6 criteria to evaluate your marketing automation tool
There are currently over 9,500 MarTech tools on the market. So, on an average day, we spend at least an hour gathering information from various tools. Many feel overwhelmed by the number of tools they interact with while working.
Therefore, it is essential to consciously choose the marketing automation tool we work with every day. Because the immense number of tools we interact with every day means that we often change context. This in turn influences our creativity and focus.
However, finding the best marketing tool is not always easy. We spend a lot of time learning a tool and setting it up to fit us, only to find that it doesn’t fit quite right after all. How can we avoid this? How do you find the right marketing automation tool that fits the needs of your business? In this post we share 6 important criteria according to which you can evaluate tools and thus find the right one.
Use Case: What do you want to use the marketing tool for?
When choosing a marketing automation tool, it’s important not to get lost in the features of the tool, but to first consider what you want to use the tool for. In other words, which specific use cases do you want to fulfill with the tool? What specific goal and benefit should the tool fulfill for your business?
Once you’ve determined your basic use case and feature set, you can start to compare the different tools and think about what makes them different. Because that gives you the basis to evaluate the available tools in a targeted manner. Don’t forget that the more complex the tool, the more time and energy your team will need to learn the tool. Important in evaluating the marketing automation tool in terms of your use case is the point that you can map your sales funnels with the tool.
Cost: Is your budget compatible with the cost?
How much does it cost to get started with the tool? And what are the costs for the setup of the tool? But also, what will the marketing tool cost me over several years?
In terms of costs, it is recommended to look at the costs of the tools for the next 3 years. Nowadays, entry-level prices are often very favorable and thus deceive about the high and later emerging costs. If the cost of the marketing automation tool is sustainable for you over the next 3 years, the tool meets the goal in this area.
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Stability: Is the performance of the marketing automation tool enough for you?
The next point is the question of the tool’s stability. Is the tool powerful enough for your purpose? How does the tool, i.e. the technology behind it, behave when there is a temporary increase in the number of visitors?
These are important questions that need to be clarified in order to avoid performance problems later on. Here, the marketing tool fulfills the goal if the tool can also absorb larger fluctuations in your communication activities.
Support: Are you getting the support you need?
What happens when difficulties, problems or questions arise? Does the tool provide professional support and reliable help for problems that need to be fixed quickly?
With these questions, you will find out what service and support the company offers beyond the tool and what other costs you might face. The marketing automation tool gets a better score on this point if you get exactly the support offering you need. The goal is to make sure you get reliable support when you have problems or questions.
Security: Can you trust the tool with sensitive data?
Another evaluation point for tools is whether you trust the tool and the company behind it. What is your impression? Do you trust that your sensitive customer data is safe here?
Criteria that you can add to this point is firstly the geographical location and their policies. In this way, you can find out whether the tool complies with the legal requirements and find out whether the marketing automation tool is also suitable in terms of data protection. Here, you should clarify the geographical location of the data storage and, if applicable, the data processing, and ask yourself whether you can explain to your customers in good conscience where their data is processed and stored. The goal of security is met when you handle sensitive data in a legally compliant and fair manner.
Sustainability: Is the tool innovative?
Finally, it is important to make sure that the marketing automation tool can accompany you for a certain period of time. The tool enables you to do this with smooth integration into current and future IT landscapes. So you should consider here if your industry solutions can be connected?
And in case your needs change and you want to switch tools, it’s important that your data can be fully exported or deleted. For the assessment of future viability, it is important that you can map your medium-term strategy with the tool.
Summary for evaluating your marketing automation tool
Once again, short and crisp zus. The 6 most important criteria to compare tools to find the right marketing automation tool for you are:
- Use Case: Check if your funnels can be mapped.
- Costs: Check if your case will still be viable in 2-3 years.
- Stability: Check if the tool also maps larger fluctuations in your communication activities.
- Support: Check if you get the support you want.
- Security: Check if you are legally compliant and fair.
- Future viability: Check if you can map your medium-term strategy.
Want to get started right away? Then you can directly download the detailed utility analysis for tool evaluation. And to strengthen your motivation once again, you can get inspired by the 5 main reasons why marketing automation is worthwhile,
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