What will we be doing?

Our goal during this sprint is to take a fresh look at key use cases and workflows, identify opportunities for improvement, review existing issue reports, proposed code changes (pull requests) on GitHub, and ideas from the Mautic forums.

Based on all this input, we aren’t just going to be prioritizing things – we’ll actually be implementing things! This is a great opportunity to join us in working to improve Mautic across many areas.

Who should join?

We’re hoping for 20-30 people to support the effort in Prague. Skills from all angles are needed, mainly:

• Experienced Mautic users: your insights into user experience are invaluable.
• Mautic developers: your coding skills are crucial for implementation.
• Anyone else! Marketing, design, documentation, testing – any perspective is welcome.

If you’ve never attended a Mautic event (and it’s geographically feasible for you to attend) this is the perfect place to get started!

Event details

• Start: Wednesday, July 9th, 12:00 AM CEST (no problem if you arrive later)
• End: Thursday, July 10th evening (most will stay for the night)
• Location: Impact Hub Praha D10, Drtinova 557/10, Smíchov, 150 00 Praha-Praha 5, Czech Republic. View on Map (Railway station is about 20 minutes away).

Sign up & support

Ready to join us in Prague? Sign up for free here: Sign Up for the Sprint!

Can’t make it to Prague? You now have two options: 

1. You can still help! We appreciate any contribution, big or small, to help cover event costs: Sponsor the Sprint (ideally €100,- or as much has you can)
2. You can attend remotely. As much as we would love to see you in person, we also would love to see you attend remotely and participate in the community sprint from the comfort of your (hopefully) cosy home.  

Shoutout

Let’s not forget to give a warm shoutout to the lovely people over at Impact Hub for giving us a nice NGO discount to run our sprint at their venue.  We can’t even begin to tell you how much we appreciate that.

Your feedback is important

Even if you can’t attend, please help us make the sprint a success by giving us your feedback / ideas on the most valuable quality improvements for Mautic: Give Us Your Quality Feedback!

We’re excited to work together to shape the future of Mautic!

As a community, we believe that it is not just about sending newsletters or promotional messages; it’s a powerful way to build and maintain relationships with customers, nurture leads, and ultimately drive conversions. We also strongly believe that it’s our responsibility to be trustworthy senders and respect our recipients’ inboxes.

Gmail and Yahoo hold the throne when it comes to email service providers, boasting massive user bases. This means a significant chunk of your target audience likely uses them, making its policies and features crucial to your email marketing success. Now, Gmail and Yahoo are rolling out new spam protections aimed at making inboxes safer and less cluttered.

For Gmail, this will require email validation, easy unsubscription, and they will enforce a Threshold for Spam Rate for senders with more than 5,000 Emails sent to Gmail per day (see details below). 

“Last year we started requiring that emails sent to a Gmail address must have some form of authentication. And we’ve seen the number of unauthenticated messages Gmail users receive plummet by 75%, which has helped declutter inboxes while blocking billions of malicious messages with higher precision. Today, we’re introducing new requirements for bulk senders — those who send more than 5,000 messages to Gmail addresses in one day — to keep your inbox even safer and more spam-free.” (Google Blog)

Yahoo is also turning its focus on domain reputation and sender authentication. The updates to Yahoo Mail mean that if your domain has a poor reputation – often due to sending spam or emails which contain phishing-like activity, you will face much more scrutiny. Additionally, the content of an email will be reviewed much more closely, to ensure it doesn’t contain phishing attempts or other scam-related characteristics.

Yahoo’s approach takes a much more holistic view – considering both the reputation of your domain and the quality of the communications that are being sent.

For Mautic users, this is not just another update to gloss over. These changes will affect how your emails are delivered and interacted with, impacting everything from open rates to click-throughs. So let’s dive in and explore what these new rules mean for your Mautic campaigns.

Ask yourself

• Are you familiar with how to handle email deliverability issues, such as spam filtering?
• What is your current strategy for dealing with email service providers’ varying spam rules?
• How crucial is Gmail for your email marketing strategy compared to other service providers?

Gmail and Yahoo’s New Spam Protections

Gmail and Yahoo are introducing new rules for senders that will impact a lot of people using Mautic to send emails (transactional as well as marketing) to Gmail or Yahoo inboxes.

Bulk Senders Requirements

They are cracking down on bulk senders. If you’re sending more than 5,000 messages to Gmail addresses in a single day, you now fall under a special category with new requirements. For Mautic users, especially those with larger campaigns, this is a pivotal update. Ignoring these changes could result in your emails landing in the spam folder, or worse, not getting delivered at all.

Focus on Email Validation

Email validation is no longer optional; it’s a necessity. Gmail and Yahoo have both emphasized that emails sent to their addresses must be authenticated. This helps in filtering out spam and malicious content. 

For Mautic instances, it means that implementing and monitoring authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is imperative. Not doing so could see your emails sidelined, affecting your campaign metrics.

Enable Easy Unsubscription

Gmail and Yahoo are making it easier for users to opt out of emails they no longer want to receive. Bulk senders are now required to include a one-click unsubscribe feature which is compliant with RFC 8058 and RFC 2369. This was included in Mautic 5.0 and there’s also a backport released in Mautic 4.4.11. 

