Updated on: 29-03-2018 22:55 CET

We’ve gotten used to the fact that while browsing the internet, we get clues about offers that may interest us. And we know that with airlines and online portals prices are set automatically depending on the utilisation or the development of the competitor prices as well as lending decisions are made at online banks without human involvement. Nevertheless, there are only a few companies in Germany where there is a lot of focus on process and decision automation in marketing and sales.

The Marketing Automation Club and the Institute for Marketing and Sales Automation (IFSMA) have set themselves the goal of paving the way for sales and marketing automation in the German-speaking area. We regularly examine the market for sales and marketing automation, promote the exchange of experience and knowledge transfer at special events and take care of training the urgently needed specialists. The common goal of the activities is to improve efficiency and effectiveness in marketing and sales with the help of scientific and practice-relevant methods, instruments and systems.

All solutions have been tested on the following list of features. For each function, we have mentioned what the usual benefits the particular feature provides. Our feature and provider list grow continuously with the industry. For further suggestions, please connect with us using the online chat or Email us at assistance@marketing-automation.club or info@marketing-automation.club.

Manage Contacts

1.1 Contact Records

• Unlimited user-defined fields
• Multiple field types
  • Short Text – Example: This is an open text field, but when you are looking at the details page for a contact, it is displayed in a one-line data entry field.
  • Open Text – Example: Allows you to store any information about the contact.
  • Integer – Example: An integer forces anything that isn’t a number to be filtered out.
  • Date – Example: Add to database dates in DDMMYYYY format.
  • Trend Data – Example: This is data tied to dates, useful for tracking information over time with the y-value of the chart being anything you like, such as dollars in savings or revenues generated by the contact.
  • Select One – Example: The field can only be set to one value. Specify the possible value in a comma-separated list in the large text box.
  • Select Multiple (Checkboxes) – Allows the contact to have as many of the values assigned to him as you would like.

1.2 Track “Digital Body Language” history:

• Web page click-stream (Click-paths): Collecting, analyzing, and reporting aggregate data about routes that visitors choose when clicking or navigating through your site (list of all the pages viewed by a visitor, presented in the order of how the pages were viewed – succession of mouse clicks.
• Form submissions: Helps to control exactly when your form is submitted and what data is passed to it. Submission screen helps you to view all the data that is being submitted through your form (contacts’ names, their time-stamp of submission, and the page converted).
• Email interactions (opens, clicks, forwards): Lets you keep records of your email correspondence and related actions by recognizing and matching the customer’s email address to a listing within your company’s database.
• Referring URL source: Refers you to the webpage address clicked or refers your web visitor to your page. The webpage that sends visitors to your site using a link is the referrer (the webpage that a person was on right before they were redirected to your page).
• Search engine/search phrase used: Web pages that contain all the words in your query that were fed to the search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, MSN, and others as the basic part of your search on the web.
• High-value content/asset conversion points: Polished content that looks good, reads smart, and provides high organic leads. Helps to build brand awareness and form relationships with customers.

1.3 Technical Profiles:

• Understand your web visitor’s technical profile: Real-time visitor reporting – track website visitors click-by-click, via Campaign Codes, and customize Website Visitor Profile form templates.
• Browser used: Read the long-term trends of browser usage, know which browsers your visitors were using, and the percentage of visitors.
• IP address: Understand the numerical label assigned to each device (e.g., computer, printer) that’s participating in a computer network (host or network interface identification and location addressing).
• Country/State/Zip/Longitude and Latitude from IP: Know the system of postal codes used by different zones and areas across the world e.g street, city, state, or country address (the IP Address Geolocation).

1.4 Segmentation

• Contact groups; categorize, group, filter, base, and breakdown your contacts into easy to understand blocks. Create a new filter based on a defined contact group.
• Field-based filters: Allows you to easily remove data from view, and focus on the most vital ones.
• Activity-based filters: Set a time frame and identify the precise activity you want (email-name sent, email-name opened, click-through, or form-name submitted).
• Inactivity based filters: Set a time range per Inactivity type.

