“The reality is the best marketers are using both inbound marketing and marketing automation together, and they are getting great returns.”
— Greg Head, Former CMO of InfusionSoft.
Marketing automation has given marketers across the globe the ability to enhance their efforts and produce a significantly higher return on investment for various efforts.
The ability to automate more complex tasks and free up organizational players to deal with more pressing matters is invaluable. In fact, according to Marketo, “91 percent of the most successful users say marketing automation is ‘very important’ to the overall success of their marketing programs.”
Furthermore, 63 percent of companies that have found success with marketing automation plan to increase their budgets surrounding the software and services.
Marketing automation is a powerful driver in the industry today and is a vital tool for small business owners. If you are ready to increase your efforts and generate a more meaningful ROI, check out these five marketing automation tools:
1. InfusionSoft
InfusionSoft is one of the most popular marketing automation solutions available today.
The company specializes in serving SMBs with automation features surrounding sales automation, marketing automation, and a wide array of other useful elements.
The service’s CRM assists organizations in automating sales and marketing management with follow-up features, lead scoring components, communications histories, and even personalized autoresponders.
With InfusionSoft brands can build entire marketing campaigns with the use of drag-and-drop features or even the use of readymade templates.
The software’s lead scoring data helps brands understand user behaviors based on marketing interactions and automatically prioritizes the highest quality leads so that you are always pursuing your most profitable prospects.
InfusionSoft also features eCommerce options, social sharing options, referral program management features, and many other elements that help to create a more efficient and profitable organization.
2. GetResponse
GetResponse is another critically acclaimed marketing automation tool that is well-known for its e-mail automation features.
This software is highly intuitive and touts a user-friendly interface which makes creating custom workflows and conversion funnels a breeze. By simply dragging and clicking filters, business owners can establish a workflow which will automatically send out newsletters and other emails, social media links, coupons, and other incentivized offerings once certain actions have been met.
GetResponse provides users with hundreds of colorful e-mail templates, which makes crafting the perfect email quick, easy, and fun. More importantly, however, this tools provides ROI stats surrounding your email blasts so you know exactly how effective your communications are.
Its web analytics measure traffic and leads driven to your website and evaluates user actions to better optimize your campaigns.
But this is only a fraction of what GetResponse has to offer; the tool also supports shopping cart recovery options, tagging and scoring aspects, landing page builder, A/B testing, webinar components, and a staggering amount of other useful features.
3. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is another exception email marketing automation service.
This tool allows businesses to round up all of their email subscribers into a single destination as company owners can upload spreadsheets, text files, import contacts from Outlook and Gmail, as well as allows customer data to be uploaded from various CRMs.
Constant Contact provides a hefty array of over 400 email templates and designs. Additionally, brands can add in their logos, other images, text, and more with Constant Contact’s drag-and-drop features. And the best part is that all of their emails are always mobile responsive.
One of the highlights of Constant Contact is its vast library of comprehensive learning materials. The company provides its customers with an archive of tips, product tutorials, on-demand webinars, user guides, stellar customer support, and tons more; all of which are free to use.
If you’re in the market for a course that is a bit more intensive, Constant Contact offers Boot Camp classes which are day-long beginners programs led by trained instructors.
Get Response also supplies users with in-depth e-mail tracking tools to help define and measure the impact of a campaign.
4. Marketo
Marketo is an all-in-one marketing automation tool that handles everything from mobile marketing to lead acquisition, social media marketing, budget management, analytics, and a comprehensive collection of other profitable features.
Marketo is also capable of integrating natively with Salesforce and a variety of CRM platforms. If you don’t have many contacts to manage, this tool is perfect for you as it places an emphasis on acquiring new leads for small businesses.
This platform helps businesses to create custom landing pages and web experiences across devices and uses a lead scoring system to evaluate the viability of potential prospects. Additionally, star and flame icons are leveraged to alert users to leads that must be handled urgently.
If traffic is something that your brand is struggling with, Marketo houses features for creating and scheduling ads targeted toward a specific demographic.
Much like Constant Contact, Marketo provides a wide array of resources for marketers to leverage to become more effective in their efforts, including a community of fellow advertisers who share ideas.
With Marketo brands can automate a large portion of their marketing efforts, acquire in-depth analytics, and continually refine their strategies for a more abundant return on investment.
Marketing automation software is currently coming into its own and proving to the industry that it is well worth its initial investment. Services like these help marketers and business owners achieve more meaningful results, while expending a fraction of the energy. But sure to check out these effective tools so that you can focus more on your customers and less on figuring out how to reach them.
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by Tina Courtney
source: SiteProNews
