by Julianne Mercer, Negosentro.com |
Automation is supposed to make your life easier but it can also result in a hellish experience if you fail doing effective automation. Just imagine having to deal with dozens of apps and software programs that simply can’t extract data with each other.
Poor integration will give you access to limited functionalities, it can result to duplicates and complicated procedures that will contribute to errors. As a result, your productivity will suffer and chances are that your clients will not benefit from the best possible service.
Your marketing software plays an integral role in ensuring your professional success. If you want to make even better use of it, however, it would be essential to carry out thorough integration with other business applications. Here’s how to do it.
Email Marketing Tool Integration
Email marketing is still a powerful tool you can rely on today, regardless of the fact it’s considered an old-school approach by some.
Email software can easily be integrated with other platforms, for example, analytical tools. Some email marketing options like MailChimp, for example, do provide sufficient statistics about the performance of a campaign. Still, integration with more powerful tools can be the key to carrying out better campaigns in the future through the acquisition of additional knowledge about audience response.
Email marketing tools should also be well-integrated with CRM software.
Imagine the following scenario – you plan to host an event and you’d like to invite a certain group of people to the location. Thus, you need geographically-relevant information about your prospects.
CRM software can do effective segmentation in order to provide you with an adequate mailing list. Based on this information, you can send out a newsletter or an email invitation solely to the relevant group of people. This is yet another way in which your marketing efforts can become more effective, whether you’re using email marketing or sending out emails to promote another kind of campaign.
Content Management Integration
Good content forms the backbone of your digital marketing strategy. It can have a massive impact on just about every other campaign that you plan to carry out. To make content management more effective, you should once again consider tool integration.
Here’s a simple example of such integration. Kapost is a powerful and popular content creation and management tool. It can automate a large portion of the tasks linked to putting articles and other types of content together. At the same time, Kapost has excellent integration capabilities, especially when it comes to using it alongside CRM software.
Kapost can be integrated with Salesforce – a well-known CRM solution. Once the integration is completed, an admin will get to publish content via the Salesforce network of social media. Sales professionals will have a much better idea about what has been published, how it’s performing and whether additional efforts will be required to maximize the reach of the respective post.
CRM Integration
This is probably one of the most important kinds of integration that will have to occur for effective campaign management. CRM and marketing aren’t directly related but they can be used alongside each other to boost the effectiveness of every single campaign.
Salesforce and marketing integration helps develop better relationships with customers, guarantees better insight into customer behavior and preferences, prioritizes leads and shortens the sale process significantly by giving your prospects all of the relevant information that they require to make a purchasing decision.
HubSpot and Zendesk integration is just one simple example of how the relationship between the two vital types of apps work.
When HubSpot gets integrated with the CRM platform, you will get more elaborate timeline about interactions with customers. You will get, for example, data about Zendesk support tickets – a piece of information that can be invaluable for carrying out adequate communication with the respective customer in the future.
Ecommerce Integration
Does your business run an online store? If so, you should be considering ecommerce integration with your marketing automation program, as well. One of the simplest ways to accomplish the goal involves the use of ecommerce add-ons. Many of the online store platforms have additional tools that can be either activated or purchased upon necessity. This way, you’ll be creating a thorough solution that puts emphasis on online commerce and marketing at the same time.
Alternatively, separate applications can be used for the purpose.
Divr.it is an example of such an application. It can be integrated with just about every ecommerce platform out there. The purpose of the application is to make social media sharing and content uploading from the online store automatic.
Zapier is another excellent example of a tool that can bring online sales and marketing together. The aim of the app is to send an SMS message whenever a new order has been received. This information will be invaluable for ensuring the quality of the customer service or giving the new client additional information that will result in a positive experience.
The interactions between marketing and other business processes are easy to understand. No department in a company works in isolation, which is why connecting different platforms can prove to be invaluable for everyone involved. When coming up with such a strategy, consider the most important processes and the ones that you’d like to streamline even further. Based on this information, you can choose the right automation tools and figure out whether these come with a sufficient integration capacity.
