Gathering leads should be the basis for any website. It starts with subscribe forms, tied into a good email marketing system like mailchimp, aweber or similar. This is where we must all start, by building a mailing list. There are new tools like optinmonster that helps boost signup rates too. With additional effort, you can start segmenting lists and personalising campaigns. Good stuff.
However just gathering up leads, building lists, sending our emails and monitoring traffic analytics isn’t enough to really succeed or grow online. You ideally need a good followup system and to know the intention behind the person that subscribed or visited your site. Identify those that keep coming back, but do nothing.
Marketing automation – Why we need it to grow
We need more sophisticated visitor tracking, drip feeding of campaigns, plus followup process that alerts business owners [or salespeople] of these interested, but yet uncommitted visitors – To gather and filter them and/or subscribers into segments. To even alert you when it seems a person or company is showing real interest in your online article, service or product based upon a particular campaign or number of visits.
Keeping it human
A useful percentage of people visiting large blogs, directories and eCommerce sites fall into this category. Interested, but not interested enough to really do anything and in the meantime, keep checking out the competition. They need a gentle prod, even a phone call or email from you. Winston Marsh told us earlier the power of a followup phone call to boost conversion rates, which is why many companies still employ telemarketers to followup on all online leads and never rely upon emails alone… And a process that ensure a followup within a few minutes and not hours pays big dividends too.
The technologies
In terms of marketing automation tools to alert and track things, here’s the key players from a long list.. Some have counted over 500 companies promoting marketing automation suites!
These four on my shortlist are smart cloud applications, paid for on a monthly basis. Marketo is the ‘most popular’ for bigger companies, although note that popularity should not be the reason you select any tool, as is them providing a ‘WordPress plugin’. Most good systems can be integrated with WordPress and with all popular third party CRM offerings like salesforce, dynamics etc.
Hubspot is nice for small-medium business, but there is considerable duplication of the tools WordPress already offers, like a blog, forms, pages etc. Infusionsoft is popular with content marketers with nice systems to help monetise your efforts and connect with payment systems. Pardot from Salesforce is a real beast, designed for medium to big business users, with big pricing to match. Each requires considerable setup and training time to work well. There’s a good reason some charge thousands for training lone.
Marketing Automation – lite
You may not need a full ‘marketing automation’ system when first starting out or are new to this technology. The time, setup efforts and frustration it leads to can be considerable. Many can consider normal email marketing systems like campaign monitor, that now include some automation and workflow features. Costs are minimal and provide a good learning experience of how automation around email and lead collection can help.
However a more recent entrant for serious bloggers, industry trainers or consultants and specific to those running WordPress, is Drip, marketed as a lightweight marketing automation tool that doesn’t suck, [or cost too much].
Another little-known one we like is Orbtr. Compared with most others, it is remarkably affordable for the immense functionality provided. Unlike most of the ‘high-end’ systems, it doesn’t double up on the webforms and other features WordPress already includes. Colleague Chris Lema recently did a great review of Orbtr.
Another exciting new entrant into this area is inbound now. With exceptionally tight WordPress integration (like Orbtr), it allows users to setup and run all their campaigns from the WordPress editor and dashboard. You don’t have to login and learn another dashboard like most other systems. Many using Inbound are ex-Hubspot or Marketo users who later discovered they really wanted an easier-to-use system that had 80% of the key features, for 20% of the cost and frustration. Inbound or Orbtr fits in better for them.
We’re at the right point in time…
Technology can do a lot of things, but it needs to be understood, embraced and used properly. And technology is almost always ahead of the market. It can be a decade from introduction, to widespread market acceptance, following the innovation adoption life cycle curve. For marketing automation we’re entering the exciting, reduced risk, high growth early adopters phase.
People, not technology is often the problem
But, tools like orbtr, hubspot and others are NOT a magic wand. People are the biggest problem when new systems arrive. Those who have struggled with online apps like Salesforce will know what we mean. Here’s a frank video we found that reveals some of the human challenges. The fact that technology packages above are getting better and cheaper, does not guarantee success. It needs the right people, commitment, goals and a strategy to be in place first.
The trick is to not rush in or sign up for the one with the slickest sales pitch and bold promises. Perhaps start with a simpler, low cost system like Drip, Orbtr or Inboundnow. Learn how these systems work and benefit marketing, without breaking the bank. You can always upgrade later as you grow and better understand how these systems work. Problems can stem around poor strategy; implementation; culture; usage; content; sales pipeline; poor analysis.
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