The Marketing Automation Discussion

This is the final post of The Marketing Automation Discussion. I want to take a moment to thank all of our guests and listeners for their support throughout the duration of this show. We have had some incredible conversations and I am grateful to have been able to interview some of you as guests.

To get a client to sign the contract first requires a statement of work. I.e. a proposal of work. And the process by which your agency produces, sends and tracks these proposal can potentially kill the deal. You can shoot yourself in the foot with your proposal process by:

1. Making you look unprofessional or inadequate,

2. Under qualifying and poor needs assessment leading up to your proposal,

3. Allowing too much time for your prospect to shop your proposal,

4. Having poor SOPs and under tracked grey areas in your sales pipeline filled with unknowns…  

My guest today has tested and experienced almost every rational proposal composition and presentation method you can think of.

Whether you are a SaaS company needing to register new users effectively, or anyone with a registration page on your website, effective communication with those who are just being introduced to your product/brand for the first time is key.

1. How much automation is too much? 
2. Onboarding differences for freemium vs paid plans?
3. Whether or not to require email verification? 
4. Why use trigger-based emails vs time-based emails? 
5. How to use third party data enrichment tools effectively in the onboarding process?
   

Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast where we unpack the components, dilemmas and strategies of tech stack capabilities with founders and leaders across all industries who have created a process or tool to better your business by way of automation. 

Today I am joined by the Former Head of Platform at Freshbooks, CEO of Appbind.com and current President of the Cloud Software Association Mr. Sunir Shah.

What Sunir and I discuss will help show you how to control your cloud software stack between clients, stakeholders and agencies you work with.  

We discuss: 

1. How to setup appropriate agency controls and processes around your stack. 
2. The five most important value propositions of an agency.
3. And, what consultants can do now to start owning their clients’ stacks for mutual benefit. 

Today we are going to discuss the new world of partnership strategy - specifically in the vertical of Partner Relations Management and PRM software like that of today’s guest - Founder of Partnerstack.com (formerly Growsumo.com), Mr. Bryn Jones.

We've all been in CRM hell. Whether it's:

• Trying to determine if you even need a dedicated CRM,
• Navigating the numerous options to choose the right CRM for you,
• Dealing with integrations,
• Or are having to rip out your current CRM after making the wrong choice. 

You hated it and wish you had help avoiding it. 

Here at Automated, it's our job to connect the teams with the experts to help get the right information across. 

Two of these experts are joining me today to answer the 5 Questions our B2B colleagues voted on from a list of 9 provided in a recent poll.   

1. What Questions should I be asking myself before picking a CRM?
2. What is the difference between CRM and Marketing Automation? Should I have them both in one app? And, should I have separate CRM and Marketing Automation?
3. What is the simplest way to add attribution data into lightweight CRMs?
4. Not every B2B org can integrate chat (Drift/Intercom…) effectively. So at what point is it good to integrate chat on the frontend?
5. When is a dedicated CRM (Hubspot, Copper, Salesforce) necessary? 

It’s time for the second part of our two-episode segment on tech-enabled recruitment. In this episode, we get tactical and even showcase a specific automated process for discovering, enriching, and serving an automated multi-touch cold outreach campaign to candidates and ensuring the entire process is synced with your ATS (or CRM), LinkedIn and cold email system. 

• Founders, team leads in B2B 
• Any recruiters

Today, we aim to give hiring teams and recruiters some valuable content in the form of a two-part episode: 

**This is the SHORT version - not including pricing + future of CRM. If you are interested in the entire recording - go ahead and listen to the previous episode...

Today is a special type of episode called a Mastermind discussion where I invite more than one participant to have an open discussion to clear up a major pain point we see in the world of marketing and sales automation. 

The focus of this mastermind is CRM. And my guests are: 

Scott Gellatly from Scale My Empire in Melbourne, Australia Alex Bass, founder of CyberBytes in New York,  And my colleague, Founder of Yellow O and our Head of Stack Services here at Automated, originally from London but streaming to us now from Phuket Thailand, Mr. Mark Colgan.

I’ve invited these 3 experts to help me shed light on the topic of choosing and building-out your scalable CRM system. 

This is the aspect of any sales stack that can either be the most expensive mistake you will have to replace, or the most valuable tool helping your sales and marketing team understand where every prospect is at and triggering the necessary automations to better customer experience. 

This is a subject I take very seriously, so one guest will not cover all of our bases. 

