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.

Read more about how you can set your own rules to handle bounces and lead scoring, in addition to contacting customers based on their behavior, without the need to create campaigns or segments.

Marketing automation requires up-to-date contacts and the integration between Mautic and n8n is the missing link to get data from the most diverse systems and enrich Mautic. 

In this article, I will detail how n8n version 0.165.0 brings new features so you can manipulate Mautic in a simple and easy way.

This is my second contribution to Mautic node improvements in n8n and I am very happy to be able to collaborate with both Mautic and n8n communities. You can learn more about how to contribute in our Community and Get Involved sections.

Send emails directly to your leads

How many times have you thought about sending a specific email to a contact through some external action like an e-commerce order, subscription expiry or an alert using Mautic?

On n8n’s Mautic node you will find the action “Send e-mail”, which requests the contact ID and the email ID (campaign type). As soon as you run node, your contact will be sent the email, without using a campaign or broadcast.

In this way, the submission and engagement are recorded in the contact’s timeline.

Create your own rules to handle bounces

Mautic takes hard-bounces and applies the “Do Not Contact” flag to the corresponding contacts, but many companies take soft-bounce with a slightly different approach.

With n8n, all you need to do is receive bounce notifications for a webhook, perform some processing or validations in alignment with your policies, add notes and choose the most appropriate “Do not Contact” level.

You are free to choose the best way to handle hard-bounces, soft-bounces and complaints.

Lead Score like you’ve never seen

n8n also allows you to add or subtract points from a contact, opening doors to the most diverse external situations that can contribute to your Lead Score strategy.

Imagine that every time a contact makes a purchase on your e-commerce website, you can add a point to them – in addition to adding a comment, making it easier to identify them on the timeline

Handle your contacts with the n8n

The integration of Mautic within the n8n platform allows you to perform the most diverse actions:

• Create or Update Contacts
• Add Tags to Contacts
• Add or Remove a Contact from a Segment
• Add or Remove a Contact from a Campaign
• Add or Remove “Do Not Contact” from a contact
• Directly send a Campaign-type email to a contact
• Add or Subtract Points from a Contact

n8n is Mautic’s best open source partner for connecting external systems that can perform actions inside your Mautic.

You can plug Mautic into major CRM, email validation systems, contact enrichment, spreadsheets, SQL and NoSQL databases, receive data via webhooks or API and much more.

If you are thinking of connecting your Mautic to an external system, be sure to look for the n8n. It’s a free and open source system that you can run on your own server.

Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira Fonseca is a Devops and cofounder of Powertic. He is also with the Mautic Meetup São Paulo (Brazil) and the n8n Meetup São Paulo (Brasil). You can follow him on Twitter: @luizeof.

Read more about the difference between email marketing and marketing automation, and how both marketing tactics can earn value for your business.

Email marketing has been around for over 40 years and continues to be one of the most effective forms of marketing. In 1978, the first email marketing blast was sent to 400 recipients and it generated $13 million in sales — that’s equivalent to $78 million today! The revenue generated from email marketing in comparison to the investment continues to be significant. Campaign Monitor notes that every $1 investment in email marketing can give a return of $44 in revenue.

Email is a powerful marketing tool and as technology continues to evolve, email marketing is becoming more automated. Let’s look at how that change has happened over time and what it means for traditional email marketing.

Although email marketing started in the late 70s, it wasn’t until the 90s that it really started gaining traction. If you remember the 90s, that’s when the Internet was born. The first smartphone was introduced and Hotmail launched its first web-based service. For marketers, this was known as the decade of “spray and pray” email marketing.

For those not familiar with the term, “spray and pray”, also known as “batch and blast”, refers to sending the same generic email message to many people via a static contact list. The “spray and pray” approach required minimal effort because there’s little strategy involved and no targeting. The message is generic and the distribution list is static, so you create one email and send it to everyone. This approach is equated to yelling “Hey, Bob” in the middle of a crowded place and expecting that someone in the crowd will be named “Bob” — that is, you “pray” that your message will hit the mark with some customers but in reality it falls short for most. Instead of shouting into a random crowd, knowing what they look like and where they’re likely to be at a certain time means they’re more likely to respond — and you’re more likely to be getting the right person, rather than just some random person who happens to share the same name.