Threshold for Spam Rate

Another major update is the introduction of a clear spam rate threshold. Gmail and Yahoo haven’t specified the exact rate, but crossing this line means your emails could be flagged as spam. For Mautic users, this requires constant monitoring of campaign metrics. Falling foul of this rule will not only affect your Gmail and Yahoo recipients but could have broader implications for your entire email marketing strategy ad other mailbox providers are sure to follow this lead.

By adapting to these new rules, Mautic users can ensure that their email campaigns continue to reach inboxes, engage audiences, and drive conversions.

Ask yourself

• How are you currently monitoring your spam rates in your Mautic campaigns?
• Do your existing Mautic email templates include a one-click unsubscribe feature?
• Are you familiar with email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and have you implemented them in your Mautic settings?

Actionable Steps for Mautic Users

There are some essential and recommended actions you can and should take to ensure email deliverability stays high for you when sending to Gmail and Yahoo.

Setting Up Main Email Authentication Protocols for Mautic Users

Email authentication is non-negotiable, especially with Gmail ramping up its spam protection features. Let’s dive into the big three: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and see how you can set them up for better email deliverability.

SPF (Sender Policy Framework)

• Identify Your Sending Domain: Your SPF record will be a TXT record in your domain’s DNS settings. So start by logging into your DNS provider’s dashboard.
• Create or Edit TXT Record: Add a new TXT record or edit an existing one to include your mail server’s details. A basic SPF record might look like v=spf1 a mx include:yourserver.com ~all.
• Test: Use SPF validation tools to verify the record’s accuracy.

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)

• Generate a Pair of Keys: You’ll need a public and a private key. Your public key will go into your DNS, and the private key stays in your mail server (Mautic in this case).
• Update DNS Record: Add a TXT record for the DKIM key, it usually looks like k=rsa; p=YourPublicKeyHere.
• Activate and Test: Once added, turn on the DKIM signing in your mail server and test the setup using DKIM validation tools.

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance)

• Start Small: Create a TXT record in your DNS settings for DMARC, start with a ‘none’ policy to collect data first, like v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:reports@yourdomain.com.
• Review Reports: DMARC will send XML reports to the specified email. Review these for issues.
• Tighten Policy: Once confident, you can change the policy from ‘none‘ to ‘quarantine‘ or ‘reject‘ for stricter controls.

Final Thoughts

Regularly check the setup using different validation tools. And be ready to tweak settings as email providers update their algorithms.

Ask yourself

• Have you set up these authentication protocols for your Mautic email campaigns?
• How often do you verify the status of your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records?
• Have you noticed any changes in your email deliverability after implementing these protocols?

Implementing Easy Unsubscription

Mautic gives you the flexibility to customize your email templates, so make use of it. Head over to the “Emails” tab, and within your templates, ensure that you include an unsubscribe link that’s easily visible. Ideally this should be connected with a Preference Centre in Mautic, which allows the user to set their preferences or completely unsubscribe.

Mautic automatically takes care of the one-click unsubscribe if you’re on the latest version.

Monitoring for Spam Rates: Leverage External Tools

While Mautic offers robust analytics, it’s prudent to expand your monitoring arsenal with external tools specifically designed to gauge your sending reputation. Remember, different mailbox providers have different ways to evaluate your email reputation. It’s not only Gmail.

Utilize these third-party tools to get a multi-faceted view.

Here are some vital tools you could consider integrating to get a more holistic understanding of your email performance:

• Sender Score by Validity: Think of this as your email credit score. A higher score generally indicates better email deliverability. This tool uses a rolling 30-day average to gauge where your IP address ranks among others.
• Barracuda Central: This tool offers real-time IP and domain reputation lookups. Use it to check whether your emails are being flagged as spam or passing the legitimate test.
• Customer URL Ticketing System by McAfee: This system allows you to dig deep into various data points such as domain history, associations, DNS, and mail server reputation.
• Google’s Postmaster Tools: If you’re sending a high volume of emails to Gmail users, this tool will provide insights into your IP and domain reputation, as well as any specific delivery errors you need to be aware of. Use this if you’re sending a lot to Gmail.
• Microsoft SNDS: Much like Google’s Postmaster Tools, SNDS provides data on your spam complaint rate and IP sending reputation when sending emails to Microsoft’s email platforms. If you’re sending it to Microsoft, use it.

Using these tools in combination can give you a more nuanced understanding of your email reputation. If Gmail or Microsoft flags your emails, it’s likely other providers will too. So stay vigilant, and keep an eye on these metrics to remain in Gmail’s good graces.

Ask yourself

• Are you currently using any third-party tools to monitor your email-sending reputation?
• How often do you check these external tools for insights into your email deliverability?
• Have you noticed any correlation between the metrics from these third-party tools and Mautic’s own analytics?

Don’t let these changes catch you off guard. Adapt, optimize, and keep your Mautic campaigns running smoothly.

Conclusions

Alright, let’s wrap this up. Email marketing is a cornerstone for businesses, and Gmail and Yahoo are too big a proportion of email users to ignore. Gmail and Yahoo’s updated spam protection mechanisms are levelling up the email game, demanding higher standards for authentication, validation, and user experience.

If you’re using Mautic, you need to get your house in order — fast.

The clock is ticking. Adapt your Mautic templates and implement the latest best practices in email authentication, like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Fine-tune your settings to align with Gmail and Yahoo’s expectations, and keep an eye on your spam rates. Numerous tools are out there to help you gauge your sender reputation, and use them to your advantage.

