We’ve discussed the need to build better stories around our automation before. Not only does our data need to tell a compelling story, but the processes and workflow that we use should support it as well.

Mautic 2.12.0 has added features and enhancements in the area of Reporting and Filters (as well as few bonus items) that should assist your business in that effort. Effectively gathering the right data, at the right time, for the right story is an essential part of getting the most out of your marketing automation strategy. Here’s what we’ve added:

Reporting and Filters:

• Scheduled Reports: Mautic users can now schedule reports to run and send those reports to specified email addresses when the reports are generated. This provides better reporting visibility to both Mautic and non-Mautic users.
• Segment Reporting: Users can now report on current segment membership so better tracking of marketing activities is achieved. This tracking is connected to the adding or removing of a contact from a segment.
• Contacts Manually Added to Segment Visibility: Now users can see which contacts were added manually, or through a filter, via a new Segment details page.
• Clickable Stats: A user can now click stat labels to view a list of contacts that are included in that metric for web/mobile push notifications and SMS in addition to emails.
• Email Replies: Users will be able to execute campaign actions based on a contact replying to an email sent through a campaign. (Note: Mautic can only monitor a single imap folder and the contact must reply with the body intact in order to know what to attribute the reply to.)
• Contact Companies: Now users will be able to include companies in contact related data sources for reports.

Integrations:

• Improvements to Connectwise: Users can now generate a task in Connectwise based on a campaign action in Mautic. You can also bring marketing groups from Connectwise into Mautic to create segments in Mautic.

Other Updates:

• Themes Update: We’ve added 4 new landing page themes and 4 new email themes! Not only that, but we’ve added a viewport meta tag on all legacy themes to ensure responsiveness to screen-width.
• Twitter: Now users can merge Twitter contacts by matching name.

Growth requires a dedicated process that is powered by relevant information that can steer our strategies in the right direction. We are excited to continue growing Mautic into a solution that will help your business be better equipped to gather and interpret your data.

A huge thank you to those in the community who made the effort to load the beta release of 2.12.0 and test these features, functionality, and fixes that were part of this release.

For more detailed information, you can find the release notes here. If you have any questions, please be sure to reach out to us via the Community Forums, Slack or our social channels (Facebook & Twitter) and we will do our best to help.

If you’re not a community member, we would encourage you to join us! Download Mautic today and start growing your business.

“85% of marketers who use automation tools believe they don’t use them to their full potential.” (Source)

This means that we likely have systems in our business that are helping us achieve specific goals, but not to the degree that leverages their full capability.

Not only are we not using these systems to their full potential, some of these new technologies have not been fully developed. So how do we navigate this digital marketing maze? How do we find our way while leveraging these powerful tools to make more meaningful connections with our customers? The future of digital marketing is being shaped by a variety of tools and capabilities. They will promise a great many things, but preparing for them is just as critical as implementing them.

Here are a few key things to remember when moving forward through the space between existing and future technology:

People are still needed:

Our desire to bring value to customers should never be replaced by a computer. Computers still can’t interpret the innate needs of our customers. Although we are gathering terabytes of data, we need people to help interpret the data in a way that makes meaning.

“But what needs to go is our reliance on using automation to do our jobs. Because at the end of the day, we’re communicators.” (Source)

What this means is that we need to get smarter about how we use digital marketing systems in our business. Where does it make sense to automate? When do your customers value the human element? When do they simply want information? As marketers, our job is to truly understand the journey and the value at each and every touch-point.

Focus on workflow:

One of the most damaging things that any business can do when preparing for new technology is to create rigid, inflexible workflows. As technology continues to develop and add new features, workflows along your customer journey should remain flexible.

We often assume our customer journey’s work in one direction. Rarely do we consider a customer going backward. This thinking limits the view of our processes and workflow. We become rigid in our thinking, making it difficult when new technologies come into view. We should consider our marketing as operating in multiple directions, often skipping steps or moving from one touch-point to another without warning.

