Duct Tape Marketing - Latest Comments in Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Lori Feldman — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:49:08 -0000

I've used Swiftpage for 4 years and love it. Last year one of my email newsletters resulted in a 6-figure sale from an EXISTING client who didn't know I "did that." Of course, I didn't know he "needed that." Relevant, targeted E-marketing really works, and I'm thrilled that Swiftpage Email is about to release an AUTOMATED drip marketing program. I believe it will be the first time in marketing history that automating the critical business function of sales follow up will be within reach for any size business, no matter what their budget. (Full disclosure: I not only use Swiftpage, I'm one of their resellers. But I believe in "eating my own dogfood" so the rave is warranted.)

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

ocstandard — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:03:12 -0000

Godaddy has a nice email blast tool for beginners. It has alot of useful functions. You can creat pretty nice emails and moniter them from the dashboard.

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Randy Vaughn — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:41:32 -0000

Hey my other Marketing Twin, Donny, said the same thing I sware I was going to say (that's a twin thing). But I have now become addicted to JOTT. I have a thousand brainstorms or action items or "oughta-look-into-that!" ideas pop into my head all day long. So now, I can simply type in 55 on my speed dial on my Cell wherever I'm at and then JOTT myself the idea. JOTT sends me an email with that idea transcribed from my voice. It's great to get the idea out of my idea, but now I don't have to keep up with scrap pieces of paper with all these notes. I love it.
Randy Vaughn
Marketing Coach & Creative Director, www.1429creative.com
www.MarketingTwins.com

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Jason Kort — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:16:37 -0000

For companies that have already made the investment in a CRM like Salesforce.com, Netsuite, etc. I recommend checking out the SoftVu marketing automation platform. SoftVu integrates with existing on demand CRMs and provides more enhanced features like the ability to trigger rich media communications with real time view notifications.

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Donny — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:15:05 -0000

automation/outsourcing is definitely worth it if you can afford to do it. thanks for the link list you provided, i have not come across some of those sites and will check them out!

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Alex B. Worth — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 09:09:26 -0000

You know when talking about the Small Business Automation, one of the things I've recently discovered is having a virtual Assistant. Like having your own virtual staff, I got some amazing tips about it from David Ledoux's interview with Frank Kern's Virtual Assistant on his blog at:

Alex

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Jeff Mask — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:00:57 -0000

ahhh - marketing automation. just the sound of that gives me goosebumps. THAT is the key to small business success

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Sarah — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:12:56 -0000

OfficeAutopilot sounds good. We're looking for an budget-friendly contact/email list aggregator. Would love to know if something exists that can track sales numbers, too.

I give Basecamp a 6 out of 10. There were some frustrating elements of that product. We are trying eSupport right now.

http://insidesmb.blogspot.com/

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Shama Hyder — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:18:23 -0000

I also really like http://www.WinWeb.com. Free accounting software for small businesses.

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Daniel McGonagle @ http://dani — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:23:57 -0000

Hey, great list there...

I wasn't aware of some of those resources, thanks.

Another one you might want to include is http://automatedlinkbuildin... since it's automated and is definitely a service needed by all web site owners that want traffic.

Thanks,

Dan

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

JMoss — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:56:02 -0000

Great post...I linked it to our Chattanooga Business blog and posted some of our favs as well.

www.businesschatt.com

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Jim Durbin — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:29:13 -0000

John,

I noticed you didn't have mobile marketing on that list.

If I may add it - I'm working with a client that allows self-service automation of your mobile marketing program. You can run your own texting and mobile messaging, manage your opt-in list, and it's a monthly fee to do as much as you want.

http://store.blastmarketing...

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Andrew Wyatt — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:36:53 -0000

Know the companies, who are visiting our website and what they are looking for.
Getting leads from our website by identifying the company name and follow up in the CRM. The CRM is being fed with the data from the website visits, generating interest with sales. Giving a ongoing monitoring of the lead qualification.
LEADSExplorer

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Duane Davis — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:33:17 -0000

John,

Great resources. I use and recommend Basecamp, in fact I endorse the whole suite of resources from the 37Signals team. TextExpander is also a great tools for all disciplines.

Two thirds of the list I'd never heard of until now.

Thanks

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Donny — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:23:47 -0000

Jott has been a great tool for our Company. Being able to "jott" someone a quick note or to remind yourself of something with a quick Jott has been a tremendous asset.

Thanks John.

Donny Vaughn
1429Creative.com
Solutions Director

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Adam Blitzer — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:10:24 -0000

That is definitely a great list of apps that help small businesses market and sell more effectively. At Pardot we use Basecamp for project management with our clients and have gotten a great response. 27Signals did a great job of not over-engineering the product and produced a lightweight web app that has essentially no learning curve.

We also make heavy use of our own system (Prospect Insight) for marketing automation but there are plenty of great options available. It is definitely an exciting time for the SMB.

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Troy Bengford — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:25:24 -0000

We use OfficeAutopilot for tracking who's on our website and integrating email, direct mail, and phone follow up systems. It's incredible what you can do with this system.. and we checked around.

We looked at Vtrenz which is similar, but complicated and much more expensive. The other option was Infusion, but we werent excited about the $5k license fee. And OfficeAutopilot.com does the same and more (though without shopping card integration, which we didn't care about).

It's also integrated with Outlook, which our salespeople love.

We also use and love Basecamp for project management.

Thanks for the great blog,

Troy

Re: Automation, the small business marketer's friend

Koka — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:41:13 -0000

nice thoughtful post with some useful links to automation tools. thanks