Don’t sleep on this. Make sure you’re ahead of the game. Stay compliant, stay in the inbox.

Ask yourself

• What specific steps will you take immediately to align your Mautic settings with Gmail’s new spam protections?
• How will you monitor the impact of these changes on your email deliverability and overall campaign performance?
• Do you have a plan for continuous improvement and adaptation as email providers continue to evolve their algorithms and user protections?
• Have you verified your DNS settings after setting up email authentication protocols?

Whether you’re a budding enthusiast just beginning your journey or an experienced marketer seeking to develop your strategies, understanding the different types of emails that can be used when you are communicating with your contacts is vital. In this article, we’ll explore the two primary email categories which you’ll work with in Mautic: marketing and transactional emails. 

We will explore their purposes, significant distinctions between the two, and the importance of the changes coming with Mautic 5.0 and later, where you will be able to send transactional emails even when contacts have opted out of receiving marketing communications. So let’s embark on this adventure and unlock the wonders of email marketing together!

Unveiling the two sides: marketing and transactional emails

Marketing emails: the essence of promoting

Marketing emails serve as potent tools for businesses to connect with their audience, build brand awareness, and drive conversions. They encompass a wide range of email campaigns, including newsletters, promotional offers, product updates, and customer surveys. 

The primary objective of marketing emails is to engage subscribers, nurture leads, and generate conversions. Conversions might mean purchasing something, but equally it could be signing up for an event, attending a webinar, or any other action that you want the contact to take. The important thing here is that you’re trying to promote a specific action or goal to your contact.

Transactional emails: the fundamental pillars of communication

While marketing emails focus on promotion – like the initial, exciting stages of a relationship, where attraction and curiosity are sparked – transactional emails reflect the ongoing, reliable communication and commitment that lay the foundation for a long-lasting customer relationship.

Transactional emails are generally triggered by specific interactions or transactions between the customer and the business. Examples of transactional emails might include order confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets, re-validating consent to contact and account-related updates. 

Transactional emails are often personalized, and provide essential information to customers, enhancing their overall experience with your brand.

The difference between marketing and transactional emails

In summary, transactional emails differ from marketing emails in three key ways:

• Purpose: Transactional emails aim to facilitate a transaction or provide information directly related to a contact’s interaction with a business. Marketing emails, on the other hand, are designed to promote products, services, or events to the contact.
   
• Content: Transactional emails are typically triggered by a specific action and are personalized accordingly, containing specific details relevant to the customer’s action, such as purchase receipts or password reset links. Marketing emails often encompass a broader range of content and while there may be personalization, in general they are tailored to engage a larger audience.
   
• Consent: Transactional emails are considered ‘transactional’ because they do not require explicit consent from the recipient, and therefore do not need to provide an unsubscribe link. By contrast, marketing emails must comply with spam regulations, requiring recipients to provide opt-in consent to receive promotional content and be able to remove themselves from receiving such content.

Working with consent

Email marketers shoulder the responsibility of adhering to legal requirements such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Anti-Spam regulations. GDPR governs the protection of personal data, ensuring that individuals have control over their information and how it is used. When sending marketing emails, businesses must obtain explicit consent from recipients.

However, transactional emails are treated differently under GDPR. As they are crucial for completing a transaction or delivering vital information, they are considered a legitimate interest of both the business and the customer. Therefore, they can be sent to recipients even if they have previously opted out of marketing communications.

As a result, transactional emails typically tend to be delivered into the main inbox rather than the promotions section, for example, because they are deemed to be important and individual, rather than promotional and bulk mailed.

Transactional emails in Mautic 5.0

From Mautic 5.0 onwards, transactional emails will be sent even if the contact has opted out of email communication. They will no longer have an unsubscribe header – because it’s not relevant for a contact to unsubscribe from essential transactional emails.

To maintain compliance, it’s crucial to ensure that when you are sending transactional emails, they are primarily used to serve their intended purpose. 

Marketers should limit promotional content within transactional emails to avoid blurring the lines with marketing messages, where consent is required. By providing only relevant, necessary information, you can leverage the power of transactional emails effectively as part of your marketing strategy.

If you try to send marketing emails as transactional emails – for example to circumvent landing in the Promotions tab or remove the unsubscribe options – it might work for a short while but you will eventually be flagged by your contacts as spam or caught and flagged by email providers’ systems. This can result in catastrophic damage to your deliverability, which can be extremely damaging and difficult to recover from. Don’t do it!

Understanding the potential of transactional emails

Enhancing user experience

Transactional emails offer invaluable touchpoints to build and nurture customer relationships. While marketing emails focus on the broader audience, transactional emails provide personalized interactions directly tied to a customer’s actions. By delivering exceptional transactional experiences, you foster stronger connections and amplify brand loyalty.

Seizing upselling and cross-selling opportunities:

While we have mentioned that you must be careful not to send marketing content as transactional emails, there is some leeway when it comes to including small amounts of highly relevant promotional content within a transactional email.

For example, including personalized product recommendations in a shipping confirmation email can entice customers to explore complementary items or upgrades. Leveraging transactional emails carefully and strategically allows you to maximize revenue potential while providing the all important additional value to customers.

