@spudty I have used a couple of systems, and looked at a few others. Pardot is good and relatively easy to use. Hubspot also has a lot, but is richer on analytics and not as “deep” into what I consider total automation (but full disclosure I have not looked at it in detail in at least 18 months).

Automation in my opinion makes the execution of tactics easier, and driving and tracking conversions on your website. Nurturing prospeects is also critical, as would be gathering data on what you site visitors do.

But, I’ve saide this before–your marketing organization must have a certain level of maturity to really benefit and see ROI. If you don’t have good content and enough of it, it will be tough to nurture. What will you do to drive conversions? How will you track (score) the value of site visitors, whether they convert or not? Who handles follow up, and how do they report this back to give good data to marketing?

If you don’t answer all those questions, it is not that you will “fail” but getting the ROI vs the cost will be much more difficult. In a small business this is even more critical, because limited staff will frequently cut corners and then point the finger at the automation, not their incomplete efforts.

@spudty Scoring can be very complex. You can give points for each page they visit, more points for each item in a basket, assign higher point values for more expensive items, etc.

But, you are right, it is important to get them to convert. HEre are a couple of ideas:

Offer a few different types of “buying guides” to some of the product categories you sell. Many people like to research a product before buying

If you sell clothing, put togeter a fabric care guide for different types, one they can download in a pdf and print. You might be surprised how many people don’t have a clue. I would include a “legend” to decipher the icons on the labels.

Basically, take a look at your product offerings and try to come up with several different types of FREE content you can offer that might be helpful to the consumer.

Offer an e-newsletter for products/ideas in the product categories. Do you sell home goods? Feature a decorating tips newsletter. Outdoor products? perhaps a travel guide

My advice is only to require an email address–you will get some bogus ones for sure, but if the content is good and you keep a stream of it availble, they might come back.

Also rather than discounts, if what you sell is consumable, or in a category with frequent purchases, create a loyalty program for frequent buyers. With that, you can certainly collect more information, including an address, if you wish

I still believe in content bringing people through the buying process (of course that’s what I do to a great extent). Done well it works.

@spudty here is an article by one of the automation companies, Silverpop. It might also shed some light on what the systems can do. Theirs is pretty competetive in price and features, too http://bit.ly/tRSZrX

It alway worries me when there’s no mention of price I remember the old addage that if you need to ask the price you probally cant afford it

thx for feedback I think I have a few issues:

create something that people would be willing to give away some for for to have access to – I have an idea for this and am currently working on it

so method of data capture – which is already in place

the last would be to evaluate IF and HOW we could set up some form of API that monitors and trigger responses on user actions outside of what we are creating or work on what we will have available