Marketing automation is hot right now. There are a multitude of companies from HubSpot to a company CashSherpa is writing about today called SharpSpring.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation refers to software platforms that help businesses automate their marketing and sales engagement processes to generate more leads, convert those leads to sales and optimize ROI. Marketing automation allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks such as sending emails, maintaining social media, tracking website interactions and handling various other tasks. Marketing automation centralizes all of the features and functions that make up the marketer’s role in an organization.

A marketing automation platform should have the ability to integrate with other sales and marketing tools (CMS, CRM, social media, meeting software and more) to provide a streamlined platform for data management and analysis.

Learn more about Sharpspring

What Does Marketing Automation Software Do?

Drive More Leads
Convert Those Leads into Sales
Maximize Marketing Spend.
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Compare Marketing Automation

SharpSpring Feature List

Email – Put an end to boring, mass email blasts and save time on your marketing strategy. Start conversations that lead to conversions with personalized messages and automated campaigns that respond to user behavior. Use the SharpSpring email marketing platform to track leads “after the click.” Unlike other email service providers, we offer detailed analytics on every interaction – so you can send the right message at the right time, and send your sales team into action with real-time notifications.

Forms – Build, customize and reorder fields effortlessly with the sleek drag-and-drop editor. Our dynamic forms autocomplete fields for known visitors to improve conversion and look great on any site with custom CSS. You can even map fields from 3rd-party and native forms.

Automation – Our powerful, easy-to-use visual workflow builder simplifies marketing automation. Use branching logic to engage leads at critical points in their unique buying journeys. Instantaneously sync information with our built-in marketing automation CRM suite. Set up buyer personas for your products and services, then assign leads to different personas so that you can send automatically targeted messages. Receive a list of each day’s hottest leads right to your inbox, and act at just the right time to convert them to sales. Use SharpSpring’s marketing automation tools to score leads based on engagement, page tracking, fit and more – they even factor in natural lead decay over time.

Visitor ID – VisitorID is one of the secret weapons in our stack of marketing automation tools. Use it to identify twice as many visitors to your site (compared to competing marketing platforms). Use behavioral-based tracking to truly understand what motivates each click. Identify pain points and successful strategies so that your website never stops optimizing. Receive a list of the day’s hottest leads directly to your inbox, and act at just the right time to convert those leads to sales.

CRM – Knowledge is power – and CRM is sales. Use our marketing automation CRM or seamlessly integrate your preferred CRM provider with the SharpSpring marketing platform. Keep integrated data up to speed with instant two-way synchronization. Track opportunities from creation to close with a bird’s eye view of your pipeline. Create custom deal stages, fields, filters and more, to manage sales effortlessly with our marketing automation tools.

Landing Pages – Build powerful landing pages and landing page funnels that transform visitors into leads. Use our simple point-and-click editor to create unique landing pages, or adapt a template from our extensive library. Set up chains of linked landing pages to organize visitors into different funnels. Drive more conversions with dynamic web content that changes based on visitors’ interests and attributes. Deliver results quickly without coding or a developer, and without touching your website – but for those who want total control, you can add your own HTML and CSS code to customize pages even further.

Blogs – Launch a blog in minutes with the blog builder and editor in our marketing automation system. Design, manage and publish posts with ease. Set up collaborations within your team, or create profiles to welcome guest bloggers. Extend the reach of your content with RSS email syndication that automatically sends new posts to your mailing lists. Get more reach out of your content with social media widgets that allow users to share and follow you online. Use SharpSpring’s marketing automation tools to track visitors, find out which content performs best, and target posts to maximize conversions.

Marketing Analytics – Make key decisions with accurate and relevant data. Choose the most important metrics for each campaign and message, then generate custom reports to review your performance. Understand end-to-end ROI and track lead sources – even from offline. Share key information with your team, clients, and customers in a readable and accessible display.

Platform – Connect to hundreds of third-party software providers with SharpSpring’s APIs and Zapier integration. Sync data with your marketing automation CRM systems, keep your content management systems updated and integrate native and third party web forms with our marketing platform. Truly make SharpSpring your own by rebranding emails, notifications, reports, and even the app itself. Store data on our encrypted, secure, and scalable platform.

Social – Go beyond publishing, scheduling, and monitoring. Turn social interactions into meaningful conversations that generate sales and show up in your marketing reports. SharpSpring Social offers all the features you expect from a social management solution, plus powerful conversion tools you can only get from a fully-integrated marketing platform. Trigger automated workflows and score social leads based on interactions, sources, interests and more. Measure end-to-end ROI of integrated marketing campaigns and demonstrate the value of your social media efforts.

Visit Sharp Spring for more info

5 Reasons Why You Should Still Blog

Blogging is a concept that started in late 1990s and has evolved ever since. It used to be a way to comment an existing webpage, an opportunity for visitors and readers to react or voice out one?s opinion on the said topic. What started as a single-sentence commentary has evolved into pages of personal take on just about anything and everything under the sun. Is addition to sites like WordPress there are micro blogging sites like Tumblr. As it continues to move forward, online advertising has tapped into the blog?s potential. Here are 5 reasons why you should use blogging as an Internet marketing tool.

1. Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get your piece on the net is through blogging. No skills are necessary? an average adult can read and type, or at least click a mouse. It?s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. If you have a PC and an Internet connection (who doesn’t?) then you can blog and advertise.

2. Blogging is authentic. In this day and age where advertising saturate our lives, we question the credibility of promoters? claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, unscathed by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience. You definitely want to buy a tried and tested product.