Showcasing a consistent brand identity

Every email, whether marketing or transactional, provides a chance to showcase your brand’s identity. Consistency in design, tone, and formatting across all email types reinforces your brand image. From the logo placement to the choice of language, transactional emails should align with your brand’s essence, leaving a lasting impression on recipients.

Conclusion

As we conclude this expedition into the realm of email marketing, we’ve explored the pivotal roles played by marketing and transactional emails. 

Marketing emails drive engagement and conversions, while transactional emails facilitate seamless transactions and foster customer relationships. 

Understanding the nuances of transactional emails, complying with legal regulations like GDPR, and leveraging their potential for enhancing user experiences and brand loyalty will empower you on your email marketing journey. 

So, embrace the power of emails, and unlock new possibilities in expanding your business horizons!

P.S. If you want some inspiration of great examples of transactional email designs, check out this blog post: https://www.brevo.com/blog/transactional-email-design-examples/

However, with this increased use of email marketing comes an increased risk of data breaches and security threats. That’s why it’s essential to take steps to secure data in email marketing. In this article, we’ll provide nine tips to help you do just that.

Tips To Secure Data In Email Marketing

1. Use a Secure Email Service Provider

A secure email service provider offers encryption, spam filtering, virus protection, and other security features to ensure the safe transmission of your emails. Using a secure email service provider can help prevent unauthorized access to your email account, reduce the risk of spam emails, and protect the privacy of your sensitive data.

When choosing a secure email service provider, look for services that offer end-to-end encryption, two-factor authentication, and robust spam and virus filtering.

2. Use Strong Passwords and Two-Factor Authentication

Strong passwords and two-factor authentication are critical to email security. Weak passwords are one of the most common causes of email security breaches, and two-factor authentication can help prevent unauthorized access to your email account.

When creating a strong password, use a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Moreover, two-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security by requiring a second form of authentication, such as a verification code sent to your phone.

3. Use a Secure Marketing Automation Platform

When it comes to managing your email marketing campaigns, it’s important to use a secure marketing automation platform. By using a secure platform, you can help ensure that your customer data is protected and that your campaigns are delivered safely and efficiently.

A reliable platform like Mautic offers a variety of security features. For example, it provides authentication options such as DKIM, SPF, and DMARC to help ensure that emails are legitimate and not spoofed or phishing attempts. Mautic provides regular security updates and patches to address known vulnerabilities or threats.

4. Implement Data Access Control Measures

Data access control measures are security measures that restrict access to sensitive data to authorized users only. Examples of data access control measures include passwords, firewalls, and access controls. Implementing data access control measures can help prevent unauthorized access to your email account and sensitive data, reduce the risk of data breaches, and protect the privacy of your customers’ personal information.

To implement data access control measures, you can use tools like role-based access controls, two-factor authentication, and multi-factor authentication.

5. Regularly Back Up Your Data

Data backup involves creating copies of your email data so that you can recover it in case of a data loss event, such as a cyberattack, natural disaster, or hardware failure. Regular data backups can help ensure that you don’t lose important data and can help reduce the impact of a data loss event on your business.

To back up your email data, you can use cloud-based backup solutions, external hard drives, or backup tapes.

6. Use Anti-Malware and Anti-Spam Software

Anti-malware and anti-spam software can help prevent malicious emails and attachments from reaching your inbox. These types of software can also scan incoming emails for potential threats and remove them before they can cause any harm.

Malware is any software designed to harm your computer or steal your personal data. Malware can be hidden in email attachments or links that, when clicked, download the harmful software onto your computer.

Anti-malware software can help detect and remove these threats before they can cause damage. Similarly, anti-spam software can filter out unwanted emails that may contain phishing attempts, which are fraudulent emails designed to trick you into giving away sensitive information such as login credentials.

7. Keep Your Email Software Up to Date

It is important to keep your email software up to date to ensure that you have the latest security patches and updates. This can help protect against known vulnerabilities that can be exploited by cybercriminals. Software updates often contain security patches that address known vulnerabilities and help protect against new threats.

If you fail to install these updates, you are leaving your system open to potential attacks. Cybercriminals are constantly looking for new vulnerabilities to exploit, so keeping your email software up to date is an important aspect of maintaining data security.

8. Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)

A VPN can help protect your data by encrypting your internet connection and hiding your IP address. This can help prevent cybercriminals from intercepting your emails or accessing your network. VPNs work by creating a secure and encrypted connection between your device and the internet. This helps to keep your online activities private and secure from hackers and other malicious actors.

When you use a VPN, your data is encrypted, and your IP address is hidden, making it more difficult for cybercriminals to intercept your emails or gain access to your network. This is particularly important when using public Wi-Fi networks, which are often unsecured and, therefore, vulnerable to attacks.

9. Conduct Regular Security Audits

Regular security audits can help identify vulnerabilities in your email marketing system and ensure that your security measures are up to date. These audits can also help identify areas for improvement and provide recommendations for enhancing your overall data security posture. Security audits typically involve a thorough review of your email marketing system, including your software, hardware, and policies and procedures.

By conducting regular security audits, you can help ensure that your data security measures are up-to-date and effective in protecting your sensitive information.

Conclusion

Implementing the tips discussed in this article can help secure your data in email marketing and protect your business from cyber threats. From using secure email service providers to conducting regular security audits, each tip plays a crucial role in ensuring the safety and confidentiality of your sensitive information.

