Before companies jump into selecting a CRM and Marketing Automation platform, it is helpful to get a clear understanding of what each one offers. The features and benefits are not as important as the specific needs of your company. Below is a comparison of two popular solutions: HubSpot and ActiveCampaign. Review the features of each to make the best decision based on which one suits your specific needs. Everything Under One Roof HubSpot includes landing pages, CRM, social media … [Read more...]
Marketing Automation: Advice on What Users and Experts Have a Hard Time Doing
Marketing Automation has been leveraged by large corporations ever since its existence. Early solutions were (and most still are) robust, feature rich, and consequently complex and expensive. This has made it hard for smaller companies to get started with marketing automation. Even if a small business can afford marketing automation software, they have a hard time implementing it and getting true value out of it. This phenomenon bothered me because small businesses with limited … [Read more...]
How Automation Tools Can Light a Fire Under Your Marketing Strategy
Following any good marketing strategy means you will never use a channel in a vacuum. Your content, social and on-site tactics need to work in tandem with your email objectives. For most small and mid-sized companies, allocating entire teams to each marketing channel can be overwhelming. It can even be downright impossible due to budgetary restrictions. This is where automation tools step in to do the heavy lifting. Here are three automation tools to use in your marketing … [Read more...]
Marketing Automation: A False Hope for Small Businesses?
You might have heard the term “marketing automation” being thrown around. The “automation” part sounds seductive. After all, who doesn’t want to automate parts of their business, not to mention marketing? So what is marketing automation? One of the major marketing automation vendors, Marketo, defines it as “a category of software that streamlines, automates, and measures marketing tasks and workflows.” Marketing your business can often feel like a bottomless pit of work that … [Read more...]
GetResponse vs. Infusionsoft: Which Marketing Solution Is Better for You?
The engagement rate for email is strikingly higher than that for social media. The average email open rate is about 20%, compared to the 8-10% of your followers on Twitter who will see any particular tweet. The click-through rate for email is 3.3%, much higher than the average percentage of posts seen on Facebook (0.07%) or Twitter (0.03%). What’s more, email is much cheaper than Facebook or Google advertising, and it acquires far more customers than Facebook and Twitter combined. Of … [Read more...]