This type of batch emailing quickly became coined as “spam” and anti-spam laws were introduced in the US by 2003, forcing marketers to rethink their email marketing approach and get more targeted. In the early 2000s, marketers started creating their own email databases, allowing them to create targeted email lists based on basic information they knew about their contacts.

These targeted distribution lists helped marketers get away from the “spay and pray” approach, but the emails were still generic and the strategy focused on a single campaign. Marketers would create an offer, schedule out the campaign and then blast emails to their own distribution lists. Although those lists may have been more targeted, they still leveraged a one-size-fits-all approach to email marketing.

The marketing landscape began to drastically change with the explosion of digital channels, devices and touchpoints beyond the web.The number of channels marketers now had to manage divided their time and made it necessary to automate manual processes, including email marketing. And as the number of marketing channels increased, so did the demand for a cross-channel marketing strategy.

That’s when marketing automation was born.

Benefits of multichannel marketing automation

Marketing automation is the process of automating repetitive marketing activities across multiple channels. In 2006, marketing automation software was introduced. Essentially, these were tools designed to help automate marketing tasks such as email marketing, social media posting and ad campaigns. But the marketing automation vendor landscape really picked up between 2010-2015 with revenue going from $225 million in 2010 to $1.65 billion by 2015.

Marketing automation leverages technology to turn manual processes and campaigns into automated workflows. And these tools aren’t just used for email marketing, they can target customers with automated messages across email, social media, web and mobile to orchestrate the omnichannel experiences that customers demand by delivering the right message, at the right time, through the right channel.

Key features for marketing automation

Marketing automation tools introduced a lot of new features that allowed marketers to do more with their marketing campaigns in less time. They required an investment of time to set the campaign and workflows up initially, but then they would run automatically based on the parameters or triggers established. Here are some common business requirements of marketing automation:

• Dynamic segments: In the past, marketers could segment their databases manually. With marketing automation, rules could be set to move contacts from one email distribution list to another based on actions they take. One example is moving contacts through various steps in the sales funnel. If a contact clicked on a link to request a demo, a trigger could be established to move them to the next stage of the funnel.
• Auto-response for email and text: Marketers can establish rules for when contacts should be sent an auto-response based on specific actions. For example, if a customer puts an item in their cart but never checks out, an email can be automatically sent to remind the customer of the items they still have in their cart. Or if a contact booked an appointment, a text message could be set up to send an appointment reminder 1-2 days prior to the appointment.
• Drip campaigns: A drip campaign allows marketers to establish a series of actions to take place over a period of time for a targeted group. For example, a marketer can create a series of lead nurture emails that would be sent out to prospects in a given timeframe. To create the drip campaign, the marketer needs to establish what actions should happen, the order of those actions and the triggers that would cause the next in the series to be sent. Then the drip campaign runs automatically for all contacts in the targeted list.

Marketing automation tools allow marketers to move beyond a one-size-fits-all mindset, and begin to put the customers at the center of all campaigns. With these marketing automation tools, it’s easier than ever to provide consistent messaging from email and social to the website and text messaging. And with the rise of personalization, marketers are able to provide not just consistent experiences across channels, but very targeted and personalized experiences as well.

Marketing automation tools are just the software that helps automate the process. It’s still up to the marketer to define the strategy and create the campaigns. This requires marketers to understand their customers better by collecting valuable data, identifying key insights, building customer profiles, and evaluating what’s working and what’s not. It’s still up to the marketer to identify the key touchpoints and design the connected experience for their customers.

Equipped with the right tools and a data-driven strategy, marketing automation can help businesses design customer-centric experiences that support their specific goals and drive marketing ROI.

Theresa Anderson is a Senior Digital Experience Strategist at Acquia and has kindly authorised that we reproduce this post, originally posted at the Acquia blog.

Are you afraid that your email marketing efforts using Mautic will be affected by spam bots? Wish that there was another alternative that didn’t involve CAPTCHAs? Research shows that CAPTCHAs are having a negative impact on conversions.

The short story is that CAPTCHAs kill conversions. (source)

The pain is even bigger if you have a high traffic website and use external email services like Amazon SES, Sendgrid and Sparkpost. If you don’t control these spam bots, you won’t be in compliance with their spam rules.

You know what? You aren’t alone.