By following these best practices, you can improve your overall data security posture and enhance the trust and confidence of your customers. Remember, data security is not only important for compliance but also for building a strong and reliable reputation in the market.

Cecylia Nejman is a writer with a deep focus on tech, security, IT, software. You can read more about secure data at Cybernews.

When used properly, it may help companies grow organically and profitably while forging closer bonds with their leads.

1. Optimize your LinkedIn profile

To draw in potential leads, you should enhance your LinkedIn profile. Playing the “role” becomes crucial because this is a professional platform.

Simply put, you need to optimize your profile for engagement:

• A relevant title that concisely describes your position with the organization and your area of expertise should be included with a clear headshot.
• Make sure your job description is compelling, useful, and informative.
• Ensure that your profile is quickly found by the proper target audience, make sure your “About” summary emphasizes your skills, expertise, and accomplishments and is keyword-rich.
• Use LinkedIn’s “Featured” section to highlight significant projects, works of literature, blog articles, etc. and attract new clients.
• Last but not least, present “social proof” by requesting genuine recommendations from coworkers, friends, etc.

2. Join LinkedIn groups

LinkedIn groups, which are specialized spaces for professionals of all levels to share their opinions and experiences or ask questions about the group issue in one place, can be searched for leads.

Fundamentally, you should participate in LinkedIn groups that are relevant to your industry or niche. You can position yourself as an authority in your field in this way. Also, this may draw potential customers that are interested in your goods or services.

Find the groups that your buyer persona would be in. Join those communities and use them to generate leads for LinkedIn by contacting the group’s members or looking for posts that show a buying signal or intent.

3. Share valuable content

Make an effort to provide your LinkedIn connections with informative content. It should offer insights and solutions to the problems your target audience has, such as blog posts, articles, and infographics.

This will increase your trustworthiness and draw in new customers.

The most effective strategy to draw in the leads you want is to publish content on LinkedIn as a thought leader – that is, as someone recognized as an authority in your field.

As you start to see responses, you can either collect all of the LinkedIn profiles in one place and manually reach out to them, or you can utilize LinkedIn automation and email tools to do it automatically.

4. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a paid feature that enables you to locate and contact potential leads. It provides sophisticated search criteria that enable you to focus your search and identify leads that fit the profile of your ideal client.

LinkedIn tracks accounts that have connected with your business on numerous levels. It then categorizes them based on your level of interest and suggests some to you.

It is the ideal method for generating leads from individuals who have previously expressed interest in your business.

5. Engage with your connections

Comment on your contacts’ posts, share their material, and send them individualized notes to engage with them. Relationships and trust will be formed as a result, potentially opening up business chances.

Being a thought leader is great. You won’t succeed, though, until you utilize social media for what it was meant to be used for: connecting with others and fostering genuine relationships.

Reach out and strike up a discussion with someone in your network if you want to develop a relationship with them.

6. Make Use of LinkedIn Tools

If you are in the business of leveraging LinkedIn to generate leads, there are a ton of solutions available to make your life easier.

What you need to understand is that tools like these are highly useful and desirable, but rather difficult to choose from due to both benefits and drawbacks.

The following tasks benefit from using tools:

• Automating common tasks like connecting invites, follow-up messages, requesting that individuals follow a firm’s page, endorsing connections.
• Launching automatic marketing campaigns.
• Automating the process of sending invitation requests and follow-up messages, enabling you to create a list of ready gen leads.
• Quick lead processing and information gathering about lead sources.

You also need to consider any potential negative effects:

• Due to the variety of tools available and the fierce competition, finding the correct automation tool for testing that can optimize value can be difficult.
• Because some of the sophisticated automation technologies are expensive, it might become an expensive endeavor.
• While limiting the alternatives, caution should be exercised because not all tools are secure to use.

Conclusion

Time and time again, LinkedIn has shown to be a reliable and strong platform for generating high-quality leads.

It takes more than just collecting the first and last names of your leads to use a LinkedIn lead generator.

The goal is to establish a stronger relationship with your leads using natural and sustainable methods while spending an optimum amount of time and effort in nurturing those leads.

You can learn more about quality methods of managing your LinkedIn connections on this link. The article will help you get a better overview of your connections and help you generate more leads by better organizing your network.

Nevena Rogar is a freelance content writer at LeadDelta. You can follow her on LinkedIn and read more of her articles on LeadDelta blog and on Clippings.

If you love Mautic and use Trello, keep on reading as we talk about connecting the systems with this plugin. And at the same time you will connect sales and marketing as well. Manage your Mautic contacts in a clear and easy way – on a Trello board. Create a card for each contact and have your contacts’ information right at your fingertips. 

Are you new to Trello?

Trello is a Kanban board-centric easy-to-use project management and collaboration tool. The tool works like sticky notes on a whiteboard – in a very advanced manner. 

You can organize teams, projects, workflows and much more by simply dragging and dropping cards on your board. Many teams use Trello every day to keep everyone in the loop, help them stay organized and don’t miss a thing. 

Get started and create contacts in Trello as cards directly from Mautic

When you work through your leads in Mautic you can directly create a Trello card without leaving Mautic with the Mautic-Trello plugin and its Trello power up (plugin) counterpart.

How does this work? Mautic users can download it here for free in GitHub – this function is pre-installed for Aivie customers. After the installation, you will find the new function “Create Trello Card” in your menu for each lead. Just choose the name of the card, the list you would like to add the card to, and a due date.

