As any technology matures, users may experience some growing pains as they get to know what works and what doesn’t. This is especially true for marketing automation. A recent study summarizes what many have suspected for some time: many of the features sold in marketing automation systems simply never get used. The fact is, many solutions offer a bigger, more complicated set of tools than is needed for any given situation. While many marketing teams see huge value in automating tactics like lead assignment and email responses, the path to success is often frustrating, confusing and wrought with over-investment.

Some blame the tools for being too complex, some blame the organizations for lack of commitment to the entire process. Maybe it’s time to stop spreading blame and get back to marketing.

For just one example, think about your own business today. Do you nurture leads and contacts with regular communication like a monthly newsletter? Is this marketing automation or good communication with existing and prospective customers? There’s a reason email marketing remains the top tactic in the marketing automation arsenal. It’s not about the complexity of tools. Getting engaging content out the door is what counts.

This idea of getting started and getting better has driven PowerObjects’ PowerPack add-ons. We have seen organizations get huge benefits from starting small.

For email marketing, PowerObjects has built an enterprise integration with MailChimp to make it easy to send newsletters and promotions directly from CRM. We believe in it, and we use our systems to do it. (Some well-known marketers do too!) We don’t believe the best approach for true lifecycle marketing is having a separate system to manage leads, contacts and accounts for marketing, and decide when to sync this data back to CRM, then apply complex filters to get rid of duplicates. We start with CRM as the system of record. You manage your marketing lists in CRM, conduct your marketing in CRM, and see all meaningful engagement (opens, clicks, bounces, web visits, conversations, and more) in CRM. This means your workflows and triggers happen in CRM too, which puts marketing, sales and service all in the same system.

We also don’t believe you need to use every tactic under the sun to be successful. You can be successful by getting started with a tactic like email marketing that is scalable and measureable. With PowerMailChimp, we made this fast, easy, and inexpensive. If you’re a MS CRM user, you can install the PowerMailChimp solution in minutes and try it free for 30 days. Do it on your own, and contact us if you get stuck. Simple. If you like what you see, simply subscribe at a low monthly cost. All of our add-ons come with no long-term contract, so you can cancel at any time.

We all know that marketing automation is more than sending newsletters, but starting simple and making incremental improvements and additions to your marketing mix can yield sustainable, scalable results.

PowerObjects add-ons can help you get started and add the following to build out your marketing functions from CRM:

• PowerWebForm: Simple forms to connect your website to your leads and contacts via CRM.
• PowerSocial: Build an audience through social media, then listen for who’s ready to buy.
• PowerWebTraffic: Your next customer is already gathering information about you – see their behavior to help accelerate the sales cycle.
• PowerScore: Give your sales team the hottest leads to close more deals, faster.
• PowerMap: Get a heat map of your territory or build your best roadshow ever.
• PowerSurvey: Collect data from your audience to build benchmark studies or measure customer satisfaction.

Make no mistake, marketing automation is vital for many companies’ revenue. With an incremental approach, any marketing team can improve how they leverage CRM as the hub of their tactics for brand building, demand generation, lead nurturing, and customer retention.

Start small, prove value and add more. It’s that simple.

Happy CRM’ing!