaign is incredibly effective at helping your business increase engagement and generates sales. New email addresses that have just signed abreast of your website will receive an automatic welcome email introducing your company, or that explains how your service works for beginners or provides a basic overview of what you’ll offer.
In case you wish to implement highly personalised marketing campaigns for your brand or have any question just drop us a line and our team will be delighted to help you out.
Staying competitive in today’s dynamic world is becoming increasingly challenging, especially for small to medium businesses. The number of possible lead nurturing touchpoints (where consumers can interact with the brand) has increased beyond imagination.
It is with this context, the idea of lead capturing and lead nurturing can be well understood. The process of engaging with the leads in a personalized (or targeted) way by providing highly relevant and contextual information at each touchpoint of the consumer buyer’s journey can be termed as lead nurturing. The intention is to provide enough value so that the lead can make a purchasing decision in the end possibly in favour of our business.
Marketers have to make sure they treat each prospect with due consideration irrespective of their source. To overcome the challenge of keeping a track of all leads and engaging with them in a personalized manner, organizations invest in CRM and marketing automation tools like Infusionsoft, HubSpot or others.
These Marketing Automation tools play an integral role in managing leads and enhancing the engagement abilities of the marketers with the leads.
What is the most effective lead nurturing method?
Now, let’s look into several automated lead nurturing strategies that can possibly boost your ROI.
1. The Art of Segmentation
The first step and more importantly the most effectivelead nurturing strategy for maximizing ROI is to segment the prospect in a meaningful manner. Segmentation will help classify the prospect as per the personas which will determine the method through which the client needs to be pursued. Although it’s not always possible to segment in an automated manner, you can deploy some of the below lead nurturing techniques for automation:
In tools like Infusionsoft, you can TAG a prospect based on his website behaviour. For example, if the visitor has spent considerable time and action on a particular service page, it might indicate a preferred interest area
For web-forms, we can add an extra field to segment the visitor based on their interest.
Expected Outcome – A prospect list which is segmented based on their interests, behaviour or geographies.
2. Timely Follow-Ups
The second important step is to ensure the prospects are followed-up in a highly personalized and timely fashion. This is where marketing automation yields the best results for lead nurturing. The idea is to create an automated machine (as Ryan Deisscall it) so that you can focus on other value-added activities. The medium of follow-up can be any, email, SMS, or push notification. Some of the examples of timely automated follow-ups
A sequence of three nurture emails (Download – Gain-Logic-Fear template) to request the user to purchase your initial offer
Abandonment Cart Email Sequence say within three hours after the user abandoning the cart
Drip series on a successful sign-up to educate the user about your product
The best part about marketing automation tools is that you can structure your follow-ups based on IF-ELSE logic. If X happens, then send Y email/SMS, or if Z happens, then send T Email/SMS. Expected Outcome – A highly targeted lead nurturing email campaign set-up in your own marketing automation tool.
3. Automating the Consumer Journey
Consumer journey refers to step-by-step activities (or touchpoints) a consumer goes through in the entire lifetime with the brand. Through automation, you can stay ahead of the curve and literally chart out the funnel (or steps) through which you want the consumers to move, before or after their purchase. For example,
Customer is driven to a landing page from a Facebook Ad -> Prompted to download the e-book -> the ones who have downloaded are requested to attend a webinar -> Ones who have attended a webinar are nurtured to undergo a free trial of your product -> Nurture to purchase paid version of software ->nurture the lead to purchase any top-ups (upsell) for the product -> Request feedback, and if feedback is positive, request to refer friends, provide reviews and ratings.
Having a well – constructed representation of the consumer journey (also known as a funnel) which is specific to your business is helpful in optimizing your marketing strategy.
4. Lead Scoring
The next strategy is to assign scores based on user behaviour and engagement. The idea is to devise a meaningful point-based system (or lead scoring) that can be useful for prioritizing the follow-up with your prospects. You should think through your own lead scoring formula and then implement in preferred marketing automation tool. An activity indicating a higher level of interest in your products or services should get more points. Also note, it is also important to keep analyzing the formula and not be afraid of refining it as you go.