Install and use the Trello Power Up

If you wish to access Mautic from within Trello, you will need to install the Trello Power Up. Power Ups are like plugins in Trello and can be installed with a click. In case you hit an issue anyway, our tutorial to install the plugin will help you out.

3 benefits of connecting Mautic and Trello

After you install the Power Up in Trello and the plugin in Mautic, you can link your Mautic contacts to a card in Trello (or create a new contact) and then view important details directly in Trello. 

Here are some advantages and some important use cases of the Aivie Trello Power Up: 

1. Add reminders and tasks to your contacts

You can add due dates directly within Mautic – without leaving it. Next time you check your Trello board, the contacts and all the information is simply there.

How we use it: When we see the need for a personal followup, we create a Trello card from Mautic and set a date. Then, every week we go through the contacts on the Trello board, filter for the due date, and initiate calls. So we always know when it’s the right time to reach out.

2. Build a sales funnel in Trello

The principle of Trello is to move cards forward as the tasks progress. The task here is: sales!… and everything that leads to it and beyond. 

You can have Trello lists for the more advanced stages of the sales funnel. From when a contact engages first in a personal conversation with your business to the commitment to a deal, and beyond the sale. Whether your business is in B2B or B2C does not matter, although we do recommend to select your prospects when you are in a high volume Ecommerce business to not overwhelm your Trello board. 

After each conversion, the card is moved forward. This way, you can see the sales funnel at a glance and have control over the most important contacts.

This Screenshot shows you how it might look to visualize your sales funnel on Trello. And with this new Mautic-Trello Plugin you can populate this board automatically.

3. See your relevant contact details in Trello

When you link a Mautic contact to a Trello card you will see the stage, points, tags and the last time they were active directly on the card. This way, your sales or marketing team has more information at the most convenient place at any point in time.

When you combine Trello Power Up with the Mautic-Trello plugin, you can also create cards directly from Mautic. Every card is created for one contact and, of course, shows the contact’s name in the title. 

How we use it: We at Aivie do lead scoring with Mautic using points and stages. This information is also displayed on the Trello card. This way, we can see immediately how interested one contact is in working with us. And maybe now is the right time to contact them again.

Who is behind the Mautic-Trello Plugin

Aivie is a Mautic community partner based in Switzerland. The Mautic-Trello Plugin and Power Up of the same name is 100% compatible with a standard Mautic instance.

Author

Adrian Schimpf is CEO and Head of Product of Aivie, a marketing automation tool from Switzerland for Europe. He designs digital channels and customer interactions with automation, AI and plugins.

He has 20 years of experience at the interface between customers and IT. Most recently as a product manager at Swisscom, previously in various roles at SMEs, start-ups and agencies. Software developer, user experience consultant, project manager, among others.

Adrian Schimpf is a CEO and Head of Product at Aivie. You can follow him on Twitter and read more of his marketing automation tips on Aivie’s blog.

Mautic is one of the most popular marketing tools used by over 200,000 organizations globally. Being open source, it’s a particular favourite with n8n users. 

This article will cover 4 ways to automate your marketing workflows by using n8n, a source-available, self-hostable workflow automation tool that lets you to connect Mautic with third-party applications – you can read more about n8n further down. Let’s get started.

4 Workflow automation ideas for Mautic

Let’s look at four different scenarios where we can use n8n to connect Mautic with other tools.

Note that, the baseline prerequisite for working with any of the workflows below is having n8n setup. The easiest way is to sign up for n8n cloud but you can also self-host n8n.

Add new customers from Woocommerce to Mautic

This workflow adds new customers from Woocommerce to Mautic. It uses a WooCommerce trigger that will run when a new customer has been added. The workflow then checks Mautic for an existing contact matching the newly created Woocommerce customer. If the contact does not exist, then it is created, otherwise the existing contact is updated.

This workflow has four steps that execute in the following order:

• Step 1: Customer Created or Updated – This step fires the Woocommerce trigger node when a customer has been created or updated on Woocommerce
• Step 2: Check for Existing – This step checks to see if there is an existing Mautic contact matching the updated or created Woocommerce customer. A Mautic node  is used for this.
• Step 3: If New – This step uses the output of the previous step to ascertain whether the data from Woocommerce is new or not. The If node  is used for this.
• Step 4: Lastly, depending on the result of the previous step, a new contact is created on Mautic or an existing one updated. Mautic nodes are used in this step.

Overall, to use this workflow you will first of all need to do two things:

• Create a Woocommerce account on your n8n instance and set the credentials for the WooCommerce node.
• Create a Mautic account on you n8n and set the credentials for the Mautic nodes.

Create Mautic contact on a new Shopify customer

This workflow creates a new contact in Mautic when a new customer is created in Shopify. By default, the workflow will fill the first name, last name, and email address. You can add any other fields you require.

This workflow has two steps that execute in the following order:

• Step 1: On new customer – This step invokes a  Shopify node when a new customer is created in Shopify.
• Step 2: Create contact – This step receives the customer data from the previous step. It then creates a new Mautic contact with the customer data using a Mautic node.

Overall, to use this workflow you will first of all need to do two things:

• Create a Shopify account on your n8n and set the credentials for the Shopify node.
• Create a Mautic account and set the credentials for the Mautic node.