3. Blogging is free. Because blogging is yet to be proven as a mainstream online advertising media, most sites see it as something to augment current marketing tools and thus offer it for free. Any opportunity for free webtime is definitely a bonus especially to businesses that are starting up. Needless to say, paid blog pages can generate more income for your seriously growing business.

4. Blogging builds credibility. As you get more and more into writing your experiences on a particular product or industry, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts for their own information needs. As such, you become an expert on it; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs. As companies and professional organizations notice the growth of your readership base, they may soon get in touch with you for advertising on your blog page, or make you an affiliate, which pays for every referral generated from your blog site.

5. Blogging builds your market. Unless you are a Hollywood star, chances are, only your Mom reads your posts. Mom has a lot of friends, so she lets her friends know how interesting your blog site is. But you need not depend on Mom to increase your readership base. Look into the following ways to build your market through blogging:

-By using your e-mail. Today, blogging is overcoming the e-mail?s popularity in quickly and effectively reaching and expanding a market. In this age of speed and quick access, logging in and downloading e-mail is simply taking longer than clicking into a blog site. Let them explore your site by using a short e-mail message as teaser to your blog site. If your e-mail is on an entirely different subject, use your e-mail signature to give a link to the site.

-By using subscription. An easy way to get your readers e-mail is to give them an opportunity to subscribe to your blog site. Keep some exclusive information for your subscribers to entice readers to subscribe and give their e-mail address. Just be responsible in using their e-mail address, as the last thing you want is a comment on your blog that you are a spammer. Aweber is what CashSherpa.com uses to collect e-mail addresses.

-By understanding your readers. Conduct a simple survey for your readers to understand their profile and advertising preferences. Ask consumers to give you feedback on a post, an ad link, or a trial that you shared. In this way, it is like interviewing your readers without the commitment and intrusion of a face-to-face interview.

-By joining a blog network ?A network of blogs maybe a collection of blog sites that share the same industry, interest, readership base, payment mode, etc. Consumers find credibility and convenience in clicking one link to several real bloggers about a single subject. Clearly, more bloggers are better than one.

-By using RSS. RSS is the fastest growing technology on the Internet today. As such, having RSS feeds to your blog is definitely another means of generating awareness for your readership base. Having a variety of feeds can add interest to your blog site.

Give your business a boost by effectively using blogging as an Internet marketing tool.

Social Media Tools – Some That I Use

I think the best way to learn is to teach. So today I thought I’d share some tools that will help you drive more traffic with social media.

One of the best ways to find trending content to share on social media is using a site called Buzzsumo http://www.buzzsumo.com/. The site is amazing for finding trending content. One can also search for content using keywords. Hands down this is one of the best tools out there and at $99/month for the beginner package it’s well worth it. There is also a free version of the site too, but it’s very limited.

More tools to help you find trending content

– Find today’s top trending content from Amazon to Yahoo http://soovle.com/top/

– Find the top content from around the world on an interactive map http://trendsmap.com/

Editing photos for social media

– Canva https://www.canva.com

– This site is awesome and free and no registration https://pixlr.com/editor/

Analyze your Facebook pages

– Analyze and monitor your Facebook Pages http://likealyzer.com/

Old Time Poster DrasticDeals.com Advertising

Check out the old time post we just did for DrasticDeals.com advertising. What do you think?

Why No One Talks About Print Marketing Anymore

Video on why no one talks about print marketing anymore and how to take advantage of this.

Tips For Success Through Instagram Marketing Advertising

Instagram is a modern marketing tool that is extremely popular and is referred to as the marketing tool that is considered to be the most powerful one in the world. It is like any other social networking site but the only difference from others is that it is a platform on which photos, videos and other pictures can be shared. The Instagram users are enabled to apply filters that are digitally applied. It can be shared on multiple networking sites. One of its unique features is that it shapes the photos into a confined square shape and enables recording of video of not more 15 seconds long.

Today Instagram is used as a marketing tool by many organizations promoting their products or services. Firstly the images and pictures trigger a curiosity in people and they suddenly take an interest in looking at the images and pictures closely. This action of their by itself is the very success of Instagram as a marketing tool. Sometimes it is so effective that it brings forth comments thereby generating an interest in the product that is visualized and creating a potential customer for the product. The addition of a new feature like Instagram Direct makes it possible for the account holder to share the images and pictures with only a select group of people thereby making it possible to maintain discretion in the sharing.

Effective use of Instagram marketing process is sure to show results as it is a valuable tool that has a wide reach and is easily accessible. To make it really effective, you need to increase your data base of contacts and by ensuring you add at least a couple of people you know to your contact list you are steadily increasing your database and at the same time ensuring that the pictures of your product reaches out to the desired audience. When sharing pictures and images make sure that the quality of them are exceptional as the quality of a picture is the first attraction that makes people look at it.   Sharing your content with friends and contacts on Instagram is sure to open up vistas in business that can make a success of it quite easily.

Instagram Marketing Strategy involves the business owner to be extremely interactive and highly communicative as it is part of the marketing techniques on Instagram. Engaging yourself actively on Instagram makes it possible to speak about your product or service, answer queries about it and ensure that your product is spoken about by most of your contact on Instagram. Consistency is another factor that must be followed in order to make sure that the marketing process is taking place as planned and as desired.

Today with registered users numbering to more than one million, there is perhaps no better marketing tool than Instagram for the promotion of a business. Moreover, it is possible to connect the Instagram account to other social networking site accounts making the networking even wider than before.  Tools like these have made advertising and marketing innovative and with new trends emerging every day, it is possible to reach out to a greater audience without having to make it an expensive process.