Not only will this approach help you be innovative in the way you engage customers, it will provide the flexibility required to add/remove process steps to improve the way you engage everyone along the journey.

Prepare your stack:

Most everyone is familiar with the term “agile”. We use this term when describing software development, manufacturing, construction and even marketing. At its core agile;

“…advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development…and continuous improvement, and it encourages rapid and flexible response to change.” (Source)

These principles are important to running any business. They should be adaptive, innovative, flexible and continuously improve. If this is true, then your marketing stack should reflect the same. The key is to keep every area of your marketing stack flexible in the way that it communicates with customers, associates, and other systems. This will allow you to respond to the demands of new technology before it arrives in your business.

Digital marketing is constantly changing. As customers continue adopting new technologies and changing their buying habits, our businesses need to be quick to respond. This requires flexibility, not rigid workflows and systems that restrict.

What are other ways your business is navigating the ever-changing digital marketing space? Add them in the comments below!

For all industries and business segments that want to use personal data to enhance their own customer experiences, it’s important to remember that customers are willing to share their information if they know you are using it to help them get what they want… (Source)

The responsibility is on us, as organizations to provide value with the exchange of data. We must assure our customers that we not only see them, but we know about them; and there is a significant difference. It’s critical that we seek to understand their specific needs at every step of the buying journey, from desktop to mobile and everywhere in between.

No matter what innovations businesses set in front of consumers, and no matter how they try to serve them, customer expectations will accelerate. (Source)

In the latest release, you will not only have access to more powerful information, but you can create a more connected, value-driven experience. From integrations to more effective communication tools, you will be able to know more about your audience, not simply know them.

Integrations:

• Workflow Integrations: There are 4 new plugins to integrate data from Citrix into Mautic. These include GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToAssist and GoToTraining. You can now automatically create contacts in Mautic when individuals register for your events in the Citrix tools from form data in Mautic. In addition, you can pull registrant and attendee data back from the Citrix tools into Mautic and trigger campaigns based on this information. The registration and attendance data is also stored as part of the contact’s timeline in Mautic, giving you more information at a glance.
• Data Enhancement: Data enhancement tools like FullContact and ClearBit can now be integrated with Mautic. Users of these services can enhance their contact and company data in Mautic by clicking buttons on the contact (or company) and bringing data in from those services.
• Accounts Integration: Data from Salesforce Accounts can now be synched with Companies in Mautic. In addition we have optimized the API to minimize the number of API calls Mautic makes. Data from a new field type – formula fields – is also now available for mapping data between Salesforce and Mautic. Lastly Salesforce users can now access the timeline for the contact in Mautic by clicking on a link on the page in Salesforce.

Campaign Management:

• Preference Center: You can now collect preferences for your contacts in Mautic including preferred channels, categories, timings and segments. This will help you manage delivery of more relevant messages, using channels the contact prefers.
• Account Based Marketing Update: We have added a number of new features to Account Based Marketing. Companies in Mautic can now be merged; you now easily change the primary company on a contact; and you can apply a lead score at the company level. These features are in addition to a new set of reports that are available to measure performance at the company level.
• Global Categories: You can specify global categories across emails, landing pages, stages etc to categorize groups of entities in Mautic. You no longer need to define categories individually for each entity in Mautic, helping you stay organized and save you time.
• Email/Landing Page Builder: We’ve created an all new view for those who want to go under the hood and adjust HTML when developing emails and landing pages. The Content tab has been replaced with the new Code Mode view. This view will provide users with 2 panes in the Builder, one to edit the HTML directly and another to preview. Simply select Code Mode to start building, or to convert your existing communications into this view.

Each of these enhancements is another step toward smarter marketing. But with these tools come a greater responsibility to not only know our audience, but know their preferences and their needs as well.

The Mautic 2.3 update has been made available to our Mautic Cloud and Self-hosted users. For more detailed information on this release, you can find the release notes here. If you have any questions, please be sure to reach out to us via the Community Forums, Slack or our social channels (Facebook & Twitter) and we will do our best to help.