
Marketing automation platforms are a powerful tool in their own right, but it’s not until you integrate other systems that they really shine.
Marketing automation and CRM are often mentioned in the same breath when considering one or the other – and for good reason. Like Sonny and Cher or potato and gravy, they’re better together. By actively syncing back and forth, you’re always working with the most up to date view of your organisation’s database, and sales have valuable prospect engagement insights at their fingertips (among many other benefits).
A great start, no doubt, but what about the other platforms you rely on to execute your marketing activity? They all play a role, but we often use them like someone coming off the bench with 5 minutes to go – they’re just not getting a chance to hit full stride. The lack of today’s most precious resource – time – often has us falling into the trap of using the bare minimum to get things going. We’re not investing the effort upfront to properly tap into and utilise the numerous ‘smarts’ of these tools or effectively harnessing the depth of information produced by them.
Often, the prospect of collecting, managing and moving resources and data between systems is just too daunting, leaving much of it to fall between the cracks – or it simply gets left behind. But there is a better way.
Integrations exist to make your life easier. While we know marketing automation platforms do more than just send emails, they’re infinitely more valuable when you start connecting other apps in your ecosystem:
That all sounds great, but at the end of the day, how does this help? The very essence of lead nurturing is providing clients and prospects with timely and relevant information so you can identify more leads. Understanding what’s relevant and when to send it is driven by audience insights – what have my prospects engaged with and via what medium? What type of content are they looking at and how often are they consuming it? Are they interested in a particular solution or offer? The answers to those questions – and many others that will undoubtably arise – often lie in those siloed systems that don’t get the attention they need.
Investing the effort to properly integrate your suite of apps will not only save you serious time but also deliver a clear, complete view of your prospects. When coupled with other initiatives like lead scoring and intelligent nurture programs, you’re well on your way to capturing, qualifying and handing over more leads for your sales team, while freeing you up to spend time on more important strategic tasks. It’s a win-win.