We go in deep - this discussion was over 120 min in total before edits. You will hear about:

What to look out for when considering ‘Free’ versions of a CRM... CRM strategy - when and how to consider CRM in your stack... The necessary considerations around CRM-triggered automations How to setup your CRM for success Pricing for the two main CRMs we will highlight,  And the business models of each of these CRMs so you know which will be best for your business long-term… 

**THIS IS THE FILL VERSION w/ pricing + business models + future...
If you are only interested in the what and how of CRM choice, listen to the shorter version [PART 1] published next...

Today is a special type of episode called a Mastermind discussion where I invite more than one participant to have an open discussion to clear up a major pain point we see in the world of marketing and sales automation. 

The focus of this mastermind is CRM. And my guests are: 

1. Scott Gellatly from Scale My Empire in Melbourne, Australia
2. Alex Bass, founder of CyberBytes in New York, 
3. And my colleague, Founder of Yellow O and our Head of Stack Services here at Automated, originally from London but streaming to us now from Phuket Thailand, Mr. Mark Colgan.

I’ve invited these 3 experts to help me shed light on the topic of choosing and building-out your scalable CRM system. 

This is the aspect of any sales stack that can either be the most expensive mistake you will have to replace, or the most valuable tool helping your sales and marketing team understand where every prospect is at and triggering the necessary automations to better customer experience. 

This is a subject I take very seriously, so one guest will not cover all of our bases. 

We go in deep - this discussion was over 120 min in total before edits. You will hear about:

1. What to look out for when considering ‘Free’ versions of a CRM...
2. CRM strategy - when and how to consider CRM in your stack...
3. The necessary considerations around CRM-triggered automations
4. How to setup your CRM for success
5. Pricing for the two main CRMs we will highlight, 
6. And the business models of each of these CRMs so you know which will be best for your business long-term… 

Simon Data in New York City - which is now at around 75 people and growing rapidly - but because of his extensive background in data: 

• Jason received his BS from Cornell in Computer Science.
• Then went on to gain his PhD from the University of Texas in Machine learning, data mining and statistics.
• After his academic career, Jason founded two data companies, one of which was acquired by Etsy in 2009. 
• At that point, Jason ran data at Etsy.com for 3 years before leaving to start Simon Data - which has just raised it’s series B of $20M.

He's the ideal person to help explain what it means to create a "Data-Driven Organization"

In this episode, I’m joined by my colleague and fellow marketing-automation enthusiast Mark Colgan to provide an in-depth look at the pros/cons of available options and our methodologies for creating scalable automation systems. 

We each work with founders and teams at very stages in their marketing and sales automation builds, and have each noticed the same issues around available options for assistance. 

Engagement pods are established amongst colleagues in an effort to further the reach of each others' content/brand by ensuring comments, likes, upvotes and shares of said content.

You all will have mixed sentiments over this topic - either understanding there is a reason for everything popular, or anti-any shortcut (regardless how harmless to society). In any case, the term 'engagement pod' causes people to voice strong opinions one way or the other.

For this exact reason, I have invited my friend Guillaume, Co-Founder and CEO of Lemlist and Lempod, to discuss and try to uncover what you all should know about Engagement Pods.

In this episode, we continue our deep-dive into the world of API Integrations for your product and between your product and the thousands of other apps out there. The founder/CEO of Integry joins us to discuss this world and how he created Integry after running into the issues we get into on the show. Learn how this world works, and what options you now have for your app and between yours and others.

The CEO of Phantom Buster, Guillaume Boiret, joins me to discuss how they're changing the way we interact with websites to get our jobs done. This is one of my favorite discussions :)

Jan is a software engineer and computer scientist by trade. He has worked on dozens of projects in all kinds of environments. Oh, and he has his PhD in Artificial Intelligence... On this episode, Jan and I discuss why we are all owners of the web. And therefore, should all have the tools to master it.

Conversations matter. And this was one of the most enlightening conversations I've had around sales in a long while... 

We all have our [mis]conceptions about dialing for dollars, but few have those conceptions in line with the larger picture - what sales tools and tactics bring in the enormous revenues for some of the largest companies in the world like: To give you an idea of how serious Chris and his company are about sales automation, check out US patent #8649500B1 - "...automated operation of a system performing attempts to establish communication connections between a user and a target." Chris Beall, CEO of Connect and Sell tells me specifically: 

1. How to get multi-channel to work. 

2. Must have vs nice to have's in sales. 

3. The human element of sales. 4. What to do with ‘dead’ leads. 

5. And as always, we share a sales automation. 

Please tell me if you have a sales process that includes a cold call, and if so, what you have done to improve it lately.

