For years marketers have taken prescribed actions immediately upon observing specific triggers, most often some form of customer engagement like a phone call, purchase or direct mail inquiry. Of course, prior to the public introduction of the internet most of these automatically prescribed actions took a while to reach the customer, sometimes weeks or more as we were conditioned to “allow 6-8 weeks for delivery” of our rebates, rewards and even certain products and services. Today we are less patient as customers and are demanding that even our small, local businesses react to our demands immediately.
90′s – Enterprise
Large enterprises set the tone in the 90′s as the web and email allowed them to automatically respond to opt-in’s, e-commerce purchases, phone calls and even in-person requests within minutes or seconds. Airlines and other travel companies, for example, were engaging us in their loyalty programs through a combination of in-person, phone, email and web services that taught us to expect our latest purchase to be reflected across channels in short order so that we could control the travel management experience to our liking. Of course, the platforms supporting these levels of marketing and service integration cost these firms millions of dollars and were often developed and/or managed by outside experts like Epsilon, Digitas and (my firm) Targetbase.
00′s – Mid-Tier
As we moved into the 00′s, the shift to cloud computing (or SaaS) solutions brought the cost of marketing automation down considerably – over 90% in many cases. This enabled mid-tier enterprises to jump into data-driven marketing automation at costs well below $100,000 per year. Now even smaller firms with marketing budgets of under $500,000 could spend under 20% of their budget to produce and support integrated, automated email and web marketing solutions converting prospects to customers, up-selling customers immediately after purchase and accelerating customers into their next purchase cycle. The comprehensive suite of cloud-based services for these marketers included data cleansing, database management, email marketing, text messaging, direct mail support, social integration, business intelligence and reporting and more. Companies leading this phase of marketing automation are still growing rapidly and include Responsys, Eloqua and (my firm) ClickSquared.
10′s – Small Business
Now, in 2012, marketing automation is hitting the mainstream, and main street, such that we can begin to expect our small, local businesses to provide us with the types of services only the biggest companies in the world provided only fifteen years ago. For a modest, up front investment of perhaps a few thousand dollars, followed by an ongoing cost of a few hundred dollars a month, small businesses can automate many aspects of their business, integrating e-commerce, database management, email marketing and more. A leader in this space is Infusionsoft – (sadly, not my firm).
Small Business Conference for Marketing Automation
Last week, at the invitation of a friend in senior management at the Gilbert (Phoenix), Arizona based firm, I attended InfusionCon, witnessing the release of the newest version of the platform and the reaction of hundreds of Infusionsoft customers. In short, I was impressed with the leap in usability the product is making versus where it had been over the past couple of years. Their latest version, in fact, can enable the dedicated small business owner to realize tremendous value from the platform. I emphasize can,as there is no doubt the platform is powerful and low cost, but no small business owner should under-estimate how hard it is to successfully automate marketing (to customers’ delight) regardless of the tool. The successful small business will either engage an Infusionsoft certified partner and/or dedicate someone on their small team to mastering Infusionsoft and, more important, thinking through precisely what should be automated and how these automated actions will be fine-tuned over time. So, as Infusionsoft appears to be a (the?) leader in the charge to bring marketing automation to small business, the burden is now (finally) on the small business to adopt marketing automation and take its game to a higher level.
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