Oftentimes? Many of the wrong things.

There is this persistent myth that marketing automation platforms are there just to make your life easier. This is isn’t untrue, but if thats what you’re after you’re missing the point.

Dont get me wrong, the practical side of it can be pretty awesome. I’ve been involved with several companies where implementating the platform literally meant no longer having to walk over to IT to ask for a list of contacts. That is a vast time and frustration saver.

But from the perspective of a sales perspective at an actual marketing automation vendor, the people that come to us with an 80-line spreadsheet with requirements often don’t get it.

Let me tell you a secret: you won’t use 20% of the things in that spreadsheet. At least, not at first! But marketers vastly overestimate what functionality they will actually need to make their marketing automation investment worth it.

There’s only one reason to use marketing automation: drive revenue. Whether that’s from new acquisition or upsales. So when you’re looking at a marketing automation platform, that platform’s ability to help you drive revenue is what you should be looking for.

Here’s the two things you should be doing with your marketing automation platform:

1. Identify prospects in your database that are ready to buy.
2. Build relationships with prospects that aren’t ready to buy yet.

Functionality around those things (automated nurturing, alerts, segmentation, etc) is what you should be focusing on. The rest is icing on the cake.

If you thought that was a fresh perspective, come check out my company Net-Results: the marketing automation platform that’s specifically geared towards helping mid-market companies generate revenue.

Cuz it’s just as fresh.

The post What do marketers look for in a marketing automation platform? appeared first on Net-Results.