This procedure is effective in prioritizing the leads that need to be targeted first. For instance, if the lead is marked as cold, then they would need more engagement with your lead nurturing team. On the other hand, if the lead is marked as hot then they are ready to close the deal and should be approached by the sales team immediately. Expected Outcome – Your prospects are assigned leads cores which in turn will help you segment them as Hot, Warm or Cold.
5. Loyalty through delight
It is an indomitable fact that the most powerful form of marketing is from the word of mouth. And this only comes through loyal customers who have been extremely satisfied with your product or services. With the help of CRM, businesses can collect personalized information of their client and use that to create personalized WOW lead nurturing sequence for their customers.
Now, who doesn’t love personalized experiences designed just for them? Off course this goes without saying that delighted customers turn into a loyal customer and customer loyalty goes a long way into increasing the ROI for your business
6. Analysis and Optimization
Any marketer knows that analysis plays an integral role in the framework of any marketing strategy’s success. Analytical marketing automation tools help marketers quantify the success and failure of their marketing techniques.
As you all know that there is no certainty of success while implementing a marketing strategy. However, with continuous analysis of any marketing strategy, marketers can determine the parts of the strategy which are succeeding or failing.
Once the above-mentioned points are ascertained then strategy needs to be optimized accordingly, thus increasing the probability of its success.
To sum things up it has been made extremely clear how crucial a role marketing automation tools play in the success of a business. From automating client communication to optimizing your marketing funnel, Marketers need to embrace lead nurturing for their business wholly and solely.
Social Media Marketing is the course of gaining website traffic or catching the attention of your target audience through social media sites. Social media is a powerful and influential place. If you follow the right tactics, you can not only earn engagement and increase followers but also generate leads and grow your revenue. If you devise your social media marketing strategy by keeping the social media trends in centric, you will surely come up with a winning strategy.
In this blog, we will take you through the most anticipated FIVE trends. Not only social media marketing trends but this blog also comprehensively covers social media marketing tips and tricks on how to succeed in your digital marketing campaigns. Social Media Marketing Trends and Tips
Lets us peep into the upcoming social media trends
More preference to personalization
Social media is a crowded place. A lot many users post their ads on a lot many social media advertising platforms. It is, hence, a challenge for marketers to get noticed prominently. Here, personalization acts as a saviour. Personalization helps to reach the correct audience and track their buying behaviour based on their search preferences.
You can use social media marketing tools which allow you to incorporate personalized targeting feature. Post your content on social media in front of your high potential customers. More attention to visual marketing
Approximately 64% of the consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. Video content is on its peak and it is not going anywhere soon. It emphasizes the need and upcoming trend of visual marketing. On the other hand, live streaming versions are on spree. Be it Twitter Periscope, Facebook Live, Instagram Story, video sharing features of DubSmash and others, live feeds are getting way popular. Such videos can engage with your audience very well. All you need here is powerful graphics which can fascinate your viewers. More expansion of native Content Promotion
If you rely on a traditional way of social media advertising, your brand will hardly survive in the highly intensified competition. Audience nowadays is more intelligent and aware of what they want, and probably from where. Based on research, native ads are expected to reach more than $20 billion by 2018. Native advertising is a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed. Along with the growing importance of native ads, native content will also grow
More admiration of brand sponsorship by marketers
Brands are looking for various alternate means to reach their target markets. This is because traditional advertisements have reached their saturation level. This will shift the focus of marketers towards brand sponsorship, also known as advocate marketing. Popular brand advocacy tools are LinkedIn elevate, Klout, and Influitive.
Most B2B marketers (89%) agree that customer testimonials are among the most effective content marketing tactics, and 88% cite case studies as well.
Brands will make efforts to activate micro-influencers such as employees, customers, partners, and others. More focus on Marketing Automation
If you are in digital marketing, to sustain the intense competition, marketing automation is a must for you. According to Marketo, 91% of users believe that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels.
Marketing automation will see an upward trend in the year 2017. Automation tools can help you in lead management, conversions, retention and feedback as well as provide insights for evaluation and future planning. The main purpose of using these tools is to automate tasks that don’t require personal attention.
