How to Build a Marketing Technology (Martech) Stack That'll Grow With You What will your marketing team look like six months from now? Or a year from now? How many people will you add? What new tools, systems, and data will you need? There are a lot of potential questions you can ask about the future of your business, but there is one certainty: you'll deal with more data, more people, more processes, and more complex problems as you grow. But how do you deal with that in your marketing team? That’s where marketing technology, or martech, comes in. By automating tasks and removing obstacles from your team’s workflows, marketing tech empowers your team to waste less time on menial tasks, allowing your business to grow more efficiently. When you put it all together, you get a marketing technology stack: a collection of tools that your team uses to do their best work every day. As your team and business scales, it’s important to create a martech stack that streamlines your day-to-day processes. In this post, we’ll go over everything you need to know about martech and how to build a marketing tech stack that will stay with you as you grow your business. Marketing technology can be used by any type of marketer — even non-digital marketers. One martech tool is typically used for a different marketing discipline. Here are a few examples of disciplines and a martech tool that can be used for them. ...

B2C Marketing Automation and 5 Top Software Tools to Power It Any B2C marketer can attest to the total relief that comes right after setting up successful email automation. To know that your customers will receive personalized emails without you having to manually write each and every one … whew, that’s powerful stuff. Did you know that segmented (a.k.a. personalized) email campaigns can drive a 700+% increase in revenue? And that’s just email. From text reminders to cart abandonment emails to multi-channel campaigns that span social media and in-app messaging, B2C marketing automation marries the power of personalized messaging and hands-off marketing. It simultaneously saves time (and money) while delighting your customers wherever they are. What is marketing automation? Marketing automation refers to any marketing efforts, campaigns, and tasks that are managed, executed, and measured with software versus manually. These efforts and campaigns are typically triggered by actions taken by leads or customers. Marketing automation has many benefits. It can help save your resources, nurture your leads, and increase your revenue — all at once and with minimal manual effort. Amazing, right? It’s important to note, however, that marketing automation shouldn’t replace human touch. This is especially true for B2C — unlike B2B, the B2C sales cycle is much shorter and the customer journey much more personalized. What is B2C marketing automation? B2C marketing automation encompasses any automated marketing messages and campaigns targeted to individual consumers versus business audiences. This type of marketing automation must be much more...

7 Steps to Use Trigger Marketing in Any Content Campaign When you hear the phrase "marketing automation," what do you think of first? A detailed diagram of emails sent to different segments, broken out by email engagement, drawing a line from lead to customer? This has become the norm, yet it is among the least effective automation paths you can set up as a marketer. The inherent flaw in this strategy is that it starts with the marketer's timeline rather than the prospect's. The marketer sits down and defines what information the prospect will consume next, what actions the prospect will take next, and the path the prospect will take from becoming a lead to becoming a customer. But if we're honest with ourselves, we would admit that the world is not as straightforward as that. You might define the funnel stages as Lead to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) to Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) to Opportunity to Customer, where leads download an ebook, then become an MQL when they start a trial, an SQL when the sales person follows up with that prospect, an opportunity when they do a trial review call, and customer when they purchase. ... But what if they start a trial and then download an ebook? Or what if they get into a sales conversation after just downloading an ebook, never become a customer, and then go cold until they start a trial months later? The reality is that you can't control what your prospect does...

8 Resources to Use to Ensure You're Using Inclusive Language We've talked about it before, but diversity, inclusion, and belonging shouldn't be about filling a quota. Instead, the goal should be to foster a true sense of belonging among your team, which is likely filled with people from all backgrounds. One way to do this is by using inclusive language. Whether it's intentional or not, we all carry implicit biases in our everyday language. However, it's important to make a conscious effort to avoid this. This isn't just the right thing to do. It also makes good business sense. In fact, over 70% of students said they prefer a company that is diverse, inclusive and makes them feel included regardless of race, geographic location, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, and appearance. Additionally, creating a sense of belonging can lead to greater retention rates and even result in higher customer satisfaction. So, how can you use more inclusive language? Below, we'll review the top tools that can automate this process for you and resources that can help you use more inclusive language. 1. Better Allies During an allyship meeting at HubSpot, we discussed tools that help people use more inclusive language. A colleague brought up a Slackbot, Better Allies. This Slackbot can help you shift your language to be more inclusive. The tool was inspired by the book Better Allies by Karen Catlin. This book can help you spot situations where you can create more inclusive culture....

