Bridging gaps with marketing automation tools
While most organizations use CRM systems, which offer a suite of sales tools with marketing features on the side, today's businesses are looking for automated ways to simplify operations and gauge the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. Marketing automation software can help organizations meet these goals.
Marketing automation platforms offer numerous benefits to organizations of all sizes, including streamlining workflow by automating repetitive tasks and unifying sales and marketing customer data. This can break down the silos that exist between sales and marketing, helping the marketing department nurture leads across all channels.
Before examining marketing automation software, there are several factors to consider, including what the business already has in place, desired functionality and integration, and how an organization will use marketing automation. Is this a first-time purchase? Or is your business replacing a current marketing automation tool? What features does your organization need? What other systems will be integrated with the platform, aka the martech stack? These questions must be answered before you can take the next step.
The market offers a wide variety of tools -- both full-blown marketing automation platforms, and marketing automation modules and tools offered by CRM vendors. This buyer's guide can help you navigate the purchasing process by examining the differences between these two groups of tools, what features and functionality each type offers, and which may be best-suited for your unique marketing environment and needs.
In addition, we provide an in-depth look at the features, deployment options, pricing and support for products from leading marketing automation vendors. Our research is based on internal reports, as well as material from other respected research firms, including Gartner and Forrester Research.