You need to formulate your social media marketing strategy by keeping these anticipated trends in the notice. If you are wondering how to do social media marketing, we have come up with social media tips and tricks. Adhere to these top 10 social media tips and tricks and maximize your success on social media
Formulate social media marketing policy
For being an active and influential social media marketer, you need to formulate your social media marketing policy. Create a plan strategy document (PSD) for all possible media, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus, and others. Your PSD should precisely sketch the way of how to accomplish your goals. You can incorporate your content plan, scheduling of posts, target audience, etc under this document. Utilize social media advertising system
Only PSD will not help to boost your social media marketing, all you need is discipline. Whether you use one social media channel or multiple, you should use a social media management system. This will help you schedule your posts, know your analytics, and manage your repetitive tasks in a timely manner.
Once you know your best time to post, you can then use a tool like Buffer, Post Planner or Sprout Social – both are excellent social media management tools. Usage of these tools can help you plan or schedule your posts at specific intervals. Such tools also help in spreading scheduled posts out to publish throughout the day and engagement time. Repost your posts
Most of the marketers make a mistake here.
Once they share their blog or update, they keep waiting for someone to “like”, “comment”, “share”, or “retweet”. Let’s be practical and accept that every person in the industry would be following a lot many people. Even after a refreshing feed for every five minutes, there are chances that your content gets lost and may not appear in the top of the feed. That’s why repost your posts. Schedule your posts wisely. You can try out varied versions of your titles for the same post. It really helps! Try A/B Testing for Ads
Facebook Ads A/B testing is the most effective way to successful campaigns. Its targeting options are robust. Facebook will display your ad to the right audience only. A perfect ad can magically boost your ROI and radically increase the reach of your posts. To increase the likelihoods of your social media success, analyze the performance of your ads. Concentrate on your social media content
Pay special attention to your social media content. It is the online face of your brand. Keep it authentic, non-plagiarized, relevant and updated. Your images, links, and titles should be fresh, engaging, and intriguing for your readers. A tool we found to be very nifty when it comes to posting evergreen content is Tailwind. Use visual content as much as possible. Approximately 64% of the consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. Video content is at its peak and it is not going anywhere soon. Make your content bank
Creative content creation
Don’t just create content when it is time to post. Instead, prepare your social media content bank. Based on the recent trends and updates, you can make quality amendments in your content bank. Create your content bank now, if you haven’t yet. It should include blogs, articles, info graphs, tutorials, webinars, videos, eBooks, cheat sheets, templates, reports, case studies and others. Make the most use of visual content
Did you know 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual? It taps into the intuitive psyche of your audience and motivates them to discover more about your brand.
Visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than the text.
3M Corporation
Visual content
Visual content has the ability to present complex information in a quick and clear manner. Images, info graphs, videos, memes, presentations, and screenshots are some of the types of visual content. Visual content is easy to understand and handy to share. Your visual content will get more shares as compared to your textual content. Explore the benefits of contests and promotions
People on social media love to interact. They enjoy participating in quizzes, contests and polls. Social media is a beautiful place for engagement. Try to get the attention by vote contest, photo contest, caption contest, and others to promote your brand. If you promote any special offer, include discounts for your audience. It is an exceptional way to offer value through your social media channels and award people an incentive to keep on following you. Keep an eye on your competitors
Sarcastic but true, competitors are real motivators. You should keep an eye on what and how they are doing on social media platforms. Notice their way of engagement, what they post, when they post, what is unique about them, etc. This will help you frame your marketing strategy in a much better and healthier way. Stay updated with the industry trends
Last but not the least;
stay updated with what’s going on in the industry you serve. Industry trends can significantly impact your business and marketing strategy. If you identify the market trends early enough then it is easier to plan for changes. You can grow your business successfully. The best way is to subscribe to social media blogs to keep you aware of recent news, amendments, and advancements.
Conclusion
Social media is gaining huge traction for digital marketing. All you need to know about powerful and effective social media marketing is wrapped up in this blog, including trends, tips, tricks and strategies for social media agencies. Keep the latest and upcoming social media trends into notice and accordingly devise your social media marketing strategy. Get started now to succeed at reaching and engaging your target market
According to HubSpot, “Marketing automation refers to the software that exists with the goal of automating marketing actions.”
