“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!

Within the amount of time I’ve been in the Mautic community, I have often seen many questions about best practice for tags; there is no best practice set in stone, you find what works for you in your data structure and test through trial and error if the end-point is functional in the way you require.

For example, a project I currently work on deals with apprenticeships and distance learning courses. When I started this project they segmented their mailing list in 2 different ways:

The first being;

• Professional
• Funded/Apprenticeship
• Employers

And the second;

• Accounting
• Leadership & Management
• Funded/Apprenticeships
• Employers

I setup Mautic and altered the segment structure to look like this;

• Professional (Professional mailing list)
• Accounting (Professional mailing list)
• Leadership & Management (Professional mailing list)
• Funded/Apprenticeships (Funded mailing list)
• Employers (Employer mailing list)

Workflow Using Tags:

This is great when wanting to manually send/schedule broadcast emails, but essentially doesn’t help when you want to use one workflow to manage/send emails to the entire list based on conditions; I’m currently in the process of building a mailing list workflow for the first half of 2018 that will send out emails to the entire mailing list based on tag conditions.

1. Starting with “contact segments” as the source I select all mailing list segments.

2. This is where tags come into play, there is no need to create hundreds of segments to cater to each sector within a specific mailing list so instead I use tags. First, I add a condition to check the segment then I add another condition to specify the tag to check next.

3. The accounting list segments further into areas such as starting an accounting career, promotion/career advancement, bookkeeping, self-employment. I am using tags to prescript the subjects of the email for that segment within that period.

4. I then create two emails, one for bookkeeping and one for all others. Having the knowledge that users on the mailing list are very specific about what they’re interested in helps us select the focal subject and then generalize all other areas.

5. Then it’s just a case of repeating the tag condition for each sector and subject within that segment, then moving on to the next mailing list.

For me this is an optimum way to break down and schedule emails for our mailing list while deciding the subject each monthly email within a list sector (accounting, leadership & management); we also manage to cater to other users on the mailing list that are not interested in that appointed subject.

Working on a 6-month basis you can clone the campaign and at the end of the flow move users to the new campaign that handles the second half of the year.

Are there other best practices that you include in your workflow? Please comment below! Thank you again to Andre Etienne for allowing us to share this valuable content. To find out more information and discover other best practices visit Andre at yourdigital.club.

In the days leading up to digital sales and marketing, the term improvisation (or improv), often took the role of the savvy salesperson who was able to think quickly on their feet in a sales presentation, or the marketer who was able to think outside the box. Improv has many attributes, but can automation be one of them?

The Art of Improv

The value that improv provides is the element of surprise and delight. But this value isn’t based on random or arbitrary activity. It’s based on a few core elements that are second nature to the people who are able to deliver it.

• Listening for relevance:
  One of the key elements of improv in a comedy context is that one person needs to listen and truly understand where the other person is leading the dialogue. This is why marketing automation should never be a solo proposition. To be truly effective in improv, you must listen to other actors and determine their role and how you will interact with them. To create moments of improvisation you must first listen.
• Know Your Audience:
  In any field where communication is relied upon to provide value, listening and understanding who you’re speaking to are key. Have they experienced what you’ve experienced? Whether it’s a group of realtors or bodybuilders, what each group finds humorous will be unique. The connections we make with them must reflect our knowledge of who they are.
• Follow the flow:
  When you’re doing improv, it’s necessary that your story have a rhythm or a cadence. It’s in this flow of story that an audience will find connection. If you’ve ever been to an evening of improv, you’ll notice that there is a broader story being told. The flow of a story will ultimately engage you in meaningful ways. Breaking this pattern or flow will leave audiences feeling disconnected.
• Delight with a payoff:
  There are many times throughout an improvisational skit or comedy routine where there’s a moment of delight or a comedic payoff. It often leaves the audience even more engaged and connected to the story being told. This is one of the most important elements of improv. It’s the response that our amygdala reacts to. It’s the part of your brain that helps evaluate if something is memorable and full of delight.

Improv is part art and part science. It’s not something that can simply be calculated or easily produced. It comes with practice and a keen awareness of these elements. Now let’s take a look at each of these elements in the light of how we automate our marketing and communications.

Automating Improv

Automation continues to be seen as a calculated prescription of actions that are a result of someone’s choice. These seem in complete contrast to the ebb and flow of a improv comedy routine. Or are they? Let’s consider the factors of improv that we’ve highlighted and determine if there is a place in our marketing automation for them.

• Listening for relevance:
  One of the things that we often miss when developing our automation workflows is a close relationship with the other functions of our business that provide us with real-time feedback. Integrations become a key way for businesses to assess relevance throughout the entire product lifecycle. Are you working with other teams in your business? If you’re able to check for whether an email has been opened or a link has been clicked, what other actions/activities can provide feedback? Payment received? Order processed? Shipment delivered? Consider what notifications can be leveraged to help you make the most meaningful connection.
• Know Your Audience:
  This seems fairly intuitive. When someone clicks on a link, visits a page or fills out a form, it begins to indicate intent or motivation. Your audience is providing you with all manner of information that will help you learn more about them. Knowing this information gives you information with which to validate interest. Are you leveraging each marketing channel and function in your business to truly understand them?
• Follow the Flow:
  Consider flow akin to your buying journey. One of the real challenges of improv is the ability to combine all of these factors into a relevant story. The same is true of marketing automation. Follow your visitor/customer as they make decisions. As you do, be sure to provide value at each milestone. Allow their decisions and your value to steer them into opportunities for delight.
• Delight with a Payoff:
  We all know that with improv the payoff is the punchline or the big finish. As we consider marketing’s role in engaging our audience and maximizing resources with automation, we must use these tools to engage our audience, not simply move them through a funnel. Whether you are listening for keywords, monitoring for clicks, be intentional by identifying specific segments or customers to provide truly delight filled moments.

Many organizations are joining the marketing automation movement. They’re taking their simple, routine communications and moving them into an automation system. This is not altogether a bad thing. But the opportunity cost may be greater than anticipated if marketing teams don’t find improvisational ways to make automation a value added part of their marketing strategy. Here’s our chance to take the stage and make each interaction one they won’t soon forget.

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.