When it comes to marketing automation, there’s no “one size fits all” answer.
An automation suite can empower your business like few other tools. A sound selection process is essential for aligning solutions with your enterprise’s needs.
A good fit between your solution and your challenges helps you capture ROI that much faster. Plus, it’ll accelerate adoption within your organization.
When establishing your selection criteria for an automation suite, remember these factors:
Costs
Cost is always a limiting factor in your selection. You need to be able to shoulder upfront costs as well as ongoing subscriptions. Per-seat costs are likely to grow over time as your team does, so ensure your choice is scalable both cost- and feature-wise.
Most vendors combine per-seat cost and various tiers of service, so be sure to hear all the details from your sales rep. A product demo is often the best way to determine how well a certain piece of software will suit you day-to-day.
Size and Limitations
Marketing automation suites are usually designed with a company size range in mind.
You can get more performance out of the suite by upgrading to a new tier, but features might not meet your needs forever. With that in mind, consider what types of large-scale initiatives you might work on in the future. Will the software you have in mind be able to handle this volume?
Support
Support is a core consideration for enterprise software. Your review of support should start with the SLA. Since most automation suites are cloud-based, it’s reasonable to require world-class uptime and availability of core features, plus full mobile accessibility. Issues can arise suddenly and may be serious, so phone support is a must have.
Features
The marketing automation world is divided into several categories of solutions. Picking the right one at the right time will help ensure you don’t find yourself switching options mid-stream.
The most common frameworks include:
Channel-Specific
If your digital marketing is primarily focused in one area, such as email, this is the option for you. These are low-cost picks with specialized features – your technology stack may use several.
Full Funnel
Full funnel marketing automation brings together a complete toolkit for SEO, content marketing, and inbound digital marketing. It’ll give you greater visibility and end-to-end insight for your long-term digital strategy.
Middle or Bottom Funnel
This is your best bet for capturing and messaging leads. If you already have an approach for demand generation and growth, these tools help you capture greater ROI.
In effect, marketing automation is like having more hours in the day and more actionable insights to use in that time. Get started now and use it to unlock the full power of your team.