Many marketing departments perform various repetitive and monotonous tasks. These tasks include, but are not limited to emails, social media, and other website actions. The marketing automation tools make these everyday jobs easier. In nonprofessional terms, marketing automation is all about optimisation. The scope of marketing automation is beyond simply automating the marketing department’s repetitive tasks. In addition, it optimises the time of your staff. It can even hint on which customers your sales team concentrates their endeavours.
Digital marketing automation has its bloodline in email marketing. However, it is way beyond email marketing. Marketing automation aids marketers to restructure various actions like generating, scoring, and nurturing leads, managing link selling, cross-selling and up-selling, customer lifecycle marketing, and others. The efficient implementation of marketing automation technology can effectively increase operational efficiency. The technology helps to grow revenue quicker by cutting your sales cycle, recovering your lead aptitude, and saving you time to focus on other important areas. However, unfortunately, these paybacks can be availed at a giant cost.
1. Infusionsoft
Clate Mask and his brother Eric Martineau, Scott jointly established Infusionsoft in 2001 at Mesa, Arizona. It caters to more than 25,000 customers. Infusionsoft is one of the most successful marketing automation tools for small businesses that already have a strong customer base and a turnover above $100,000.
Infusionsoft, a leading sales and marketing software, supports small business in getting structured, building sales, and saving time. Its user interface is very well designed. Very few marketing automation tools offer order forms, payment processing, execution, and inventory tracking directly inside the tool. Infusionsoft is one of those automation tools. In addition, it allows worldwide tracking, which makes it easy to keep a track of a contact’s behaviour across multiple marketing channels. Besides, a lot of bloggers use this software for email marketing and creating marketing campaigns & funnels.
Infusionsoft expedites the creation and execution of a sales and marketing strategy. It centralizes customer interactions, attracts new leads, meets sales quicker, and automates recurring tasks like a follow-up, contact management, billing, and payment—all from one place.
Infusionsoft charge a unique mandatory launch fee of $1999.
2. ActiveCampaign
Again, this automation tool is the best-fit solution for small businesses having the strength of less than 100. This tool is very reasonable compared to others. You would be amazed to know that it costs a maximum $150 per month. ActiveCampaign provides services like unlimited email sending, CRM and sales automation, onboarding, and unrestricted access to social data.
Though it is very affordable, the automation features that ActiveCampaign provides are robust. The features include sales team notification, cart and form abandonment, visual workflow editor, and web traffic analysis. The interface of this software is so straightforward that anyone can operate it with ease. The reason why ActiveCampaign should be preferred by small businesses is pretty obvious. The platform makes lead generation and warm lead nurturing effortless by excellent CRM and mailing solutions.
3. Hubspot
In 2006, HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was launched in December 2007. Since ages, HubSpot is one of the pioneers in automated digital marketing. It is an inbound marketing software company that helps businesses in modifying their marketing from outbound lead generation to inbound lead generation. It does it by allowing them to “get noticed” by more potential customers in the usual course of the way they shop and learn.
They “get” content marketing.
It provides a full suite of integrated marketing tools that comprise blogging, content management, search engine optimization, social media publishing and monitoring, email marketing, and more. HubSpot is a complete platform for developing marketing effectiveness and marketing competence.
Hubspot does have monthly packages of $200. However, their offerings cost $800/month package for marketing automation and CRM integration that includes only 1,000 contacts. The further cost grows based on the user’s contract requirements.
4. Marketo
Marketo, founded in 2006, launched its first product “Lead Management.” In 2012, Marketo acquired “Crowd Factory.” This acquisition resulted in the benefits of social media marketing capabilities. Finally, the company went public in 2013.
Marketo is easy and influential marketing software that suits an organization having the strength of 100+. It helps marketing and sales professionals drive revenue and develop marketing engagement. Most of the users usually compare this software with Pardot owing to their similar functionality.