Honeypot Method

There is a way to get past this struggle, even if you are not a developer. The solution is to implement an approach called the Honeypot method, in your Mautic forms.

First, login to your Mautic instance. Go to Settings (cog icon), then Custom Fields. In the Custom Field window, add a new field.

In the Label field lets call this honey, click Save & Close, and continue to the next step.

The Setup

Now, let’s go to the forms we need to protect using the honeypot method. I would suggest going to the forms that are more prone to attack.

Add a new email field in the forms and select call it email2 and map that field to the honey field we created.

Now in Mautic v2.8+ we have a new field type called HTML Area, we’re going to use this field and add the follow code in the HTML area;

This code will make the email2 field invisible to the human eye, but not for the spam bots.

NOTE: You have to replace the formname and fieldlabel with the form name without space and the field label in your honeypot filed you put in your Mautic.

Another approach to hiding the field would be to specify the Field Container Attribute of the email2 field you want to hide as:

style="display:none"

Now let’s start eliminating spam bots.

Eliminate the Spam

Go to all the campaigns you have attached to a Campaign form;

Now adding this condition at the first step of the campaign will check to see if the person that submits the form has information in the field “honey”. If the field is empty it is likely a real person. If it’s not empty, it is a spam-bot and we are going to delete it.

NOTE: If you use a Standalone Form and you have the action to send email to user you MUST disable this and create a campaign associate with this Standalone Form and replicate the step above.

Using the honeypot method will help you stop spam bots and the negative effect they have on your email marketing activities.

Mautic’s Rod Martin developed a short video tutorial to walk through this approach step-by-step;

Because of Mautic’s robust workflow, there are a number of different ways to accomplish any given task. This is simply one approach. Comment below if you know of others.

The Mautic community is filled with incredible individuals with a variety of backgrounds and experiences. We believe that each perspective represents unique value to the broader community. If you’re interested in becoming a contributor to our blog, please contact us.

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.

If you are looking for your customer facing teams to be aligned, here are some tips that will guide them in the right direction.

Tips for Marketing and Sales Alignment

• 1. Executive sponsorship is key – Alignment starts at the top. If the leader of the sales team and the leader of the marketing team are not in lock step, this will permeate down into the organization. It is not required that these two leaders report into the same person, they just need to be focused on achieving the same objective and agree on the plan to get there.
• 2. Align terminology – Sales and marketing must speak the same language. This helps manage expectations between marketing and sales internally as well as in customer facing conversations. One term that often causes confusion between internal teams is the word ‘lead’. Is a lead a person or an interaction? Is it a noun or a verb? Marketing advisory firms such as Sirius Decisions advise their clients to be more granular when it comes to definitions – leads can be marketing qualified leads, sales accepted leads or sales qualified leads. Having clear definitions for all terms and metrics and communicating these helps preempt misunderstandings between sales and marketing teams.
• 3. Align goals – People manage what they are measured on. Ensuring sales and marketing teams are measured on the same end goal is one way to ensure they are working towards the same outcome. Now, I am not suggesting that marketing should have a sales quota, but just that the marketing team needs to have a ‘skin in the game’. The game being bringing in new customers and managing them through their lifecycle. One example of how this could be done is aligning compensation in a way that while the sales rep is paid on the revenue number, the marketing rep’s compensation is split between the total number of leads they bring in and the quality of lead, i.e. the leads that result in revenue.
• 4. Create a joint plan – When a team creates a plan together they are usually more vested in ensuring its success. Create a joint team plan that documents the goals, activities and expected outcomes. If everyone cannot participate in the creation of the plan, make sure the plan is documented and communicated. The plan should not just be a calendar of marketing activities, but should also include sales spiffs, promotions and other activities that will help the team achieve their set goal.

• • 5. Put SLAs (Service Level Agreements) in place – According to a Harvard Business Review, companies that try to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving queries are nearly 7 times as likely to have meaningful conversations with key decision makers as firms that try to contact prospects even an hour later. Maybe an hour is not realistic for your company, but put in place realistic SLAs or service level agreements and hold the sales team responsible for what they commit to. From a marketing perspective, the commitment should be around the the number and quality of leads. Agreeing to these and delivering on these SLAs will build trust between sales and marketing and better alignment.

