How to choose the right marketing automation platform for your company?

What is a marketing automation tool?

A marketing automation tool automates one or more marketing processes like lead management, e-mail marketing, and content personalization. It collects all these tasks in one centralized platform. It also consists of analysis and reporting possibilities, and it can visualize this data in a clear dashboard.

A concrete example: imagine you have imported your customer database in a marketing automation tool through an API connection. You can now easily segment your database based on various criteria like website visits or lead scoring. Looking at the segmented database, you notice that some people are very active on your website. You can now “nurture” these leads from this tool with automatic and personalized communication in the form of e-mails, text messages… All of this to lead them towards a purchase, an appointment with one of your advisors, etc. In short, with a marketing automation tool you can reach your marketing goals in a very targeted and automated manner.

Step by step to the right tool

Choosing a marketing automation tool is best done step by step, analyzing both the tool’s capabilities as well as your own. Our expert Kim offers the following workflow:

1.   Analyze your current situation

First, map your current situation. What are your company goals? What data do you have at your disposal? Which tools are you already using? And what is your company structure? Answer these questions before you choose a marketing automation platform.

2.   Determine what you need

When you have mapped out your current situation, you can start to think about the needs that the platform needs to fill. Do you mainly want to automate your marketing communication with your clients? Then a tool like Mailchimp can prove sufficient. Do you want to go a step further and, for example, easily manage your customer database too? Then you should consider more comprehensive tools like Creatio.

3.   Involve everyone who will use the tool

Choosing a marketing automation tool is not something you do alone. It is important that you bring everyone to the table who will come into contact with it. For example, do you want to write custom code in the tool? Then involve the person responsible for coding in compiling a list of possible tools.

4.   Split the list in need-to-haves and nice-to-haves

Now is the time to start choosing. Split the list in need-to-haves and nice-to-haves. The column need-to-haves will be decisive. Make sure to think in functional terms. What do you minimally need to use the tool? And what other functions would you like to include to improve your current situation? Because the goal is to make progress, not to maintain the status quo.

Some things to take into account:

• How many users need access to the tool?
• How big is your database and how much growth do you foresee?
• Do you want to enter into a contract for multiple years to get a discount?
• Are you looking to send marketing communication? How many emails do you want to send per month?
• Is it your goal to manage B2C and B2B in the same platform? How separated is the data?

5.   Take your budget into account

It is also important to keep your budget in mind. There are plenty of expensive players on the market who overwhelm you with all kinds of functionalities that you may not need at this moment. That is why it is important to look at the scalability of a tool. What should the tool do for you today and what should it do in the future? Then look at what tool fits this growth plan.

6.   Test the tool

Now choose one of the tools and be sure to book a demo so that you can have a look inside to see whether you like the structure and its functionalities. Does the communication with the platform’s contact person run well? Do not hesitate to ask this person all your questions before you commit!