Marketing automation is the intersection of many useful features and functions. It's a proven fact that marketing automation software gives marketers full visibility into aspects of the sales cycle that were previously a mystery. But the sheer number of buttons and tools can seem daunting if they're not old-hat to you just yet.
As you begin to build an effective marketing automation program, you can begin to gain a holistic view of your marketing activities. From there, you can streamline traditionally manual processes (like customer segmentation, email marketing, and campaign management).
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STRATEGY
OVERVIEW:
Each Thursday
at 11am EST, marketers from around the world join the ExactTarget
user community on Twitter for a conversation about trends and
campaign ideas across the interactive marketing industry. We call
this virtual coffee chat ExactTarget Café.
If you're a
client of ExactTarget, you definitely are. But even so, there's
some practical steps you can take to make sure you don't ever cross
that easily-blurred line of being non-CAN-SPAM
complaint. 
Websites have evolved so much since the inception of
the World Wide Web. I recall first receiving a book on HTML for my
13th birthday and being incredibly excited to begin making my first
Web pages. (Note: for those asking why I was coding HTML at age 13,
I often ask myself the same question.) Back then, you had your
website published on something like Geocities, Angelfire, or some
other free provider who was willing to take on the expense of
hosting while displaying horrific ads to monetise their business
model. Only if you were serious did you have a domain!
Not that long ago while working for a web
analytics company, I went on a joint sales call with our founder
Peter McCormick who was a partner of mine at the time. While
neither of us were technically sales people, here we were in the
boardroom of a Fortune 100 client pitching the benefits of a lead
nurture campaign. For their part the client had very realistic
expectations, after all they had believed most of what they
had been told by their vendors.
How do you communicate with your customers about relevant
and new products or services offered at your organization? I
receive postal mail from every Financial Services company I have a
relationship with on a weekly basis that I quickly turn around and
recycle. Alternatively, I don’t receive any postal mail from
any of my favorite retailers – instead, they send me emails.
Between sessions, the intrepid staff of the Westin brought
in several more chairs, effectively ensuring that no one will be
sitting on the floor this time. There wouldn't be room, even if
they wanted to.
When you talk about SMS marketing messages, you always
talk about it in terms of the mobile device. 