How to Set Up Automated Email Marketing Workflows (+ Examples) Are your contacts going with the flow, or are they just sitting dormant in your marketing database? If you don't have any automated email workflows set up, your answer is probably the latter -- which means you're missing out on some major opportunities to nurture and engage your existing contacts. Did you know that marketing automation can lead to a 14.5% increase in sales productivity? Lead nurturing campaigns aren't the only type of email marketing automation you can use to get more out of your contacts database. Think about the contacts who are already your customers. Email automation can not only help you convert leads into customers, but it can also help you delight your existing customers and encourage activity like greater product adoption, upsells, evangelism, and additional purchases.  Email marketing automation is useful because it eliminates small but time consuming tasks, such as preparing email lists, sending generic messages, or scheduling events manually. This allows marketers and salespeople more time to work on more productive projects or bigger deals. Email marketing automation is centered around the workflow, which is essentially a blueprint of actions you're directing your automation software to take. Software can' t read minds, so one of the challenges is implementing a repeatable process that takes all use cases into account. 1. Identify who you're sending to. Personalization is critical when it comes to email, and if your CRM is...

The Top Benefits of Marketing Automation For some reason, whenever I hear the words "marketing automation," I think of the "Transformers" movie with Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox. It makes me think of the Autobots doing all our marketing -- which would be pretty cool. But today, we're not going to be talking about the robots from Cybertron. Instead, let's focus on how marketing automation can benefit your business. Marketing automation is the process of making systems or processes occur automatically within a software. Essentially, marketing automation can help streamline your marketing efforts and make your department more efficient. In today's post, let's review the top benefits of marketing automation. 1. Efficiency. First and foremost, marketing automation makes your entire department more efficient. You can potentially reduce staffing costs while freeing up your team's time to work on more important, strategic projects. Instead of manually posting on social media every day, marketing automation software can automate that process. This means that your team can do more creative work, like planning and brainstorming for upcoming campaigns and projects. Additionally, working in an automation platform will make your team's tasks easier. Your staff can post on social media, create an email nurturing campaign, post a blog, or create a landing page all in the same software. Ultimately, this saves your team time when you're creating campaigns. 2. Marketing and sales alignment. If you combine your sales and marketing automation efforts by using the same software, you'll be able to align...

Why CRM and Marketing Automation Need Each Other When I was younger and I listened to Hannah Montana sing "The Best of Both Worlds," I didn't fully understand what she meant. Now, as a marketer, I get it. Having the best of both worlds is the feeling you have when your company's marketing automation software and CRM work in tandem. But it's not just about how much easier it makes your job. When the two software work together, your company will convert more MQLs to SQLs and make more sales. In fact, marketing automation software can increase sales productivity by 14.5%. That's why marketing and sales teams need to integrate their software and work together. Below, we'll review what marketing automation and CRM software do and why they need to be integrated. CRM and Marketing Automation Before we dive into why marketing automation and CRM need each other, let's discuss what each software does. To start, marketing automation software helps marketers automate some of their processes such as sending email campaigns or posting social media posts. Marketing teams use automation software to produce and promote content. Additionally, this software includes reports and analytics for when leads visit your website, open an email, fill out a form, or read a blog. Ultimately, the goal is to streamline the process of taking a lead, nurturing them, and moving them to a sales qualified lead. Essentially, it's all about lead generation and personalization. If your team needs more marketing qualified leads,...