How to choose a winning marketing automation platforms lookinglion.net without stress comparing seven leading solutions choosing is hard selecting a marketing automation platform from a landscape that includes 8 000 vendors can just seem painful but it doesn’t have to be once you’ve decided on your must-have features and eliminated the unnecessary buzzy tools you’ve done most of the work and we can help you get there in this video we will first walk through the factors you need
to consider before you commit to a solution after this we will be ready to perform a comparison between pardot hubspot marcato eloqua active campaign act on and ontraport fasten your seat belts and enjoy the ride how do i choose a marketing automation platform today three out of four
How do I choose a marketing automation platforms lookinglion.net?
Companies use marketing automation however this doesn’t mean all of them are a success story most companies still struggle with siloed systems roi reporting and data management on top of that there is talk of an expertise gap among marketers today sometimes no matter how well designed the system you put in place if your employees don’t know how to use it you are missing out so before you get into the process of choosing a marketing automation platform check your current marketing state this includes the strategies and tactics you use at the moment and the road map
you want to follow in the future to sum up these are the questions you need to have answers to it’s crucial that you look into these points to avoid ending up with marketing automation platforms lookinglion.net that doesn’t fit your purpose every marketing automation vendor will promise functionalities however not all of them will really listen to your needs that’s why it’s your job to do the homework
first checking the map features based on the 2019 research act on performed alongside london
Checking the map features
Research most companies that apply marketing automation software use the following tactics almost all of the marketing technology systems provide a set of commonly used features however not all of them are set up to the same standards to demonstrate pardot hubspot marcado eloqua active campaign act on and ontraport are robust platforms most of them are used in a business to business b2b environment as of april 2021
trust radius reviews compare the platform’s scores like this note oracle eloqua is only a part of the oracle cx marketing suite however trust radius only offers the oracle cx marketing review option keep in mind that some of these marketing solutions are better adjusted to certain requirements than others for instance while pardot may be the lead management expert hubspot
is better in inbound marketing on the other hand if you are looking for a great out-of-the-box roi analytics tool you would be better off going for marketo rather than active campaign we have compared the seven platforms for you based on the most common features used in marketing automation please note although we took extra care to provide the freshest as of april 2021 information available from the vendors websites and comparison sites such as git app and trust radius there may be some oversight so please take into account any new releases updates and developments before you decide on the best platform for you email automation sending and
Email Automation
Scheduling emails is the one element all marketers use no matter what the company sells so naturally every marketing technology solution will have to offer email automation as a cornerstone tool however they are not built the same way when it comes to choosing email marketing features you need to get answers to the following questions number one can this platform send triggered emails
How do email automation platforms send triggered emails?
based on customers web behavior purchase history or upcoming events number two can this platform
Can email automation platforms schedule emails?
schedule emails number three can this platform perform a b testing within emails number four how
Can email automation platforms perform A/B testing emails?
far can i personalize emails within this platform and number five how can i track prospects behavior
How to track prospects behaviour within emails?
within emails advanced marketing automation platforms lookinglion.net platforms provide an interface with drag and drop
Drag and drop tools
Tools that allow you to build emails with ease others have an intuitive interface but no drag and drop features additionally consider whether the ability to track clicks through emails and validating email addresses is an essential feature for you to compare our chosen seven
Table : 7 email marketing automation platforms
Platforms let’s look at this table we can see how some of the email marketing options vary according to the different vendors for example pardot didn’t have a drag and drop email builder which judging by the comments in the salesforce community was frustrating to use but in october 2020 a new drag-and-drop email builder was announced in pardot lightning aunt ontraport doesn’t provide a drag and drop email builder however it does offer simple mail editor for basic text focused emails entre mail editor for graphical newsletters and html editor for email coding options as of 2020 eloqua offers eloqua content blocks which acts as a drag and drop template builder for email or landing pages integration disconnected technology systems are one of the biggest
Integrations to enhance marketing efforts
challenges that companies face in their quest to improve digital marketing integrations are essential if you want to enhance your marketing efforts so when choosing your marketing automation platform check for the following integrations crm integration api third party integration
CRM Integration
CRM integration is becoming ever more crucial the further we progress down the business automation road however crm integration is not the only integration you should take into account consider this the marketing department is not the only department that might need the insight a marketing automation platform can provide while the sales department is one obvious beneficiary
other departments might prosper for marketing automation platforms lookinglion.net as well for example the hr department will benefit from running hiring campaigns and customer support will want a complete history of users behavior to ensure you are making the right choice check if your chosen platform has api access this will allow any further developments and
API
App integrations you might want to link to your chosen solution however a more important feature to look for in your marketing automation is third-party integration it’s similar to api
Third-party integration
integration in that both talk to external applications but third-party integration capability is better because you will not have to build another api from your side additionally look into api’s specifications for how the application communicates with other software apis typically enable integration of data logic and objects with other software applications and often provide two-way sync remember this is about future proofing your organization and planning at least one or two steps ahead when adopting a new marketing automation segmentation
Segmentation
Segmentation is vital if you want to personalize your communication with customers or prospects it’s a starting point for marketers and one of the most used features in any marketing automation platform depending on how you could or plan to use segmentation we have divided it into two separate items market segmentation customer segmentation market segmentation is