1.5 Preference Management

• Email opt-in subscription management; Maintaining Targeted Email List and Keeps your list clean by automatically removing duplicates.
• Email opt-out compliance (global or campaign level); Helps achieve optimized and highly targeted subscriber list by keeping it clean from inactive email. Informs recipients of how to opt-out of receiving future messages.
• Web tracking consent compliance: Creates trust and compliance with the cookie law. Informs and obtains consent from visitors about the cookies and tracking used on your website to collect data.

1.6 Data Integration

• List upload; Learn how to create and import contact lists, create a new contact list, head over to the Contacts page.
• Form integration; It allows you to embed forms within your own website that will let your customers enter their details directly into the system.
• Open API integration for data import/export (CRM, custom connectors); Assists you to use XML based format to import and export data, from updating new products to integrating with third-party services.
• Automated data import engine (secure FTP): Integrates a functionality that accomplishes your tasks over a secure connection (Secure File Transport Protocol, or SFTP).

1.7 Data Quality Programs

• De-duplication: Use the best data de-duplication technique to compress your data and for eliminating duplicate copies of repeating data.
• Normalization: Learn how to use database normalization and organize the columns (attributes) and tables (relations) of your data relational database to reduce data redundancy and improve data integrity.
• Cleansing: Choose the best data cleansing or data scrubbing. Use the best process of amending or removing data in a database that is incorrect, incomplete, improperly formatted, or duplicated.

Manage Campaigns

2.1 Emails

• Email development; Roundup of some pretty incredible tricks that makes the best email strategy.
• Template library; View, and edit all of your transactional templates in one place.
• HTML and plain text: An email campaign is built in stages in an HTML or text editor, with each stage focused on a specific set of elements. HTML is formatted while plain text has no formatting options.
• Activity driven content: Allows email content to be substituted depending on information in a contact field, allowing emails to be sent to users with different interests.
• Email deliverability optimization: Make sure your brand reaches the right inbox and that the deliverability of your email impacts success not failure of your email.
• A/B testing: Use split testing in comparing two versions of a web page to see which one performs better.
• Exclusion of competitor domains: Ensure competitors are excluded from auto-response and lead nurturing emails. Exclude geographies and precede the target with a minus sign.
• Bounce back capture and management: Learn how to manage bounced email address lists with different options such as forward mailboxes or from outlook.
• List management: Walkthrough on how to manage your leads, using the simple options and software. Create a standard database for managing your client list including client details, UTR, VAT numbers, etc.
• Deployment (one-off, batch or campaign/form triggered): Understand list management; deployment tracking integration; personal URL system; web page click-stream.

2.2 Web Pages

• Platform created/hosted pages: Optimize your website for wordpress, landing pages, HTML, CSS, and other client side technologies.
• Template library: Create a template/ software library including hypertext documentation.
• External website tracking integration: Learn how to add an external site and integrate with external issue-tracking systems such as Team Track; and hyperlink them to the right site.
• Personal URL (PURLs): Get effective at direct marketing campaigns. Boot your direct mail response rates by using personalization and capturing online responses.
• Embedded forms: Modify your signup form and response emails before you generate the embedded form code.
• Content substitution: Create a pattern to filter the response content (Syntax).
• Content hosting: Couple your website hosting with a content management system and enable easy edits to website content, share files, and hyperlink pages.

2.3 Personalization

• In emails (field merge, activity driven content, sales signature rules): Use field sales direct mail, fax, RSS feeds, SMS, and trigger outbound SEGMENTATION signature rules.
• In web pages (field merges, content substitution) and page alternates (URL redirects based on data lookup): choose live or automated voice messaging, create contact groups and use ideal filters.
• In forms (field pre-population): View your form’s source to identify each form field name you wish to use.

2.4 Multi Channel Capabilities

• Integrated, multi-channel marketing: Make use of email, web, direct mail, fax, RSS feeds, SMS, trigger outbound calls (live or automated voice messaging) to get direct and timely responses and feedback on products.

2.5 Form Processing

• Platform created/hosted forms: Create online forms and publish them. Get an email for each response. Collect data and file.
• Template library: View, and edit all your transactional templates in one place
• External form integration: connect WordPress contact forms to external services like a CRM using their API
• Field validation: Includes a list of form elements, and rules to validate each field against, select validation options to ensure that data is correctly entered in a field.
• Automated field processing steps: Send email to submitter, send notification email, add to automated campaign/program, redirect to website, refer-to-a-friend etc.
• Progressive profiling: Set up iterative forms that enable you to designate which questions appear based on what you already know about a lead
• Form field pre-population: send your respondents a form with some fields already filled in.

