Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Fabulicious Workbook Helps Assess CRM Integration Features of Marketing Automation Systems

CRM integration is a fundamental feature of marketing automation.  Pretty much every system can send leads to Salesforce.com, but capabilities vary significantly once you start looking for more.   Sadly, most marketers pay little attention to these nuances until they've already selected a product.  Then they learn they hard way what they should have asked.

In hopes of avoiding these mistakes, Raab Associates has just published a workbook on assessing integration capabilities before you buy.  The workbook lays out the types of integration, types of issues to consider, how to understand your needs, and how to assess vendor capabilities. It then gives ten pages of checklists with specific features to consider. the topic.  The workbook was sponsored by SalesFusion, although they didn't influence the contents.

This is an inherently dry subject, so I made the workbook as entertaining as I could. In fact, I may have exceeded the bounds of good taste: the topic allows a surprising number of double-entendres if you work at it. If you’re planning to buy a marketing automation system, be sure to download it from the Raab Guide site (free with registration) and take a look.

Even better, attend SalesFusion's December 6 Webinar on the topic (register here).  I won’t be presenting but you'll get great information and a copy of the new workbook.

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