Hubspot is known as a leader in marketing automation, with one of the best marketing blogs I have come across on the Internet and having worked for a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startup, the blog is also one I would highly recommend as a part of one’s daily reading.
In the article “2 Ways Hubspot’s Marketing Automation Can Benefit Your Sales Team,” Chris Osterhout – a VP of Business Strategy with solid technical experience – discusses the benefits of marketing automation for improving sales efficiency.
The key benefits – according to Chris – is the ability to understand your customers better as well as providing a list of qualified leads, i.e. prospective customers who have expressed an interest in the product/service you are selling.
Img source: http://www.meltwater.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Screen-Shot-2015-02-02-at-1.38.58-PM.png
While the marketing automation industry certainly has its fair share of benefits that provide incremental time and energy savings to companies, especially resource-stretched startups, we are in danger of gearing closer towards automation and losing that personal touch that is so crucial to being a world-class service organization.
I see a lot of parallels with the manufacturing industry, where warehouses are typically organized to be as efficient as possible, with little time lost in between processes. With my family’s business being in custom suiting, I have seen firsthand the difficulty in streamlining what is a very variable production process, I do believe there can be a “happy medium” achieved in the world of manufacturing through “mass customization” – though even that has its own downsides.
Speaking to marketing automation, while working for the aforementioned SaaS startup, I found myself having to use multiple tools in order to use the data gathered by marketing automation software just to have a small degree of personalization when talking to customers. It is very easy to miss one small step and lose that personal touch, which is extremely difficult to come back from.
I have yet to find a “silver bullet” solution to this that does not involve using several tools, which might be considered counterintuitive and uses up the same amount of time that you saved up anyway. Thus, the industry still has a large gap to fill and businesses will be empowered to an even greater extent with a solution that manages to automate and customize personalization.
Please comment below for any thoughts on this or if you have seen any solutions that solves this problem.
Signing off,
Navin
Article reviewed: http://blog.wsol.com/2-ways-hubspots-marketing-automation-can-benefit-your-sales-team
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