More than ever before, companies are expected to connect with their audience in an immediate and personal way. This is where email marketing and marketing automation can benefit your business.

A question we often receive when on-boarding new marketing automation clients is, whether they need to continue using their email service provider, or ESP.

Most marketing automation platforms can also send emails in bulk like an ESP. However, once you want to track interactions, followup with new prospects, and segment audiences, you need more than just a traditional ESP.

A Marketing Automation platform offers more functionality.

• Track social media, email, and website interactions with leads.
• Segment your mailing lists, allowing for more customized campaigns to targeted audiences.
• Support your sales process with personalized, email drip campaigns to individual leads. Internal sales notification emails ensure your sales team engages with leads in a timely way.
• Track more types of engagement than just email opens and clicks. You can track; visits to your website, shopping cart abandonment, form fills, chatbot conversations, booked meetings and sales opportunities.
• Attribute your marketing efforts. Centralizing all your marketing data on one platform, allows you to attribute your marketing efforts, and make more informed marketing and sales decisions.

Many Marketing Automation platforms cost more than an ESP. The Marketing Automation platform we offer our clients is a great option for many small and medium-sized businesses that need more capability and functionality at an affordable rate.

For a detailed comparison of the differences between Marketing Automation and Email Service Provider platforms download our checklist below.