Marketo overpowers Pardot in terms of implementation, usability, and design of their platform. Marketo provides the foremost cloud-based marketing software platform for companies of all sizes to develop and maintain engaging customer relationships. It has an outstanding integration with Salesforce. These two tools work effortlessly together through their syncing takes a considerable amount of time.
The packages of Marketo include three standard pricing tiers, at $895, $1,795, and $3,175 per month. Under each tier, various new features are available which may come at hefty prices of an additional $900 – $1,400 per month.
5. Ontraport
Ontraport is again very good for SMBs, the affordability factor is just as important as a feature. It allows accessing the full suite, along with a money-back guarantee only at $600/month. The topmost features of Ontraport include but not limited to two way SMS automation, Landing page A/B testing, ROI tracking, custom reporting dashboard, video hosting, API access for third-party development, task management automation, and lead scoring and routing.
Ontraport holds a wide range of inspiring shopping cart features. These features comprise automatic credit card payment collections and the ability to add cross-sells, upsells, and cart rejection orders.
Ontraport allows storing 25K contacts, managing 100K contacts, and sending 100K emails per month.
Pardot belongs to Salesforce. It was jointly founded by Adam Blitzer and David Cummings in 2007. In 2012, Exact Target acquired it for a reported $95 million. Later, Salesforce acquired Exact Target in 2013.
It is a full-featured and user-friendly marketing automation tool. It helps pipelines to pick up the pace and drive sales through social marketing, sales intelligence, email marketing, lead generation, lead management, and more. Other prominent features include segmentation wizard, ROI reporting, email marketing with complete branded templates, real-time sales alerts and CRM integration. It maximizes the efficiency of the sales and marketing teams and ultimately increases revenue.
The standard package provided by Pardot comes at a cost of $1000 per month. The other packages related to advanced analytics, A/B testing, dynamic content costs around $2000 per month. The ultimate package related to API access and custom user roles is of $3000 approx per month.
7. GetResponse
GetResponse Marketing Automation facilitates you to devise flexible processes that sustain your unique business style. Also, can transform your marketing database into a lead scoring activist. It is highly efficient in optimizing the sales funnel. The top features of GetResponse include but not limited to drag and drop visual workflow editor, post-purchase communication, loyalty and reward programs, tracking online activities of subscribers, cutting-edge customer scoring, and others. This platform is very simple to operate; you need to have a full-time CRM manager. Its monthly payment plans are sectioned by list size which starts at $15 per month for unlimited messages to up to 1,000 subscribers.
MailChimp provides enterprise-level automation tools without any hurdles. Its prominent features include but not limited to trigger emails when customers abandon shopping carts, conversion of interested subscribers into customers, re-engaging with existing customers, integration of web services with apps, and others.
There are three pricing plans offers of Mailchimp: Forever Free, Monthly, and Pay As You Go. They also have an alternative designed to fit users’ needs.
9. AWeber
AWeber is an ideal autoresponder platform for small businesses, bloggers, and entrepreneurs. This marketing automation tool is a comfortable process to automate your emails. Its new drag and drop editor is capable to support your email automation requirements. Its prominent features include lead segmentation, web activity tracking, creating invoices, split testing, generating sales reports, and others. AWeber enables you to assemble your list with their opt-in forms. It sends out automated emails to your subscribers. If you want to get started with email marketing, AWeber is the perfect key.
10. Zoho CRM
Zoho Campaigns is an email marketing automation product that helps you create, send, track, and share your email campaigns. Its free services include 12000 emails/month, 2000 subscribers, pre-designed templates, real-time visitor tracking, template library, A/B testing, social sharing, merge tags, sign-up forms, and many more.
Zoho CRM provides a complete view of your sales cycle and pipeline. Zoho. Thereby it enables you to spot trends, marking opportunities, and further, lock more deals. Zoho’s shaped customer relationship management and marketing effectiveness procedures help you build your company into a customer-centric business. Its campaigns are integrated with internal services like Zoho Survey, Zoho CRM, Zoho Forms, Zoho Docs & Zoho Sites, Zoho Creator, and other services like LinkedIn, Shopify, SurveyMonkey, Facebook, Twitter, Eventbrite, Google Analytics, WordPress, Google Apps, and others.