• 6. Celebrate successes together – The end goal and hence success for both sales and marketing should be the same thing. What I mean by that is, the marketing team should not be celebrating just because they have delivered the committed number of leads. Success should be when both teams’ objectives are achieved. Once that happens, don’t forget to celebrate and have some fun, because at the end of the day, teams that have fun together and are happy are likely to be more productive.
• 7. Use data and technology – The good news is there is a plethora of systems and technologies which if implemented correctly can help you achieve better alignment by providing visibility into what activities are planned, which ones are working and a better understanding of the buyer. Keep in mind, the insights from these systems are only as good as the data you put in and track. Also, make sure the systems are tightly integrated so that relevant information from any system is available at the point of communication with the buyer as well as for a wider analysis.

Today the lines between sales and marketing are blurring. Marketing and Sales both influence the buyer’s journey throughout the lifecycle. It is more critical than ever that we align marketing and sales, and that they function as one team. At the end of the day it’s about communication, visibility and accountability. Irrespective of whether the communication is written, in person or virtual – they can all work. The more visibility each team has into what the other has planned, committed to and delivered – the better the team will be aligned and the smoother the buyer’s experience will be in dealing with the company.

This is the first in what we hope will be a long list of short tutorials on different aspects of Mautic.  Today’s tutorial answers a question I received from a user last week.

There are two kinds of forms:  “Campaign” and “Standalone”, each with its own characteristics.  How do I know which one to use?

Choosing the Right Form

Campaign forms allow you to send people straight into a campaign and be the source for that campaign.  These can be edited even after a campaign has begun. Any actions you might want to perform at the time of submission, are handled by the campaign itself, and that can be limiting.

Standalone forms can also allow you to kick-off a campaign. The main difference is that the form submitter must be added to a list as one of the form actions.  The form itself cannot be used as a campaign lead.  You can perform any number of actions on a standalone form!  For instance, if you want an email sent to an administrator when the form submits, then you would use the standalone variety.

Campaign Forms:

• Push the lead directly into a campaign.
• Can not perform other actions outside of the campaign workflow.

Standalone Forms:

• Can not initiate a campaign.
• Can perform actions at submission such as:
  • adjust a lead’s points
  • modify lead’s lists (which must be done if this form starts a campaign)
  • modify lead’s tags
  • download an asset
  • push lead to integration
  • send email to lead
  • send email to user
  • send form results (such as another administrator)

If you’d like to suggest a topic, please head over to the #support channel and message @imrodmartin.

The goal of marketing remains the same

My first takeaway was that the end goal of what marketing as a function is trying to achieve  has not changed at all. People want to buy from companies they trust. The goal of marketing is to build trust with potential customers and maintain that feeling of trust with existing customers.

Before the dawn of the digital age, word of mouth was the most popular method that people used to decide what to buy and from whom. Existing customers served as trusted advisors for potential new customers.  Building trust is the way that companies sell to and keep their customers today as well.

Then what has changed?

What is different today, is that now there is so much information and so many ways to get that information, that it becomes hard for the customer to figure out what is true and who to trust. An interesting statistic that was shared at the event was that 90% of the world’s data has been created in the last 12 months.

In addition, the buyer could search for information on the Internet or receive information from companies in the forms of emails, SMS messages, notifications through the website, messages on Facebook, Twitter and many other ways. They could also search or receive these messages on their desktops, laptops, iPads, mobile phones or smart watches.

It is the responsibility of companies today to help the buyer cut through the noise and consume the information that is relevant to them and helps them figure out what product or service will best meet their need. The challenge or opportunity, depending on how you look at it, is how do companies leverage all this data and these different technologies to deliver relevant messages to people through their preferred way of receiving them? The focus should be to begin building this trust with potential buyers and existing customers by making them feel like they have a 1 on 1 relationship with the company.

What technology trends can help you do this?

