Marketing Automation is scary powerful and can also be scary expensive but I have a few secrets that can help you add marketing automation but also keep the cost down.

Let’s be real -- the buying cycle in the association industry is much slower than in for-profit industries.  As a past for-profit sales manager, I basically had to forget everything I knew about sales rules and start fresh when I began working in the association industry.  In the for-profit industry, sales naturally move more quickly and the flow of the conversation is different.  Cold calling, being aggressive, and being blunt are expected. In the association industry, however, relationships matter and trying to sell someone something right away is, for the most part, frowned upon. 

HighRoad completed their Marketing Automation Workshop and the buzz in the room seemed to be people noticing how different an email marketing platform and a marketing automation platform really are…

I have heard many times this year from either clients or prospects that they are looking for a CRM and so a Marketing Automation platform isn’t really needed. So I went searching for reasons why this isn’t true and why it is better if they are together.

I left Robert O’Neill’s speech feeling inspired and excited about what I had just learned.  Life wasn’t so bad, and I didn’t have one bit of stress in my life that was anywhere near what he had gone through, especially from my job.  I felt like someone had just slapped some sense into me and I wanted to go slap some sense into as many people as I could.  I could not stop talking about this speech.  So when my boss came to me and asked if I would write a blog, I more then jumped at the chance.