2.6 Campaign Automation

• Design, build and maintain automated rule-based marketing campaigns.
• Visualize the campaign workflow: See what you expect to achieve in form of anticipation.
• Build segments: Create ideal categorizations that allow you to find the fitting places for your customers.
• Incorporate campaign assets: Choose the right equipment to use in order to realize your objectives.
• Define decision rules: Create rules that are well targeted to your line of work, choice, and eventual targets.
• Trigger resulting actions based on activity or inactivity: Determine your results by acting in a specific way or not.

2.7 Nurturing

• Coordinate and automate multi-step, multi-track campaigns that send out staged communication over time.
• Browsing behaviour: Choose a good Website design which facilitates a user’s Web browsing behaviour and leads to better user performance.
• Form submission: Design a form with different types of input elements, like text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, and submit buttons.
• Event attendance: Use ideal software that allows you to track attendance at your seminars, conferences, classes, events or member club meetings.
• Segment membership: describe how your membership works by using Demographic Variables to trigger the ideal numbers.
• Product/region/role/industry: Determine the most profitable area of focus that you could choose to work with.
• Buying cycle or lead qualification stage: Use a simple way to look at the buying cycle, capture those leads and determine who qualified enough to warrant the additional cost.
• Triggered by external system (i.e. CRM): Use the right components in your system to transmit Customer Data to an external system.

2.8 Event Management

• Manage event wait lists, session registration and cancellation processes: automated pre-defined reminders and follow-up actions steps; manage multiple session events from a single registration form, including multiple locations or time slots

Manage Leads

3.1 Lead Scoring

• Score leads based on factors
• Demographic Lead Score (explicit contact data): Ideal customer fit (explicit contact data)
• Activity Lead Score (implicit contact data): Assess how recent and frequent an activity is, in order to increase or decrease the score; apply lead score thresholds to send sales-ready leads to CRM; trigger actions based on lead score (i.e. add to program)

3.2 Lead Assignment

• Assign leads to sales people based on geography, industry, product interest, or other business rules. Use lead assignment to further customise marketing communications using sales signature rules.

3.3 Lead Source Tracking

• Track multiple lead sources – (i.e. both original lead source and most recent lead source); track referring source; use query strings to track marketing channels

3.4 CRM Integration

• Bi-directional synchronisation – real-time data push to CRM and scheduled automated data pulls; real-time push of behavioural activity into the CRM system’s lead and contact record; CRM campaign association; trigger CRM assignment rule routing and notifications

3.5 Sales Enablement

• Access to full behavioural activity history from the CRM lead and contact records, and from add-on tools; ability to trigger marketing programs from within the CRM system; real-time web activity alerts to the assigned sales person; Outlook plug-ins leverage email templates and tracking capabilities; Gmail extensions

Measure Impact

4.1 Database Health

• Diagnose the health of your marketing database (i.e. % growth) and understand distribution across key fields and values (i.e. lead source, region, lead stage, role)

4.2 Web Analytics

• Understand visitor activity on platform hosted pages and externally hosted pages.
• Out-of-the-box reports: # of website visitors; most popular pages and time spent; page navigation; top entry/exit pages; leading referrers (i.e. social media, blogs), search engines and keywords used; unknown visitors by company

4.3 Campaign Analytics

• Report on the performance of campaigns. Drill down to explore and compare individual asset performance, like effectiveness by email and groups of emails (opens and CTRs, bounce backs, unsubscribes), form conversions, high-value content reviews. Further break down the data by other views (i.e. by region, by industry, by role)

4.4 Dashboards & Drill-Downs

• Access quick insight into all your marketing activities through visual dashboards, instantly drill down to the details

4.5 Report Delivery

• Schedule regular delivery of important reports and dashboards so that they are sent directly to your marketing and sales team’s inboxes

4.6 Standard & Custom Reports

• Choose from pre-built reports and dashboards or custom build your own with the data you need.