Marketing automation is all the rage these days and it seems every time you turn around, “there’s an App for that”.

According to recent research, the number of new marketing applications doubled since 2015. The key is to find affordable, scalable solutions that can work with a small business/start-up and grow with the organization without costing thousands and reinventing the wheel. Luckily, we’ve found one.

What is marketing automation?

Essentially, marketing automation refers to software that exists with the goal of automating repetitive marketing actions such as emails, social media and other website actions. Why is it important? Bottom line – nurturing relationships and creating a sustainable connection with prospects and/or customers. 

Example: someone visits your website to review a product or service and then moves on without contacting you for a quote or next step. A marketing automation tools can detect the visit which triggers a series of personalized communications (emails) through the tool such as a greeting with introduction, etc.. The customer is impressed with the quick response time, and is now introduced to the salesperson with a name, contact information and a face. This initial communication carries with it a series of conditional logic/setup for subsequent communications all geared at driving a conversion, quote or a sale.  Pretty slick and helps keep the sales/marketing process clean and simple.

The Solution

Late last year (2015), we were pleasantly surprised that Autopilot, a marketing automation tool previously out of reach of many small businesses, had reduced its fees to $100/month after a free trial period (30 days).  Autopilot creates marketing workflows through a drag and drop interface that primarily uses pictures. The fresh perspective that MailChimp gave email marketers 10 years ago, AutoPilot is now creating for marketers frustrated with the text-heavy interfaces of big name marketing automation solutions today. We are huge advocates for MailChimp due to its simplicity for our clients and sophisticated technical back end, and we are very excited about the offerings of Autopilot as it will help many of our clients take their sales/marketing efforts to the next level with ease. If you struggle with designing and tweaking intelligent marketing automation workflows, you’ll want to check Autopilot out.