You could add more steps as well, like checking first if the customer is new before you create it on Shopify.

Create or update Mautic contacts for new invitee created events in Calendly

This workflow creates or updates a Mautic contact when a new event is scheduled in Calendly. The first name and email address are the only two fields that get updated.

This workflow has two steps that execute in the following order:

• Step 1:  On new event – This step invokes the Calendly node when a new Calendly event is scheduled.
• Step 2: Create/update contact – This step accepts data from the previous step and creates a Mautic contact or updates the contact’s first name if it already exists. The Mautic node is used here.

Overall, to use this workflow you will first of all need to do two things:

• Create a Calendly account on your n8n and set the credentials for the Calendly node.
• Create a Mautic account and set the credentials for the Mautic node.

Add item with a note in Monday.com on a new task/contact in Mautic

This workflow creates a new item in a Monday.com board when a new contact is created in Mautic. Additional fields can be added to the workflow to send more data to Monday.com.

This workflow has two steps that execute in the following order:

• Step 1: On created contact – This step executes a Mautic node when a new contact is created in Mautic.
• Step 2: Create item – This step receives the Mautic contact data from the previous step and creates a new item in the Monday.com board using the Monday.com node.

By default the workflow will send the contact’s email address to Monday.com and name the item after the contact’s first and last name.

Overall, to use this workflow you will first of all need to do three things:

• Create a Monday.com account on your n8n and set up a Monday board. Refer to the Setup section of this documentation.
• Set the credentials for the Monday node.
• Create a Mautic account and set the credentials for the Mautic node

How to use n8n to automate your own Mautic workflows?

Before we dive into set up and run n8n workflows, let’s first of all cover the basics.

What are Workflows and Nodes?

Think of a workflow as some major process you would want to automate. For example, the Woocommerce to Mautic workflow that automatically moves customer data from Woocommerce to Mautic. Workflows in n8n are not just limited to Mautic. As an example, you could even have a workflow that declutters an email’s inbox.

At the core of every n8n workflow are nodes. Remember, a workflow is some major process we are automating. On that note, think of a node as a sub-task or step in the process. For example, in the Woocommerce to Mautic workflow, we are going to have the following steps:

• Customer created or updated: where the workflow would perform some action when a new Woocommerce customer is created or an existing one updated.
• Create contact: here the workflow would create a new Mautic contact when it receives the new customer data from Woocommerce.

From a more technical standpoint, we can define a node as an entry point for retrieving data, a function to process data, or an exit for sending data. The data process performed by nodes can include filtering, recomposing, and changing data.

With these high level understanding of workflows and nodes, we can simply say that a workflow is a collection of connected nodes. Thus, to create a Mautic workflow or just any workflow, you just need to connect all the necessary nodes.

Setting up and running your own workflows would require one or more of the following steps in the order they appear.

Step 1. Set up n8n instance 

As mentioned earlier, the first step to automating any workflow with n8n is to spin up an n8n instance. n8n is available as a Cloud service, desktop app, npm module, and Docker image.

One other thing, most of the nodes you’d work with will require some authentication with the service they connect to. To learn more about creating, managing, and sharing credentials, refer to Manage credentials.

With an n8n instance setup, next, you need to create your workflows in the n8n UI. But what does creating a workflow entails?

Step 2. Choose how to start your workflow

Once you create your workflow, it can be started manually (with the Start node) or by Trigger nodes. When a workflow is started, it executes all the active and connected nodes. The workflow execution ends when all the nodes have processed their data.

In the image above, the rectangular boxes are the nodes, and the arrows between them are the connections.

A connection establishes a link between nodes to route data through the workflow. A connection between two nodes passes data from one node’s output to another node’s input. Each node can have one or multiple connections.

Step 3. Connect nodes

To create a connection between two nodes, click on the grey dot on the right side of the node and slide the arrow to the grey rectangle on the left side of the following node. See image below. To configure parameters and settings for the node, double click on the node block.

Wrap up

Integrating Mautic and the different marketing tools you work with using manual processes could be hard.

With n8n this is no longer a problem – it allows you to automate these manual processes that would normally be a hassle. 

To illustrate how n8n could be used to automate your marketing workflows, this article covered some use cases where Mautic integrates and shares data with platforms like Woocommerce, Shopify, Calendly and Monday.com.

Ready to connect your Mautic with other third party applications?

Sign up for the n8n cloud account to easily get started and start automating processes with n8n! The platform also offers hundreds of pre-built integrations and hundreds of automation templates, allowing your team to design the custom workflows you need.

What’s next?

Now that you’ve seen some practical use cases where n8n could be used along with Mautic, also keep in mind that the usefulness of n8n extends beyond Mautic. For example, you can automate how data is imported into Salesforce with n8n.

Additionally, you can also explore a list of some open-source marketing automation tools we curated.

Nyior Clement is a developer advocate @ 84codes & freelance technical writer. You can follow him on Twitter and read more of his articles about data transformation and automation on n8n’s blog.

If you plan on converting leads into customers or buyers, efficient lead targeting and segmentation must be at the core of your marketing strategy. Whatever business you’re in, your target consumers will be a diverse group of people with varying wants, which will alter as they progress through the buying process and get closer to making a purchase. 

You should segment your leads at the time of capture and on an ongoing basis as their relationship with your brand changes. This will allow you to offer messaging to each of these prospects, meeting their individual needs at each stage of the sales process.