Market Segmentation
A process of dividing or filtering the target market into separate groups later the segments can be used in different campaigns based on the characteristics they have in common to see the four types of market segmentation check out this image customer segmentation on the other
Customer Segmentation
hand involves grouping your customers based on similar characteristics from age and location to industry and company size customer segmentation helps companies to expand their offer to existing customers cross sell and upsell improve customer service test new products or pricing options build better relationships personalize their existing relationships segmentation is used often and in many ways and while most of the marketing automation platforms lookinglion.net
platforms offer segmentation as a given there is a limit to how deep some of them can go before committing to a specific solution make sure you determine what type of segmentation you require and if the platform delivers accordingly to compare our chosen platforms check out this table landing pages building landing pages is a key ingredient in any marketing mix depending on
Landing pages
How many campaigns or product launches you produce you may want to check if your marketing automation platform offers this feature some platforms offer templates to choose from others offer tools to create your own and of course some offer both also it’s beneficial to look for a b testing for landing pages so you can test their effects on different audiences and optimize as you progress for the purpose of our comparison we have divided the landing pages into two categories
Two categories of landing pages
Custom landing pages create your own and landing page templates take a look at how they compare the newest addition to the landing page automation is active campaign
ActiveCampaign
The platform vendor introduced the landing page option in november 2020 providing a drag and drop interface along with the templates cross channel marketing a unified platform results in a
Cross-Channel Marketing
Unified experience for the customer not only is it important to be present on multiple channels such as social media email and mobile but the channels also need to be streamlined having a cross-channel experience means aligning and personalizing all of your communications to the customer’s needs for example if a lead has spent some time browsing through a specific feature of your product then your digital ads should logically continue that interaction between the lead and your company
so if the same lead goes to facebook next you will find an ad that addresses how that specific feature solved a problem for one of your previous customers cross-channel marketing is important because it gives you a unified view of the customer it is also necessary for both personalization at scale and content optimization marketing automation platforms can unify channels like mobile email sms and push notifications
Unified Channels
SEO digital ads and social media marketing but depending on your type of business you may not need to integrate that many channels so let’s check how our seven platforms compare on cross channel marketing keep in mind that some platforms can integrate with your social media accounts however they don’t offer a unified view of your ad performance on the platform itself similarly some solutions offer out of the box sms messaging such as marcato while others integrate
with third third-party solutions that deliver that feature eloqua integrates with oracle content marketing tool natively although you may need to pay extra for the feature and provides the keyword suggestion tool that recommends keywords to you as you write and develop your seo friendly content for social media management most of these platforms support social media posting retargeting or listening but often you need to add connectors such as in the example of pardot and ontraport lead nurturing and lead scoring lead management is a big part of b2b marketing
Lead nurturing and lead scoring
But to remain on top of the leads that come in you need to have a reliable marketing automation platform lead management will include identifying your leads
Lead management
Nurturing them scoring and grading them and eventually passing them on to sales lead scoring is one step of lead management where you assign scores based on your leads activity for example if a lead signs up for a webinar or downloads an ebook you will assign points to that action based on the likelihood of it converting the lead into a future customer lead nurturing is a process of following your leads through their buyers journey and engaging with them with relevant content using
the example from before lean nurturing would be providing an ebook or webinar at the right time for this to work we need marketing automation to track analyze score and provide insight to find out where our seven platforms stand when it comes to these two functionalities take a look at this image reporting and roi analytics most marketing automation platforms lookinglion.net provide
Reporting & ROI Analytics
Some level of reporting some of them offer a dashboard view where marketers can customize their reports depending on who they report to while others offer activity tracking based on the channel you perform operations on advanced reporting tools often include deeper insights that don’t just report simple numbers like bounce rates but actionable insights as well for our current needs we will compare the seven platforms against visual analytics roi analytics
Table : 7 Email marketing automation platform comparison based on visual & ROI analytics, and sales reporting
And sales reporting so let’s dive in keep in mind even if they don’t offer customizable dashboards with precise analytics it doesn’t mean they are not able to provide insights in different ways for instance act on offers analytics and reporting however it’s still a work in progress on the visual side of things it’s good to remember that the platform also offers third party integrations with tools that provide improved insight gathering
active offers custom reports as a way to track performance on your dashboard yet for optimal visual analytics capabilities you are probably better off integrating the platform with isvs such as data hero that provides an in-depth insight into your business through intuitive dashboards when it comes to roi analytics most platforms offer some capabilities that will support your roi calculation however for some of them as an ontraport’s example
to access marketing roi tracking stats and utm tracking filters you’ll need a pro account license or above in terms of sales reporting in cases such as marketo eloqua and hubspot you will have to tap into their sales tools offering which can include an additional license fee or require an integration bottom line to sum up before making your decision take a good look at your
Bottom-line
Requirements marketing process campaign management procedure customer demands and your future goals most marketing automation platforms are built in a similar way due to corresponding market demands and they evolve at a rapid speed continuously refreshing their tool set also don’t forget to evaluate your in-house talent tools are only good if applied properly
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