Using Integrations to Improve Marketing Processes

There is a whole suite of integrations that can help make day-to-day marketing activities much easier, especially when it comes to mundane or repetitive tasks or those that require handling large amounts of data.

Integrations, very simply, are a way of connecting your data to multiple applications in a way that brings them all together, so your apps can access your software without you having to manually enter the same bits of data, for example, into every single app you use.

An integration is a direct one-to-one connection solution, and in general will be available from your software’s marketplace. Also of relevance is Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS). IPaaS connects applications and systems (both on-cloud and on-premise) between an organisation and third party software via a cloud-based platform. IPaaS is useful if you’re looking for a specific integration solution where no connection is available, as an iPaaS solution can help when you’re in need of something more bespoke.

Benefits of Integration

When done well, there are a number of benefits to marketing integrations, including:

• allowing data to flow seamlessly between platforms and enhance each one
• enabling you to create a more holistic marketing ops strategy
• improving customer experiences with better data
• automating tasks and freeing up time
• removing barriers to collaboration, such as data silos
• delivering accurate insights and reporting and empowering decision-making.

Which kinds of marketing integrations?

Of course, the integrations you will need are dependent on your organisation and industry. Just to give you an idea of what they can do, integrations exist for advertising, account-based marketing, sales, ecommerce, email, analytics and data integrations, content management, social media, customer success, events and webinars, video, lead gen, conference calling, live chat and more.

They also range from the relatively straightforward, such as the integration of email marketing databases with CRM systems to ensure that contacts are always up-to-date, or generating reports from email marketing campaigns or paid advertising data. There are also more complex integrations, such as workflows that can help to improve revenue, speed up approval processes, or manage social media activities automatically.

Let’s get into some examples.

CRM and marketing apps

A CRM system, like Salesforce, Pipedrive or HubSpot, should be at the heart of your marketing ops because it is the central repository for managing all the information you need – sales, marketing, billing and support – on a single customer.

Not only can you use the data from your CRM to inform and update all your marketing apps, but you can also use integrations from other apps to bring data into your CRM and ensure your CRM is as up-to-date as possible. Enriching the data between CRM and marketing apps should be a two-way process.

CRM and email marketing campaigns

Integrating your CRM with an email marketing app such as Active Campaign, MailChimp, Sentori, Force24 or MailUp will provide you with accurate and in-depth insights into every contact’s interest, behaviour and communications preferences.

Insight into your email marketing database, thanks to your CRM, will enable you to segment audiences and create targeted communications, ensuring that your email marketing campaigns are as successful as they can be.

Approval processes

Created a draft of an article in WordPress? Integrate it with Slack so that it will be automatically posted to your manager, for them to approve and put live.

As a digital workspace and communication tool, Slack is ideal for team collaboration.

Social media integrations

Not only can social media integrations automate your social channels by automatically posting to your social channels, but they can also provide insight into your followers and the contact they like and share.

Schedule Facebook and Twitter posts ahead of time, engage and communicate with your LinkedIn network, and monitor Twitter streams and interactions with your competitors.

Abandoned basket flow

Sent to someone who added an item to their shopping cart but left without completing the purchase, an abandoned cart email sequence is one of the most valuable for an ecommerce business. With almost 70% of shopping carts abandoned on average, not contacting these customers is a wasted opportunity.

You can integrate your ecommerce store with the dedicated tools built into your platform email service, although this may tie you into which email service you can use. Alternatively, you can create your own custom flow, combining data from your various sales and marketing tools to provide your user with contextually relevant offers which should lead to a sale.

Reporting

Whether it’s getting email marketing campaign data, paid advertising data, revenue reporting, social media or advertising efforts, into a report (or multiple reports), integrations are the way forward. They will harvest the data you need and push it into your own dashboard. You can then combine it or slice and dice it your way to create bespoke reports from multiple sources.

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As you’ve seen from this select list of examples, there are plenty of integration options out there. Integration can also connect to wider parts of the business, for example, aligning sales and marketing in a passive, but effective way.

And if you can’t find an existing integration, then look to an iPaaS provider to help you develop your own. Creating your own bespoke integrations will enable you to select which data you want and combine it in different ways. And at the end of the day, the more bespoke your marketing is, the better it will be.