Ryan is the founder of Fomo and a partner at Fork Equity, which buys and grows bootstrapped SaaS apps. I brought Ryan on today not only because I was so impressed with my experience with the fomo product, but also because of Ryan’s mature understanding of customer behavior and what automation is really about. On this episode, Ryan and I; 1. Showcase an automation using Clearbit, Google events, and FOMO 2. Talk about why you should be completely transparent about how you got customer data in your automated messaging. 3. Discuss another great automation FOMO uses to boost brand equity and bring back canceled accounts while also providing social good. This was an incredible discussion. I assure you the 40min will be well worth the time. 

He gives value every time, so I gladly record it :) Yet another awesome installment with our Friend Nathan Hague: New Instagram Direct-Messaging Platform: https://www.directheroes.com/ Remaining GDPR-Compliant Quickly By Removing People From All Databases At Once: http://wowq.io/ LinkedIn Ad Platform Updates: https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/blog/linkedin-news/2018/linkedin-introduces-public-beta-of-objective-based-advertising-i

Calling all product developers, managers, and owners... We're looking for your insights 🧠 https://automated.af/automated-sales-and-marketing-processes/democratizing-productivity-in-your-app-saas-and-productized-best-practices/ Below is a mastermind discussion between Zachary Schenkler, Matt Lo and I on: ☝️ "Democratizing Productivity", ✌️"Productized Best Practices" 👌and "Coaching Networks" in your app/saas/platform. Essentially, (a) what it means to capture and re-distribute the best uses of your product by other users back into the product for all users, (b) good and bad examples, (c) our consensus, and (d) where AI / ML fit into this. It's worth the listen/share. As always, a link to the entire discussion is in the comments 👇 The ASK: Consider what it would have been like if you were able to install a piece of software and simply choose to run it like another company's actual customized build. And what that would mean for you as a user. Then let us know if you have any good examples of this in practice, or if you have any follow-up questions for the panel. Alex - Founder, Automated Zack - Founder, CTO Holonis Consultant Matt - Founder of Chip Bot

I am so thankful to have had the VP of Platform at Hubspot, Mr. Scott Brinker on the show! This is a perfect episode for those marketing technologists who are inside an organization... We spoke mostly about the progress and democratization of MarTech in the last decade, but also touched on: ✔️ What it means to be a "citizen technologist". ✔️ What's coming in MarTech. ✔️ How HubSpot will stay relevant in the coming years. For more on this subject, check out Scott's blog and article: https://chiefmartec.com/2018/05/democratizing-martech-marketing-technologists/

This is the Marketing Automation Discussion where I look out for valuable sales and marketing technology and processes to help scale your business. Today I am excited to have Max Altschuler on the show to discuss; - Omnichannel and other key trends to watch. - A lead qualification process. - When you should hire that first inside salesperson. - And of course, what really works in sales outreach.

Ben is the CEO at Growlabs.com. An all-in-one Lead Generation & Sales Automation platform. What people love about Growlabs is that they combine lead generation with automation in one UI - set filters, grab as many verified contacts as you need for your campaign, add them to the campaign you’ve created, and start sending. Ben is on today because he has scaled multiple companies using cold outreach as a part of his marketing stack, and can help shed some light on the ‘state of the union’ so to speak, of cold outreach. We discuss: > Why Gmail? > Metrics to monitor. > Tips to ensure cold email longevity > How to set up a cold email automation that works. If you enjoy this, please leave us a review!

Who is this for? This is my recommended marketing/sales stack for almost any B2B organization using G-Suite. ✅ Link to the full article👇 https://automated.af/automated-sales-and-marketing-processes/our-recommended-marketing-sales-stack-for-b2b-g-suite-users/ Here are the players involved in this stack: Copper CRM Copper is the Google-recommended CRM to manage your prospects, leads, partners, and more-right from Gmail. It is said to be the only CRM designed to fit right in your Gmail inbox. Jon Aniano and his team have taken this one over the top. Persist IQ A Sales Engagement Tool that to launch personalized campaigns with multiple touchpoints to get more engagements started with your cold leads. I am looking forward to what's next for Pouyan Salehi... G-Suite Formerly Google Apps for Work - combines all of the familiar productivity and collaboration tools by Google and combines them in an all-in-one suite for universal access across teams. Acquire For this stack, Acquire.io is my ideal chat platform. Laduram Vishnoi has built something very special here I am thrilled to be a user of.

This is a new and different segment where I am going to phone a friend in Australia who I know has the answers to almost all things marketing. He's been on before, and it was a blast, so I'm excited about this new segment we're calling: "Nathan Hague answers What's New, What's Broken, and Who Should Foxtrot Oscar?" Follow Nathan (but do not send him automated messages...) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhague/

I was invited down to Indianapolis to record this special episode from inside the amazing offices of Lessonly.com (which happens to be a former high school). My guest is Kyle Lacy, VP of Marketing and all-around badass marketing executive. What started as a generic talk quickly turned into a fantastic discussion about maintaining your company culture in your marketing and sales automations. As Kyle and I were going through sound testing, I hit record because even that content was valuable. Enjoy...

