Marketing Automation Checklist: 5 Things Your Program Should Definitely Have
There are a lot of options for marketing automation, but some are better than others. When picking the right one for your brand, consider this marketing automation checklist:
1. An Easy to Use Interface
Marketing automation is supposed to make things easier, right? Four out of five marketers say that ease of use is the most important factor when choosing a marketing automation platform, and for good reason. If your platform has an awkward interface and a long learning curve, are you gaining anything? Experiture provides an easy to use interface with drag and drop functionality to allow you to create, manage and optimize your campaigns.
2. Multi-channel Communication Tools
Is it as easy to reach out to your prospects on social media and SMS as it is to reach them through email and direct mail? Do you have the tools to track all of that communication and the results? The lead nurturing process takes many touches, often across many channels. Your marketing automation suite should make it easy to see how and where you have communicated, so that you keep in touch without pestering.
3. Ways to Foster Long-term Customer Engagement
The lead nurturing process can sometimes take a great deal of time, but the effort pays off. According to a recent study, businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects over time see as much as a 451 percent increase in qualified leads.
You will need to start off with one approach while gradually leading your prospect toward a sale. A quality system will make it possible to engage in tactics like drip campaigns, providing lead scoring throughout the process so that you have a better idea when your prospect is ready to convert.
4. Analytics
It is important to know how well your marketing works. If you do not have figures about your success, you do not have what you need to convince the company brass that your efforts are worthwhile. Plus, having analytics at hand allows you to continuously test to figure out what can get you the best return on for your marketing investment. Seventy-eight percent of successful marketers say that automation is largely responsible for improving their contribution to the company’s revenue. By tracking your results and tweaking your approach where necessary, you can increase yours, as well.
At any given time, you should be able to access your results in easy to understand reports. Experiture provides sophisticated analytics that are prepared in real time. This allows you to test different approaches to evaluate the most successful method for converting prospects into customers.
5. Excellent User Support
When you have a problem or a question, your automation vendor should be there. There is no reason to spend hours Googling bugs or poring over knowledge bases. Experiture has superior customer support representatives available to help work through your problems quickly and easily so you can get back to what you do best.
By picking a highly effective marketing automation suite, you can get more out of your marketing effort. You spend less time puzzling out answers and more time getting highly effective campaigns launched. Over time, this means less frustration, better results and a higher return on your marketing dollar.