Choosing the right marketing automation platform for your business can be a tricky task. After going through several trial periods of different software, you'll find the one that best suits your needs. But, what next?
Once you've selected the right platform for you, it is important that you continue to learn and familiarize yourself with the platform. Sure, the platform does what you want it to do, but chances are that it can do even more.
Go through the onboarding process
With a marketing automation platform, it's important that it can accomplish what you desire but it is equally important that you realize that marketing automation can surpass your expectations and improve your existing marketing and communication campaigns. Luckily, most platforms will come with an onboarding process.
Take advantage of the knowledge of your onboarding personnel and ask questions about the platform's capacity and ask what else you can do with it. You may just want to do newsletter campaigns but did you consider SMS reminders? Things like this are what the onboarding process is for: teaching you more about your platform. So, don't be shy and ask questions.
Start small
If you're new to marketing automation, you may not want to start off with the biggest, flashiest system and package; that could get overwhelming very quickly. Instead, pick a medium or small package and learn the basics. As your knowledge of the platform grows, you can always scale up to a larger package.
Try internal and external communications
The popular view of marketing automation is that it automates and personalizes your external communications with clients and customers. While this is a true and effective use of the software, you can also use it to streamline and organize your internal communications as well. In fact, automating your internal communications is a great place to start while you familiarize yourself with the system. This way, if you do make an error or send something to the wrong list, it is only your staff that will see – not your customers or potential customers.
View your reports
The best way to see how successful your automated campaigns are performing is by viewing the reports. Through an optimized reporting interface, you should be able to see the success rate of your campaigns: how many emails were opened, how many links were clicked, hard/soft bounce rates, etc. Without looking at your reports, you'll never truly be able to know just how engaged your customers are with your messages.
Keep learning
Marketing automation is a relatively new development, but luckily lots is being written about how to best implement it as a solution. Take advantage of this material whether it's in the form of a whitepaper, blog, or video. Start the learning process by visiting this page to learn more about the benefits of marketing automation.