Have a listen to what we recorded today... https://automated.af/automated-sales-and-marketing-processes/a-product-hunt-strategy-mastermind-with-the-automated-members/ Kaloyan Yankulov, Baptiste Debever, Matt Lo, Gaetano Caruana, and I dug into product hunt strategy on a new 'mastermind' podcast format (and these strategies are useful for ANY product launch - not just product hunt features). >> LINK TO THE FULL EPISODE IN THE COMMENTS << ✔️ Using tools to build a list of ideal 'hunters' to reach out to. ✔️ How to get more life from your hunt. ✔️ Why you do not want just anyone upvoting. ✔️ Dealing with negative feedback. ✔️ Prepping content and your team. And much more... Let me know what you think! If you have any mastermind discussion needs :)

This is a fantastic new podcast episode! Please Please Please leave us a review on iTunes! "How To Automate Custom Signature-Creation to Boost Sales" 🤯 Brad Beutler (Director of Marketing at Sigstr) and I discuss the process and tools to turn email signatures into powerful brand engagements. Here are the use cases: ✔️ Customer marketing ✔️ Driving to events in real time from EVERY email account ✔️ Discount code at a specific stage in the (cold) email sequence What are the tools necessary to execute? Email marketing platform (or Gmail with campaign add-on), Sigstr, and your CRM with lead status's set. Example: hot prospects will see a banner that says “Sigstr love’s {{your_company_name}}”, OR: new downloaders, who also have a certain customer score, will see a banner saying "Please leave us a review in the App Store!"

In this episode of the podcast, Alli and I cover: ✔️ Seller-centric communication vs buyer-centric communication. ✔️ Where we as sales leaders or business owners at in today’s world of marketing and sales enablement. ✔️ And steps to take to improve your sales presentations...

Jon Vaughn is a genius level software engineer turned entrepreneur. He is now the founder and CEO of the software development firm Tier5. Tier5 specializes in building high-end SaaS applications for clients and Tier5 currently has 6 SaaS software’s in the market all aimed at helping other entrepreneurs scale and automate their business. Today, we’re going to discuss an automated lead prospecting system leveraging SMS. What you will need to execute this automation is: Robo Contact - www.robocontact.io TextInBulk - www.textinbulk.com Magic Zap - https://about.amagiczap.com Get the entire software package used in this automation for $1/day: https://1-dollar-a-day.jonvaughn.io/sales-page

We are going to show you how to be very strategic with your top-of-funnel prospect segmentation, and of course, automate it. This will allow you to not only increase conversion rates, but manage post-lead-capture nurturing efforts to increase ROI from all traffic campaigns. Axel Lavergne is the Head of Growth at Sendinblue, a French all-in-one marketing platform with email marketing, SMS marketing, and a marketing automation platform that can connect to pretty much any other service.

So, let’s set the premise for when this automation would be useful: 1. Let’s say you or your sales team are sending out a lot of customer emails manually in gmail. 2. Or, maybe you are slightly more proficient and using a gmail-based-CRM like Mailshake to send those blasts. 3. Or, you are doing cold outreach using a third party like Hubsell.com or Mailshake to push emails through your gmail or g-suite business email account. My guest today is going to show us a way to ensure no prospect falls through the cracks. Stephen is the co-founder and CEO of Sales-Torch.com - a suite of tools used to by sales teams to reduce the time reps spend in their inbox so they can focus on building relationships with prospects.

Today, I have a special guest with me to discuss the following: GDPR compliance Quora ads strategy, what do and how Reddit - where and when to use it in your business routine It’s a lot to discuss, so let’s dive right in… My guest today is Nathan Hague. Nathan is a full stack marketer who specializes in systems, automation and making things easy where there is confusion and chaos beforehand. What tools are necessary to set this up: Tools, budget, hours/week and people: Not using our software: Use Cookiebot Using our software: Use wowq.io Reddit Strategy: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-use-reddit-your-business-marketing-toolbox-nathan-hague/

Today is all about automating your feedback loops to increase customer satisfaction, improve the speed/efficiency of bug fixes, and reduce churn.

My guest today is Baptiste, the founder of Feedier.com. Baptiste, why don’t you tell us what Feedier is exactly? Yes of course. And thank you for setting this up Alex. I think everyone will find a lot of value in what we’re about to show them. Feedier is a feedback application focusing on gamification of the user experience in order to gain more actionable feedback results. It’s great to have you and I am really enjoying my initial experience with Feedier. It’s a gorgeous product.