The Fundamentals of Integrated Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is all about integration. There is not a single technology company that doesn’t offer a public API to connect their tools with external providers. This greatly benefits marketers who are increasingly looking to use modern technologies as a way to automate and streamline their workload. Years of work that culminated in the young field of MarTech.

MarTech is such a new concept in the marketing world that few people truly understand, based on how to integrate and automate using these tools. The platforms are still being developed, and they’re not particularly easy to use, at least for marketers who have more of a traditional background. With that said, MarTech (and marketing automation) is here to stay.

The Difference Between MarTech and Integrated Marketing

A well-known example of MarTech is Zapier, a marketing automation platform that allows marketers to create so-called zaps and automate anything they want — that is, if the services they use are supported by the platform. But Zapier isn’t the only company sharing a piece of the pie. Monsters like Google, Microsoft, Marketo, Salesforce, and HubSpot are a big part of this as well.

Separately, the idea behind integrated marketing is that every single part of your marketing is melded into one singular, constant flow of communication. If you think that’s an impressive feat to achieve, you’re not wrong. Most companies may never even try to attempt such a gigantic task, but the biggest companies in the world definitely have something to say about it.

This is mostly due to the sheer amount of data that these companies have acquired over decades of operating in the industry. Most of them know so much about what’s going at a business level that they can almost spoon feed marketers the solution to their problems — as long as they’re willing to pay for it. Integrated marketing is about aggregating (data).

So, what’s the difference between the two? MarTech is the technology that enables a highly-automated marketing environment. Integrated marketing is the process that sees companies trying to bring all of their marketing campaigns together, on all channels. It’s a consistent approach to marketing that is, unfortunately, quite hard to pull off.

The Benefit of Using Integrations in Marketing

Let’s go back to Zapier. Thanks to this tool, you’re able to connect one app to the other, and vice versa. But what’s the benefit of that? The reason why most marketers are moving toward this solution is that they are increasingly assigned responsibilities that they can no longer handle on their own. They physically do not have the time to do things anymore.

This means that they need to delegate. In 2019, delegating via digital means has become standard practice among startups and innovative companies (outsourcing). Many marketers are happy to pay so-called virtual assistants to make mundane things happen on their behalf. But can automation do a good enough job of making things happen for you?

Yes, it can. Most marketers are already reaping the benefits of that. After all, hiring a virtual assistant is a cumbersome experience compared to telling a machine exactly what to do, and seeing it happen in real time. That’s what Zapier is. They even have a term for the step-by-step workflows they’re known for — they call them paths.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Marketing Automation

No matter how hard you try, you simply can’t avoid artificial intelligence. Big tech companies are building their way into AI faster than ever before, and they want you to try their products. Google’s way of getting into AI is to provide marketers with quick bites of data through its analytics platforms. They call it Intelligence, a slightly ironic name for a feature that many marketers have found to be dull for many years.

We like to poke fun at AI for not being so great (yet!), but AI doesn’t really care. Companies like Google know how much data it takes to train the neural networks used in their software, and they’re constantly looking for more of what can be adapted to their Intelligence platform. The role of artificial intelligence is one that is becoming more and more relevant over time.

Take HubSpot for example. Their platform is a prime example of artificial intelligence mixed in with a ton of marketing automation. If you’ve used a CRM before, you know that their databases are enormous. When you first type in a lead, the CRM fills in the remaining fields for you; things like annual income, how big the company is, where they are located, etc.

It might sound scary, but when you get that data from HubSpot, it means that somebody, somewhere, freely accepted to fill in their data via a HubSpot form, filling their database with all the juicy details about themself or their business. Of course, if applicable, a lot of this data can be extrapolated from their business website as well, which is — by all means — a public domain.

Overall, artificial intelligence aims to optimize. Its purpose is that of making small decisions on behalf of the marketer and applying the correct fixes on the fly. At some point, we might be able to understand what’s going on with our business using a report provided by AI. But, in the meantime, it’s much better if you stick to your traditional analytics and funnels.

3 Simple Integrations That Can Improve Your Marketing

Integrations can improve your marketing, but they need to be set up correctly. Without a strategy, you’re just adding noise to the mix. Platforms like Zapier allow you to do many things, but that doesn’t mean that you should do all of them. Instead, you should take advantage of integrations that are highly valuable. Here are three of them:

1. Todoist + Calendar = Ultimate Organization

If you use Todoist (or any other to-do app), you’re in for a treat. Thanks to Zapier, you can set up zaps that will automatically bring your deadlines into your calendar. It can be done with any third-party calendar app. This is useful because it provides a date-based view of your tasks, rather than a list-based sheet on your app.

2. HubSpot + Contacts = Lead Bonanza

With this integration, you can stop fiddling with your phone every time that you get a new lead. Using HubSpot (or any other CRM), you can automate everything. Leads come in through forms on your website, and they end up directly in your phone’s business contacts for further nurturing. That’s a really powerful way to use Zapier.

3. Email + Google Drive = Never Miss an Attachment

Attachments are really important. How many invoices do you think are buried in your inbox right now? You need to back them up. If you end up having problems with a product or service, how are you going to prove that you paid for it? Automating your attachment history to end up in your cloud storage can spare you many headaches.

These are only three examples that can be applied to Zapier, and they’re very simple. But what about creating an entire workflow? That’s a different story. Automation can provide ease of mind with little things such as attachments. You can redirect those to a specific folder on your Google Drive and, finally, not have to think about them being organized anymore.

How MarTech Is Changing The Way We Do Things

Using tools like Zapier isn’t just a way to save some time, or fiddle around with technology; they have real-life benefits. The world is moving towards automation, and whether you like it or not, your competition will take over if you let them get ahead of the curve. Just like any new form of technology, getting used to MarTech is not easy, but it’s absolutely worth it, and here’s why:

• If and when appropriately set up, your bottom line benefits from it. The tools used to automate and integrate marketing are referred to as the MarTech stack, and they need to be chosen wisely. When set up well, these almost always guarantee ROI.
• It’s a great way to stay ahead of the curve. When the day comes that information technology will be a more mature industry, you’re going to be in the know, unlike the many people who will have decided to stop studying the latest and greatest.
• You can apply it to anything, not just work. Say you decide to create something on your own, as a hobby. Finding a way to automate some of the processes required to make that happen can lead to an incredibly satisfying building experience.
• It’s the future, and the future is awesome. If you can’t get excited about MarTech, few things will get you excited in the world of marketing. Without data and automation, marketing won’t be able to push forward the way it has the past few decades.

Love it or hate it, MarTech is here to stay. It’s a great opportunity to achieve your company’s dream of integrated marketing, and it’s also a perfect way to get into technology, a dominator of today’s economy. MarTech is undoubtedly changing the way we do things, and it’ll only increase in popularity when people start realizing that it saves real money and real effort.

Want to know more about integrated marketing? We at DarwinApps build websites and apps that truly hit the nail on its head when it comes to targeting a specific audience. We’ve spent time and effort creating a workflow that’s partly enhanced by automations, but make no mistake, we handle all the heavy-duty work ourselves. Learn more about it here.