CRM, HubSpot, Digital Marketing & Transformation

As marketers, we are constantly adapting to rapidly changing customer needs. This guide sets out to help you grow your marketing strategy with automation by highlighting the benefits, comparing the marketing software and tools available and providing examples and some quick-start steps to get your campaigns up and running. With a large number of marketing automation software to choose from, we hope this guide will help you select the one that is right for your business needs and your spontaneous campaign ideas that struck while brushing your teeth.

Marketing Automation usually has a reputation of being difficult to set up and more of a hindrance than its worth. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Essentially, marketing automation can help streamline your marketing efforts and make your department more efficient through powerful automated actions. Marketing automation software can improve marketing and sales productivity, increase lead quality, and guide future campaigns. Here's what you need to know before adopting a marketing automation platform. Contents

Marketing activities can become overwhelming and complex, so the idea of marketing automation as a solution is very enticing. You’ve probably seen the successes other countries and businesses are having, but does marketing automation even work in South Africa, and is it right for your business? As the global investment in marketing automation is expected to grow by close to 200% by 2023, is it time for your business to get started?

Marketing Automation's enormous rate of growth Internationally the industry is growing at a massive rate and is currently the biggest current trend in the digital marketing space. As with most trends, in South Africa, we lag a few years behind the USA, but we should expect the use of Marketing Automation in South Africa to trend upwards sharply in the coming years.

Marketing automation creates a user information journey to fill the gap between initial enquiry and sales team efforts Market research shows that 30-50% of users are not ready to buy when they first enquire about your business, but about three quarters of these leads will potentially become sales ready within 12 to 18 months. Lead nurturing via automated email journeys allows a brand to stay top-of-mind throughout an

As with all things you generally get what you pay for, but there are some sweet spots in the marketing automation software space where some of the solutions are genuinely affordable. Scalability with Affordable marketing automation software A small caveat here, I would not recommend going with a cheaper solution or a solution that can’t scale, reason being it takes a lot of time and effort to get a marketing automation platform up to speed and delivering results. Don’t underestimate the time it takes and the cost of your time to set the system up. We recently provided HubSpot to a

What makes marketing automation software easy to use? 1. It's Intuitive When choosing a marketing automation platform, it should be intuitive for new users. As there are so many features within marketing automation tools, understanding how to use each feature and how they all fit together is vital for a successful automated marketing campaign. 2. It's Well-documented As is often said, if it's important, get it in writing. Documented software is good software. If the software you've chosen for marketing automation has a knowledge base, wiki, or

Although not the sexiest part of marketing automation, and despite being around for a few decades now, email marketing is still the top lead generation medium in the B2B space according to a 2017 report by Chief Marketer. So what core features do you need to look for in Marketing Automation software? 1. Easy to use email editor An easy to

Marketing Automation is a relatively new trend in South Africa The relatively recent emergence of marketing automation in the digital marketing world is the main reason these skills are not ubiquitous in South Africa just yet. In the USA, the base of marketing automation consultants is significant and like with most things, the technologically driven Americans were early adopters of marketing automation and in fact, by and large, the originators. Our European counterparts are also still building up a solid base of marketing automation consultants. Two very important