Digital marketing requires a continuous follow-up of visitors and users of the company’s online platforms, which in digital marketing jargon are called “leads” or “prospects”.

Data collection

The path of these users during their visit to a website generates “leads” that allow us to identify their centres of interest (visitor tracking). The visitor is then invited to click on a link to receive more information or special offers on the product or service they are interested in (“CTA for “Call To Action”). For this purpose he fills in a small form with his name and e-mail.

At this point the lead becomes “mature” (“lead nurturing”), when the relationship is established with the visitor and the “conversion” phase from visitor to customer begins.

Process automation

Marketing automation is an activity of managing contacts with a target audience, prospects, either by email (news) or on social networks, triggered automatically by software, which will send news, offers or standard responses to current or potential customers according to a predefined scenario.

The software combines data extracted from audience and visitor path analysis (“Analytics”) with customer profiles (CRM) to choose the most relevant message to address to the potential customer (prospect), at the best time.

Software

Numerous software solutions exist for the automation of these tasks (customer data platform) that integrate customer relationship management (CRM) with lead management and e-mail marketing.

Most are based on proprietary systems, whose software is hosted on external servers, which offer their customers more or less limited access to their services depending on the monthly subscription fee chosen. This type of service is referred to as “Software-as-a-Service” (Saas). By extension, automation or programmatic marketing is called “Marketing-as-a-Service” (MaaS).

Among the most important B2B-oriented platforms for large companies are HubSpot, SalesForce, which has acquired Pardot to integrate it into its CRM, as well as Oracle, which offers the Eloqua platform, and Adobe, which has acquired and optimised the Marketo user interface

Of these major platforms, the cheapest and most popular solution is the HubSpot Marketing Hub, compatible with WordPress, which offers a free version with automatic management of personalized emails coupled with a CRM (Hubspot Marketing Hub Free), as well as various paid versions, including the “Starter” for 46€/month and the “Basic” for 185€/month.

But there are also other very powerful solutions for start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises. One of the most popular is ActiveCampaign offers one of the most powerful tools for marketing automation, with an integrated CRM and a range of services, while being very easy to use, for a fairly affordable rate of their “Plus” package which comes to $348 per year with 1’000 contacts.

Finally, there are a few open-source solutions, including two developed in France: ACQUIA, based on Drupal and Mautic (www.mautic.org), founded by David Hurley (https://dbhurley.com) in 2014. The company Webmecanik, in Lausanne, offers a solution based on Mautirc: Webmecanik Automation, for 400€/month.

Agencies offering automated marketing services

In the Geneva area there are agencies that offer automation services, either with a full range of multi-channel marketing services, such as Affluence, BeOnPerf, Enigma and MyAlbert, or as a specialised core service, such as WSIgabs, Emakina and Lemonads.

Services provided by the Agencies

The services of an Agency generally involve three stages:

1. Audit and strategy definition
2. Implementation and configuration of the tool and CRM
3. Deployment of automation services over time (6 months to 1 year)

In Lausanne, the Digitalmint Agency (Tamia) specialises in growth marketing and offers well-defined and clearly structured services in marketing automation.

Prices

All Agencies are quite discreet about the prices of their services in general and in automation marketing in particular.

Based on a rate of 1,000/day, the cost of the first two stages can be estimated at between 4,000 and 5,000.

The third (deployment) will be subject to a monthly subscription fee which will depend on the cost of the chosen automation software on the one hand and the service package provided for monitoring on the other. A basic rate will be around 1’300.00/month or about 16’000.00/year.

This is where the ROI (return on investment) calculation comes in.

Links
www.hubspot.ft/produits/crm
www.activecampaign.com
www.mautic.org
www.affluence.ch
www.digitalmint.ch
www.webmacaniak.com
www.enigma.swiss
www.beonperf.ch
www.myalbert.io
www.wsigabs.ch
www.emakina.com
www.lemonads.com