What is lead segmentation?

In order to efficiently and effectively target leads, you need to properly segment them first. In a nutshell, lead segmentation is the process of dividing your database of leads into smaller groups depending on their behaviors. This, in turn, will allow you to send more persuasive marketing communications – one of the core objectives of an efficient E-CRM.

For example, you have people that have only visited your homepage and left, but you also have people who have browsed through your website, even looked at some of the products. And, hopefully, you have the ones who have added items to the cart but abandoned the purchase, and the ones who have made it all the way to the end and made a purchase. 

Knowing this, you have the freedom and advantage to send different messages to specific groups of visitors. For those who have only visited your homepage, you might want to engage them by pointing them to product list pages. For those who have already browsed some of your products, it may be a good idea to offer them similar products or discounts.

Why is lead targeting important?

When you know your potential customer’s behavior, you can motivate and entice the cart abandonment segment with some promo code or discount – for instance, one that is time restraining in order for them to make a purchase in the next few hours or days. These specific contents and messages are much more effective than sending generalized promotional offers. 

Without lead segmentation you are not addressing specific needs, nor are you demonstrating which problems you’ll solve for them, that is, providing any incentive for customers to choose you above the myriad of other companies offering a similar bundle. According to Venture Harbour CEO, Marcus Taylor, lead segmentation resulted in an 89% sales uplift and 58% increase in average order value for one of their ventures.

How to efficiently target leads

Segmenting and targeting leads using traditional marketing methods can be very time-consuming and often is not so efficiently organized, specially if you are dealing with thousands and thousands of leads. However, today, there are a number of marketing automation tools like Mautic that enable you to automate those tedious tasks and give you more time to focus on creating a successful marketing strategy or on other processes and tasks.

Mautic’s solution provides detailed contact tracking and automates the process of finding and nurturing contacts through landing pages and forms, email campaigns, text messages, web notifications, and integration with your CRM and other systems in a smooth and easy way.

Nikola Radenkovic is a Techical Specialist at Sales Snap. You can follow him on Linkedin and read more of his marketing tips on the Sales Snap blog.

The customer journey is the complete experience of a customer going from a “contact” (lead) to becoming a buyer. We usually think of this path as a map, with its landmarks, twists, and turns.

The customer journey map needs to be considered when creating a campaign in Mautic. There are a few different approaches to what is the best practice for a customer journey. Regarding Mautic and its abilities, we have chosen the most essential steps of the customer journey. We will explain how you can complete these steps successfully using Mautic’s features. 

Five steps to build your first customer journey

The basic customer journey is divided into five steps:

• awareness;
• consideration;
• purchase;
• retention;
• and advocacy. 

1. Awareness

Creating a welcome flow of emails followed up with nurturing emails is a common way of raising awareness. That makes your company more present among your public. 

Mautic has a user-friendly interface that enables you to create your email campaign drips very easily, using either a template that is already available in Mautic or a coding mode for those who like coding. 

Awareness can also be achieved through using other channels of Mautic, for example, if it is integrated with social media accounts.

2. Consideration

Consideration is the moment when a client starts thinking about your offer but hasn’t made a final decision yet. The client is considering the possibility of engaging with you further and they still need an extra push to go from considering to being sure they find the value in your offer.

Consideration means that the client has already recognized some value of what we have to offer, and they are, therefore, willing to go further and consider the purchase. There is an option in Mautic called Assets. In the Assets, it is possible to upload any type of asset you want and make it available for your potential customers to download. 

These assets are usually a kind of promotional material that brings on the added value of a product. It can be a catalog, an ebook, a walk-through, or anything that you want. Document file types are also varied: a pdf, an image, a text document or some kind of spreadsheet, a questionnaire, a video, or any other promotional material. 

The highlight of this feature of Mautic is the ability to see in the history which of your users have downloaded the material. That is, leveraging your customer’s consideration to drive them closer to the purchase.

3. Purchase

If we follow the same logic, once the users have downloaded your promotional material, you can very easily create a segment called “leads who have downloaded the e-book”. This segment can trigger sending personalized (but still automatic) emails that will lead your client to the next step of the journey, which is the shopping cart. 

When you consider the path you are building for your customer, the idea is that you are first going to highlight the value of your product with the asset. Once the customer sees this value, they are more likely to complete a purchase.

4. Retention

Retention is the term for getting a first-time buyer to remain a customer and go on to other purchases. In terms of marketing strategies, one-way retention can be achieved through nurturing campaigns or upselling journeys. 

For this matter, the focus item option of Mautic, or more popular, a pop-up campaign can be set and triggered at exactly the same time the first purchase has been made. The popup message can communicate some similar product being available for the upsell to the same group of contacts. 

5. Advocacy

Needless to say how a good experience your client has had with your brand can influence your business reputation. 

In Mautic, there is also a possibility of creating web push notifications. These web push notifications may show up even a day or two after the purchase has been made, just saying “Thank you for purchasing! You have gotten a point”.

This means the different channels are covering your client on their customer journey. Moreover, your customers know that they have been rewarded for the purchase. 

Ivana Rosic is a marketing expert at Sales Snap. She is also a Project Manager, leading the Partnership program with Mautic. You can follow her on Linkedin and read more of her marketing strategy tips on the Sales Snap blog.