The 5 key technology trends that were the underlying theme of most sessions at the event were:

• Cloud – In the State Of The Cloud report by RightScale, 95% of the enterprise organizations that were surveyed used cloud technologies. What that tells me is that IT organizations are moving away from managing hardware to managing software. The availability of applications in the the cloud has raised the bar for performance, stability and time to market for new functionality. This has leveled the playing field to some extent as similar capabilities could be available to companies to use as they try to sell to, service and keep their customers.
• Mobile – Technology companies have been talking about making their tools available on a mobile device for some time now. What is new is that they are now talking about mobile first and mobile only. Techcrunch predicts that by 2020 there will be 6.1B smart phones in the world. Compare this to the projected population in the world in 2020 at 7.7B people. A large number of the smart phones will be the only devices people use to run their lives and their business. This makes it all the more important to figure out how to build products that are easy to use on a mobile device and also build those relationships with potential buyers and existing customers using this device.
• Social – Human beings are social and want to be part of a community.  Though communities have been around forever – the difference now is that they are online. Social is nothing but an online community – the size of which is controlled by the individual. Social is both an outbound messaging channel so companies can deliver targeted messages using Facebook or Twitter; and it is also a data source to get to better know your buyer. Social is no longer just a marketing channel but it has also become a place where companies can service their customers and sell additional products to existing customers.
• Data Science – Vcloudnews states that every day 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created online. What does that even mean? The challenge is making sense of this data so that companies can use the data to better understand their buyers.  This  is in fact a science, because if analyzed and leveraged correctly companies can create superior, personalized experiences for their potential buyers and existing customers which will undoubtedly lead to more business for the company.
• IoT – My definition of IoT or the Internet of things is the ability for a device to record an activity and trigger a communication when a certain condition is met. Companies have only started to scratch the surface on the use cases for this. The concept of devices triggering actions has been around for a long time – e.g. a thermostat that turns off the heat when a certain temperature is reached; but what is different about IoT is the ability for the device to trigger a communication that can be accessed on a variety of devices when something happens.

Some companies get excited about the potential that these new technologies offer, others are overwhelmed and not sure how to best leverage these. What is important to keep in mind is the end goal – building trust through a personalized and superior experience. Use only those technologies that help you  achieve that objective. Remember, at the end of the day, these technology trends simply equip us, and it’s really the relationship with your customer that matters.

Many businesses use the word free as a lure. They will offer their solution to us without initial cost, then convince us to pay after seeing the value of their solution. But is that truly free? We would argue these are trials, not free solutions.

“Free” Marketing Automation

Lately, we’ve seen many businesses offer “free marketing automation software”. But are they? Mautic is free and will be forever. But this is not a marketing concept. This is a philosophy.

When we set out to produce marketing software, we were compelled by our mission. To empower organizations by providing powerful communication tools to anyone who needed them. Free speech is a freedom we often take for granted. To provide a solution that empowers free speech is an incredibly powerful concept.

GNU Free Software Definition says:

We campaign for these freedoms because everyone deserves them. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them. When users don’t control the program, we call it a “nonfree” or “proprietary” program. The nonfree program controls the users, and the developer controls the program; this makes the program an instrument of unjust power.

So while others offer “free” marketing automation tools, read the fine print. Because free for a month isn’t free. It’s bad marketing.

Authentic Marketing

We believe in the concept of authentic marketing. Authentic marketing is about value and values, it’s not about trickery. When we have something of value, we don’t need shady marketing to communicate it. Marketing should be the artful way we convey and connect individuals to that value. So for our marketing efforts to be effective, we must consider trust as a key element for connection. If we continue to use trickery, we diminish not only our brand, but our value proposition.

As marketers, let’s strive to be authentic in the way we communicate with buyers. We can’t be lured into traditional marketing schemas. Our values AND value must shine at every step of the customer journey. The Young Entrepreneur Council encourages us:

Don’t get trapped by marketing dogma. Think outside the box and be willing to take risks, so long as it’s in line with your philosophy. For instance, blog openly about the problems your company seeks to solve in the world and how you’re working to overcome them by fulfilling your mission.

Honesty, truth and conviction. When we communicate our values using these principles, it is authentic marketing. And the data shows it’s what customers are seeking. Let’s not disappoint them. It’s time we start using our creative voice to engage buyers in authentic conversations and communicate with our vision, not archaic marketing tricks that convey false promises.

“… human nature dictates that people have a hard time genuinely connecting with, being close to, or really trusting other humans who (pretend to) have no weaknesses, flaws, or mistakes.’ This is not only true of human connections; it’s true of our relationships with brands.

We encourage you to join our community. Because free is free. Forever.