So, you’ve finally decided to automate your marketing operations and take them to some incredible heights? Congratulations! As you begin to search for the perfect marketing automation software however, you’ll likely be overwhelmed by the massive amount of tools available on the market – at least 7,000+! How can you know which of these automation tools could be perfect for your business? The answer is that it depends on the nature of your business and the operations you primarily want to automate.
In this blog post, we will cover the five most significant areas that you should consider when choosing the right marketing automation software for your business. These can help you make a more realistic and profound decision as you look forward to automating your marketing operations and even design and development tasks either today or in the future.
Before we dive into these factors, let’s look at why the need for marketing automation tools actually arises for a business and how they help.
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Why Do Businesses Need Marketing Automation Tools?
Marketing is undoubtedly an overwhelming function and requires lots of effort – especially when your business has reached a higher stance in the market. When you need to continue fulfilling the expectations of your target market, it becomes a real hassle to manage all your marketing operations efficiently.
Marketing automation tools are meant to ease that hassle. They can help you execute multiple marketing operations quickly without asking for a lot of effort or man-force. Thus, they not only help a digital marketer and ease up their tasks, but they are also a source of scaling your business better than usual.
A marketing automation tool can help send bulk emails, collect data insights, and grow your database. Here’s the list of some exciting benefits a marketing automation tool can deliver to your business:
- Decrease in the cost of customer acquisition
- Increase in the customers’ order value
- Conversion of the newly acquired buyers into retained, loyal customers
- Increase in the number of purchases
- Enhanced rate of conversion with automated emails
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Five Factors to Consider When Choosing the Right Marketing Automation Software
1. User Interface of the Automation Tool – First things first, look at how the automation tool’s interface has been designed. Most of them claim to have an easy-to-handle user interface – but that’s not the case.
It’s important that you assess the user interface yourself. The ideal way to do that is by asking for a demo of the software program. While you evaluate each different automation tool, consider asking yourself the following important questions –
- Does the platform offer quick and clear navigation? Assess by crafting an email and checking through the analytics to see if these tasks get easily performed.
- Does the platform offer contextual information for vague titles? Some platforms with vague headers offer explanations below that really boost user understanding.
- Does it make you jump through multiple hoops to perform a single task? Well, that issue can be a hindrance to your operation’s efficiency in the long run.
Adapting to a new platform completely will surely take some time. You’ll have to go through a learning curve to get used to the new marketing automation tool. However, an ecommerce business like yours sure has some priorities such as generating leads, converting them into clients, fulfilling quick orders, and so on. Thus, you cannot really invest a lot of time in seeing your learning curve rise. Instead, you’ll need quicker outcomes.
The best way to deal with this situation is to ensure choosing an automation tool with an easy-going interface and that is simple to grab.
2. Features & Native Integrations – Every marketing automation tool comes stacked with amazing features; the key is to choose one whose features really resonate with your needs. Also, consider whether they can be integrated with your existing technology or not.
As you evaluate and compare multiple automation tools, make sure to ask yourself these important questions –
- Does the automation tool have features similar to your requirements? Jotting down a list of features you require can help pick the adequate tool for your business.
- Does the software natively integrate with your existing technology? This is an important factor for it will help connect and transfer data across your system.
- Does the software program come with an open-ended API? This factor is crucial specifically if you plan to have some customized assets added to it in the future.
Because most ecommerce businesses have their online shops based on a different platform, like Amazon or Shopify, in such cases, it’s crucial that your online shop natively integrates with the marketing automation tool you’ve picked. This will assist in setting up automated marketing campaigns without hassle.
3. The Efficacy of Customer Support – As you start working on something new, you will definitely need some quick assistance. Thus, a very important factor to consider when picking your automation tool is the efficacy of customer support.
You can always track and evaluate the customer support efficacy of multiple automation tools to land upon one that offers the finest assistance. Here’s the list of questions you can ask yourself when evaluating multiple tools:
- What medium do they use in providing customer assistance? A few common mediums include calling, live chat, or emails. Consider picking a tool that offers real-time, human assistance because that’s certainly better than dealing with a chatbot in the time of need.
- How quick and efficient is their response? Most customer support teams are available 24/7, but you may have to wait a lot longer with some services.
4. Pricing – Though most automation programs come up with similar pricing themes, they could slightly vary based on the number of contacts they have and so on. While you evaluate multiple platforms for pricing, here’s the list of important questions to ask:
- Does the pricing align with the number of contacts the platform offers? You should always pick a platform that offers the most number of contacts at the least possible pricing while maintaining the quality on top.
- What features of a platform could impact the pricing? Suppose you’ve come across a platform that offers great features at almost affordable pricing, yet some of the features are excessive. You can always go for a cheaper version of such platforms.
5. Set-Up & Onboarding – Adapting to an all-new marketing automation platform isn’t just about the purchase; you have to also be cautious about the setting up and onboarding process. Now, as a fast-paced business, you must need something to be set up quickly, right?
Here’s the list of questions you should ask when evaluating multiple automation tools based on their onboarding process:
- Does the system charge an additional onboarding fee, and how much? This can help you keep track of your budget when buying the right automation tool.
- Whether the platform offers physical assistance in onboarding or virtual?
What Role Should Automation Software Play In Social Media Marketing?
Automation tools allow marketers to save time and money. By using automation tools, marketers can update their social media channels automatically, thus increasing ROI and efficiency in campaigns. Furthermore, it allows them to perform several tasks at a time.
However, finding out which tool is best for social media marketing is a challenge in itself. There are a lot of them out there and not all of them work well with one another, so you have to do your research beforehand. But once you find the perfect match, you can get through your campaign much more easily than before.
Final Thoughts
The idea is to choose a platform that provides either free-of-cost or budget-friendly onboarding assistance. Also, physical support could really work in comparison to a virtual one.
Ultimately, businesses planning to share the burden with marketing automation tools have larger databases to handle. In a scenario like that, it’s always ideal to choose a feature-rich marketing automation software that offers a big number of contacts yet falls into your budget at the same time.
About the author: SEO Analyst at Designitic. Having been involved in the field of digital marketing for the past five years, I’ve witnessed tremendous changes. As a keen reader and writer, I have a vested interest in writing about the field’s rapid development.
