Marketing automation is the answer to all the questions you thought there wasn’t an answer to, such as
- how to find out more about the people reading your content
- what they do and what they like (way past Google Analytics),
- how to segment content according to what visitors to your website are interested in
- and how to nurture cold leads.
In essence, it is about turning the leads you have created from your content into leads that your sales folk can follow up.
I’ve just been talking to the sales people at ActOn, which seemed like great program that is easy to use.
But the obvious next step is to look for stories that compare the various marketing automation software programs such as Hubspot, Marketo, Pardot and Eloqua.
I found this one at the specialist review site, G2Crowd, which provides both reviews of individual programs and then allows you to make comparisons. That’s informative.
For the basics — what is marketing automation, and who should use it), plus a simple features overview, Capture The Conversation is a good place to start.