Prior to the selection of a Marketing Automation system, it’s important to find a company that will work with you and fit the technology to your needs. Larger vendors have traditionally looked at the mid market as a simple downgrading of their enterprise wide solutions without any particular focus on the specific nuances of mid size business needs. A scaled down version of an application designed for a large enterprise probably won’t meet the needs of a mid-sized company as well as an application designed specifically for the mid market.
You should base your ultimate decision on your organization’s specific requirements, but the following tips will provide a good start:
- The most important thing to look for when exploring solutions in Marketing Automation is a technology partner with enough experience in the mid market to understand your problems and needs.The most frequent mistake in mid market companies is to believe that CRM is simply software and not a relationship with a technology company. Effective solutions can only be created when a technology partner takes the time to analyze your current methods, needs, staffing and goals.
- Marketing Automation solutions should have the flexibility to work as part of a larger CRM solution provided by the vendor or be adaptable by that vendor to software solutions you may already have successfully implemented. Marketing solutions may be advantageous on their own, but true integration with other customer touch points is a valuable and powerful component in the concept of one-to-one marketing. Any customer is only as loyal as their last interaction with your company; therefore, the implementation of an effective marketing automation system as part of an overall CRM solution needs to extend into the policies and people of your organization.