GetResponse has been talking about their new Marketing Automation features since April. This week they officially released the beta of GetResponse Marketing Automation. The key features of GetResponse Marketing Automation are to build automated campaigns, tagging and scoring as well as a visual campaign builder.
GetResponse Marketing Automation
Before we go into the specifics, here is a video that explains the use and features for businesses and marketers that are looking for marketing automation functions to help achieve their goals.
(with the obligatory banjo background music).
Building logical automated campaigns
GetResponse Marketing Automation works on simple “if… then” logic. Users can use multiple conditions, actions and filters to visually build automated campaigns. For example, if an email is not opened, then the customer is sent a reminder the next day. Although it goes further than that.
Tagging and scoring audience profiles
Users can design workflows that automatically score and tag customers based on their reactions to offers and content.
Over time, the GetResponse Marketing Automation system creates profiles that marketers can use to build behavioral campaigns:
- Lead scoring and grading
- Evaluate customer engagement and loyalty,
- Inspect prospect readiness to buy,
- Gather interests.
For a full overview of the platform, have a look at our complete GetResponse review.
Visual automation workflows
Users can setup marketing campaigns with a drag-and-drop, visual workflow automation builder. Within a workflow, conditions trigger actions.
Conditions:
the following conditions that are available, although to keep consise some are mentioned a bit further below under “e-commerce journey”.
- Scoring: Use scoring to define the group of subscribers that you want to address by their score value.
- Subscribe: You can narrow your search to those who subscribed to a certain campaign or used a certain sign-up method.
- Message Open: Set this condition to find those who opened an email — one specific message or any message.
- Message link clicked: Use this condition to find those who clicked a specific link. Optionally, set a time limit on when they clicked the link.
- Tag value: Set this condition to find subscribers you’ve (automatically or manually) tagged in the past. (more about this later.
The counterparts, like failure to open an email, click a link, or buy within a specified period can also be used as conditions.
Marketers can use these triggered actions for example to Send an offer for a cross-sell product, Add subscriber to an autoresponder campaign or Resend messages.
Targeting filters
Users can add what GetResponse calls targeting filters on ranges, amounts or set delays:
- Range: Use this filter to limit the segment to a specified range. For example first ten subscribers who open an email, click a link, or purchase a specified offer.
- Amount: Set this filter to define the number of subscribers who receive the action. Example: send a gift certificate to 10 subscribers only.
- Delay: Use this filter to define time to wait before taking the action. Example: Wait three days and after non-click, send the next email in a series.
Track and respond to a customer’s e-commerce journey
Users can track the customer journey across any desired e-commerce site, mapping activity at three potential points of engagement.
Here is an example video of GetResponse Marketing Automation for ecommerce marketers that shows how to plan a “thank you for your order” post purchase flow in the visual campaign builder.
The user can set up triggering conditions often seen in e-commerce, based on:
Shopping cart abandonment: Track if an online cart has been abandoned and encourage a completed purchase.
Visited url / page: Learn if a subscriber has visited a specific e-commerce page or URL and keep track of their interests.
Purchase behavior: Learn if a subscriber has purchased product and act on it.
These data points can be used to build the customer profile within GetResponse and trigger new campaigns.
GetResponse Marketing Automation Pricing
GetResponse has a monthly pricing based on the number of subscribers, packaged with some additional features. The GetResponse marketing automation pricing is included in their main product, so it is not an “extra”.
The only exception is for the “email” package that has limited marketing automation features. Which makes a lot of sense, but you don’t want that one anyway because it lacks email split testing. So it basically starts with the Pro package and 5.000 subscribers for $49 per month.
You can see the pricing overview here. Below is the price for 25.000 subscribers.
Marketing Automation
According to the press release and video, GetResponse is changing the adoption of Marketing Automation, which historically found too complicated and expensive for smaller organizations.
Simon Grabowski, GetResponse Founder and CEO shares his view on Marketing Automation and the barrier to adoption:
“Despite its benefits, many marketers fear marketing automation, believing they have to change their business to fit the platform they adopt. “This isn’t an unwarranted fear, however, as most automation services are clunky, cumbersome and take months to integrate into a business.
At GetResponse, we have solved for that complexity, designing our new solution to be both easy and advanced. With our interface, any marketer can create and launch a complex automated campaign with the use of visual workflows.”
For more information on the marketing automation features, check out our updated and full GetResponse review.
The GetResponse Marketing Automation Hub (it is not what you think)
Alongside the launch of GetResponse Marketing Automation (the software), GetResponse has also built a new part of their site with blogs, webinars, and ebooks on digital marketing (automation) strategy. Called the marketing Automation hub.
MA Hub writers
These contributors all have pretty great blogs themselves, so you should definitely check them out. Linked below with their site and piece they made for the hub, enough for a weekend (i mean like 48hrs) full of Marketing Automation reading. 🙂
Our note on the name: The knowledge resource is promoted as the Marketing Automation Hub, which is a pretty brilliant move on their part to emphasize the fact that they are a Hubspot alternative, and to a lesser degree research firms Gleanster, Forrester, and G2crowd.
A Marketing Automation Hub is what is normally classified as a type of Marketing Automation software, a software category. And in that move might be a glimpse of where the vendor is headed with their strategy.
