Marketing automation is truly for everyone. Companies of all sizes can benefit from a marketing automation platform, and marketing agencies in particular find value.

Marketing Agencies

By offering marketing automation and related services, you’ll become an integrated and indispensable partner to your clients. This helps you move from unpredictable project work to retainer-based relationships, helping you grow your agency and boost your monthly recurring revenue. Marketing automation also provides you with comprehensive reporting and analytics, so you can prove the value of your services to your existing clients as well as prospective ones. Some marketing automation platforms are built specifically for marketing agencies, so there are some important things to look out for, including flexible agency pricing, a rebrandable interface and domain, and much more. Agency-focused features include agency support, joint sales calls, platform rebranding, white-labeling, shareable email templates, rebrandable sales materials, and a multi-client management console. The marketing automation console or dashboard is a platform interface to manage all of the agency’s marketing tasks in a single location. Other professional services that marketing automation offers to agencies include technical tasks such as HTML, CSS, development services, data restoration, import and sync services. Shareable email templates are pre-formatted with sample text for agency use. This eliminates the need to create new emails for each client communication.

• Hear how marketing automation helps agencies create more retainer-based relationships.
• Hear how marketing automation helps agencies have personalized conversations with prospective clients.

Startups/Micro-Businesses

If your company has a small, in-house marketing team, don’t let resource constraints prohibit you from getting the most out of your marketing efforts. Marketing automation is great for growing your contact base and managing email campaigns. Comprehensive reporting and analytics help you improve the effectiveness of all your marketing campaigns, meaning more opens, clicks, shares, etc. Some platforms have flexible and affordable pricing models to help companies with restrictive budgets grow at their own pace. Also, if the platform is too much to handle in house, don’t worry – there are many marketing agencies that specialize in automation that can help you maximize your return. Make sure you choose a platform that agencies embrace, so you can get assistance beyond the vendor’s own onboarding program and have an ongoing resource to guide you through campaign

Small & Medium Businesses

Marketing automation offers a number of specific benefits for small and medium businesses (SMBs). First, it helps you monitor the effectiveness and ROI of your digital marketing campaigns, so you can find out what’s working and what’s not. Next, it automates many activities – like lead follow-up, email campaigns, list segmentation, lead scoring, etc. – saving you tons of time and effort. Marketing automation also has great tools to support drip marketing campaigns. It enables you to build quality emails and landing pages, and then track your campaigns from start to finish to see how leads are moving through your funnel.

Large Companies

If you are running a larger business, chances are you already have a sizeable database of contacts. A marketing automation platform can connect with your CRM to streamline your data and eliminate any cold contacts from your email marketing process. Similarly, if you’re already managing multiple campaigns and websites, automation software can provide you with powerful data on which landing pages are converting the most, which emails and posts are working best, and which content is getting the most downloads. Automated segmentation is also a helpful tool to ensure that you’re sending relevant content to your leads, especially if you provide different services or operate in different countries.

• Hear how marketing automation helps businesses of all sizes align their sales and marketing teams.

One of the key features of marketing automation is its ability to link with many different social media platforms. Essentially, it integrates all social media accounts into a single platform for easier management. It can also help to increase conversion rates and boost engagement.

Behavioral-based automation is when marketing automation is used to track a lead’s online activity. This includes clicking on an email that kicks off an automated email campaign, visiting a website that puts that lead on a list, or filling out a form that triggers the release of certain content.

When you’re considering marketing automation platforms, you need to find the provider that best meets your specific goals and business needs. While it’s important to consider individual features and functionalities, your focus should be on finding a platform that is cost-efficient for you in the long run, as well as scalable, so it can grow in tandem with your business. Here are some resources to help you make your choice:

• Marketing Automation Alternatives: 2019 Vendor Comparisons
• SharpSpring vs. HubSpot
• SharpSpring vs. Act-On
• SharpSpring vs. Pardot

Marketing automation can eat up a significant portion of your client’s budget, leaving less room for your agency’s retainer. (Psst...SharpSpring’s agency pricing model is as little as 1/10th to 1/20th the cost of others). You’ll want a platform built around the needs of agencies to help you create higher-value relationships, generate monthly recurring revenue and prove your ROI. Look for a provider that lets you reinforce your brand by rebranding the platform interface, domain, login screen, and notifications. The vendor should treat you like a partner, including sending you new business referrals. You will also want a marketing automation provider that offers a pricing model that is inclusive and simple. A solid pricing structure will enable you to bill your clients without interrupting the client-agency relationship. It also gives you the flexibility to choose your price points and bundle packages accordingly.