Its service packages are in affordable ranges. $12/user/month package provides services of sales forecasting, reports, and dashboards. A professional package worth $20/user/month provides services of Email integration and social CRM. An enterprise package worth $35/user/month provides services of territory management and custom modules. Further, its CRM Plus package worth $50/user/month provides services of email marketing, help desk, and customer surveys.
All internet users must have experienced marketing automation, even if they are not aware of the term specifically. Think about Infusionsoft, Salesforce.com, Hubspot, MailChimp, Act-on, Marketo to name a few; these extremely popular services can be classified as examples of marketing automation.
Marketing automation, as the name implies, is the use of IT-based tools to automate aspects of marketing, such as e-mail campaigns, social media posts, polling contests, offers, etc. Automation tools can help you in lead management, conversions, retention and feedback as well as provide insights for evaluation and future planning.
Industry Insight
Marketing automation services are plentiful! There exist offerings to suit
All budgets- Services ranging from 100$ a month to 5000$ a month
All marketing requirements- inbound, e-mail campaigns, social media
All business sizes- serving a target base of a few hundred to a few hundred thousand customers
While it may appear to be the ultimate weapon in tackling all your online marketing woes, one needs to realize that it is simply the contemporary toolkit for a marketer functioning in the internet era. At its core, it still abides by fundamental marketing principles.
What do we mean by that? We mean that having an automation software alone will not help you in achieving your marketing goals. As a marketer, one needs to have a defined game plan, which can be accomplished with greater ease and effectiveness using a marketing software/service.
What brought about the advent of marketing automation?
Tracing the evolution of the internet in a very general way, we can see why marketing automation became a norm, a necessity:
The internet became a new landscape of interaction, with hitherto unseen capabilities that were bound to be leveraged by both producers and consumers.
The ubiquity of the internet made it essential for brands to have an online avatar to remain credible.
As it went from ‘a virtual place that we visited’ to ‘a virtual space we live in’, brands had to adopt social media and other interactive platforms to be where customers are.
Extensive user behaviour tracking enabled greater insights and more sophisticated methods for conducting planned and targeted marketing activities.
With each step of the internet evolution, one can notice the corresponding evolution in the scope and focus of the marketing automation tools.
In fact, some companies in this space might object to their offerings being referred to as tools, and would be keen on emphasizing how they can be considered as platforms with comprehensive capabilities to execute marketing strategies, and not just complete marketing tasks.
What does marketing automation look like?
The best way to bring out the essence of marketing automation is to compare how a standard marketing objective would be accomplished with and without the use of an automation tool/platform.
Objective
Non-automated
Automated Marketing
Targeting
Buying bulk e-mail lists-mail blasts and push strategy
Inbound marketing attracting the right audience through content, social media
Data Gathering
Unsystematic and infrequentUsers need to be pushed to provide data
Subtle and incentivized accumulation of dataSystematized and regular to enable analysis
Campaign tracking/management
Control predominantly over marketers actions without adequate information about the target’s response
Detailed behavioural information available, allowing for better analysis and modification if needed
Closing the sale
Strong and overt promptsMultiple calls to actionPushing for sale irrespective of the prospect’s level of readiness
A gentle experience with the prospect being taken through stages of awareness, persuasion and then a smart call to action
CR M
Feedback generated haphazardly follow on based on generic conventions (events/occasions)Prospect sees the effort as another sales tactic
Engaged customers (through a web portal, social media, etc.) who can be targeted based on insights to deliver customized messagesProspect sees effort as a value addition
Marketing integration
Extensive effort required to coordinate and synchronize multiple objectives and campaigns might result in a confusing clutter of activities
Automation services provide a wholistic perspective of the campaign and allow multiple activities/campaigns to be managed using a centralized system
Conclusion
If you are still not sure about adopting marketing automation for your business, here are some statistics:
According to Infusionsoft, nearly 80% of top companies have incorporated marketing automation in their business.
Investing in conversion rate optimization (CRO) solutions are guaranteed to deliver high ROI, as much as 223.7 %, according to VentureBeat.
Arm yourself with the tools of today and guide your marketing the right way with marketing automation.
