Much like businesses themselves, marketing automation platforms and CRM’s come in all shapes and sizes. Some are incredibly robust and contain the power and tools to manage marketing, sales, and customer success for large enterprises—and are priced accordingly. However, various effective and intuitive platforms exist that are appropriately priced for small-to-midsize businesses that contain the power and tools to take your company to the next level. Let’s discuss CRM and marketing automation explore some of the best marketing animation tools for small businesses.

What is CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a valuable technology for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with prospects and customers. A CRM is designed to help companies stay connected with customers, improve revenue, and streamline processes by providing intuitive and useful interfaces that help you manage your contacts in one central location. The right CRM solution can improve business relationships and ultimately help grow your business.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation uses software to automate tedious and time-consuming marketing work. Commonly automated tasks include email marketing, social media posting, and ad campaigns. Marketing automation not only saves valuable time, but also provides a more personalized experience for customers by using sophisticated algorithms and integrations with CRM systems.

Marketing automation can be utilized to streamline tasks during any phase of the marketing process, from lead generation to relationship maintenance. Automation tools can efficiently create dynamic and high performing lead generation campaigns through personalized marketing methods such as landing pages and advertisements. Once the lead has been generated, marketing automation can guide the prospect through the buyer’s journey with customized content that is relevant to their interests and has the highest chance of converting them into a customer. Finally, marketing automation can ensure that once leads have become customers the relationship doesn’t go stale by using dynamic email and social media content to maintain meaningful relationships.

What to Consider for your Marketing Automation Solution

Personalization: Quite simply, personalization is the most valued and important feature among marketing automaton platforms and has a direct correlation with customer satisfaction. The numbers speak for themselves, as 90% of customers find personalized experiences appealing, and 91% of customers are likely to shop with brands that provide relevant offers and recommendations.

 

Leading marketing automation platforms use sophisticated algorithms and integrate with your CRM to deliver robust and dynamic personalized content that is relevant to its target audience.

Lead Nurturing Strategies: When marketing automation platforms are performing at a high level, they will be converting your leads to customers at a better rate than any of your other marketing tools. The best automation platforms have the ability to seamlessly deliver lead nurturing content at a faster rate than any other marketing method, while also utilizing lead nurturing strategies driven by powerful analytics.

Future-Proof: The world of digital marketing is constantly changing with no signs of slowing down. It’s crucial to choose a marketing automation platform that is utilizing the best modern technology and tools available. Time cannot be wasted attempting to play catch up with technology. Ensure that your marketing automation is modernized and prepared to evolve and adapt alongside your company.

Omnichannel Marketing: One of the biggest ways to hurt your marketing efforts is by limiting the number of channels you deliver your content on. Every available marketing channel presents its own valuable opportunities to grow your audience and business, and none should be ignored. Marketing automation platforms are what make it possible for small to midsize businesses to consistently deliver content on a considerably wide range of marketing channels.

Ensure that whichever marketing automation platform you choose supports a variety of marketing channels, such as email, SMS, push notifications, live chat, retargeting ads, social media platforms, and landing pages.

Integrations: You can get the most out of marketing automation platforms by integrating them with your existing CRM platforms and data. When selecting a platform, verify that it includes integrations for any CRM and social media platforms you are already using. Integrations will automatically sync the data from your existing platforms, enabling your current and future marketing material to seamlessly integrate personalization and improve conversion rates.

eCommerce Capabilities: If eCommerce is part of your business, it’s a huge benefit to find a marketing automation platform that offers integrations for your eCommerce platform. These integrations can create a more efficient and straightforward buying process for your prospects while keeping your sales and customer management in one centralized location.

Onboarding & Support: When you’re ready to upgrade to a paid plan with a marketing automation platform, they will assign you an onboarding manager for a fee. For example, HubSpot charges around $6,000 for their onboarding process. However, these onboarding costs can be completely waived by utilizing a certified onboarding partner like Vonazon. We can save you thousands in expenses while also providing expert onboarding and training services that will ensure every member of your staff feels comfortable on the platform.

Additionally, it’s vital that your marketing platform provides excellent and reliable support going forward. Ongoing support can also be provided by an expert partner like Vonazon, as we can perform periodical marketing automation evaluations for your company and assure that you are getting optimal results from whichever platform you’re operating on.

The Five Keys of Lead Nurture Program Success

Goals & Targets: Before beginning the lead nurturing process, set clear goals and targets. These should lay out the timeframe of the lead nurturing campaign, as well as which segment of your audience you are targeting, and what the ultimate end-result goal is for the campaign. Goals for conversion rate and budget can also be set during this stage.

Data: Correct and updated data is what helps create campaigns that are relevant and personalized to their target audience. This is where your CRM comes into play, and why it is so crucial to have a modernized and robust CRM that can serve as the data backbone for your automated marketing campaigns and lead nurturing programs.

Technology: As we’ve discussed in this article, utilizing modern, intuitive, and future-proof technology for your marketing automation is an absolute necessity. Modern and up-to-date marketing automation technology produces the best results and keeps your company safe and compliant with new online regulations and policy updates.

Content: The phrase “content is king” still rings true in the world of digital marketing. High quality and relevant content is what drives the highest conversion rates and maintains the most meaningful relationships with your audience.

Execution: Once your goals are set, your tech is up-to-date, and your content is ready, it’s all about execution. Ensure that anyone handling your marketing automation is well trained and knowledgeable on the platform being used to execute the lead nurturing campaign. Additionally, perform regular analysis of your marketing results to discover where adjustments can be made to improve performance.

How To Select a Marketing Automation Platform and Onboarding Partner

When selecting your marketing automation platform, lay out the current pain points of your company and its marketing process. Then, search for a platform that will help remedy those pain points and help you reach and exceed your goals. It’s always a good idea to try out marketing automation platforms that offer free trials, so you can decide if the software is right for you and your company.

Once you have selected a marketing automation platform, you will need to go through an onboarding process with the platform provider itself or a certified partner. As mentioned, a certified partner like Vonazon can save you thousands of dollars in potential fees while providing expert onboarding and guidance.

We can walk you through integrating your CRM and other marketing tools with your automation platform to ensure you are running the most dynamic and personalized marketing campaigns possible. Certified partners can also provide ongoing expert support after onboarding to offer guidance through any future issues or updates that may arise. With a partner like Vonazon, your company can be sure that it’s getting the most out of whichever marketing automation platform it’s utilizing.

Streamline Your Marketing

Automating the tedious and time-consuming aspects of your marketing will open up your company to a world of possibilities. Marketing automation allows you to expand your audience by unlocking various new marketing channels, while also improving your revenue and conversion rate by churning out marketing campaigns that draw business in. Any time a company spends not utilizing a marketing automation platform is time spent missing out on valuable opportunities that can take your company to the next level. And if you are currently using a marketing automation platform, performing an evaluation to ensure it is still the perfect fit is never a bad idea.