A guide to marketing automation integration

Investment in marketing automation platforms is expected to rise over the next few years due to the increase in big data and the need for more personalized content. 

As platforms like HubSpot and Marketo play a bigger role in your organization’s operations and that of your clients, the benefits of integration far outweigh the costs.

To help you integrate the software successfully, we’ll break down the different forms marketing automation integration can take, common use cases, and the benefits these use cases provide.

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What is marketing automation integration?

It’s the process of connecting either one or multiple marketing automation platforms with your internal applications or your product. Once connected, you can keep specific types of data between the systems in sync in, or near, real-time.

Related: What is SaaS integration?

Examples of marketing automation integration

Since marketing automation integration can involve either internal integration or external (i.e. customer-facing) integration scenarios, its use cases naturally vary quite widely. 

Let’s break it down by highlighting use cases for each scenario:

Internal marketing automation integration examples 

Marketing automation integration can be applied internally by both B2B and B2C companies across all kinds of industries. Here are just a few examples:

Lead enrichment

To help your team determine how warm a lead is and the campaign they should get added to, you can integrate your marketing automation platform with a data enrichment solution (e.g. Clearbit) and build the following workflow: Any time a lead gets added to your marketing automation platform, it’s automatically enriched via the data enrichment provider. The enriched data can include anything from the company’s industry to its size to the company’s contacts that match your ideal customer profile.

Related: What you need to know about CRM APIs

Lead routing

To ensure leads get assigned on time and to the right rep, you can connect your marketing automation platform with your CRM and sync key fields, like company name, industry, address, company size, etc. 

Based on the information that’s synced in your CRM, the lead can automatically get assigned to the right rep. The rep can then get notified, review all of the information on the account within the opportunity page in the CRM, and take action—all within minutes.

Related: Common examples of software integration

Personalized outreach

Consumer products, such as D2C brands, spend a lot of time optimizing consumer purchase behavior based on available data. By taking advantage of consumer data on e-commerce platforms, such as Shopify, brands can send targeted newsletters, SMS blasts, and notifications to their buying audience to influence behavior via their marketing automation platform. 

Dealer and distributor management 

Marketing automation integration isn’t just limited to digital or consumer products. Material industries, such as manufacturing, can take advantage of the automations built into Marketo or HubSpot to schedule communication for order processing, inventory updates, and product information tailored to distributors and dealers.

Related: Examples of API integration

Customer-facing marketing automation integration examples 

B2B SaaS applications also invest in customer-facing, or product, integrations to allow their own customers to bring their marketing automation data into their applications. 

Here are a few examples:

Lead generation

If your app is a lead capture tool or provides any form of lead engagement, integrating with marketing automation platforms can allow for instant transfer of lead data, triggering immediate automated follow-up actions.

Event management

For apps that manage events or webinars, integration allows users to automate invitations, follow-ups, and nurture campaigns for attendees based on their interactions with the event content.

Identify high-propensity deals

By ingesting data on a contact's engagement with marketing materials, your app can significantly aid sales leaders in identifying likely buyers and understanding customer profiles. This integration facilitates targeted sales strategies and timely engagements, enhancing the probability of purchase.

Report on ROI from your product

By leveraging the data stored in marketing automation platforms — such as click-through-rates, deal sizes and stages, and engagement — your product can better report on its own efficacy in helping your customer’s overall GTM stack. 

Benefits of marketing automation integration

Similar to the above examples, the benefits of marketing automation integration help internal and external use cases differently.

Benefits of internal-facing marketing automation integration

Here are some of the benefits of internal integrations:

Increased efficiency

Automating data syncs between applications like Marketo and Salesforce or Shopify saves employees time. What was typically done by manual CSV upload or entry can happen automatically in minutes. 

Enhanced accuracy

Automation reduces the likelihood of human error, and human error is costly. IBM has estimated that $3 trillion is lost every year due to bad data. In addition, automatic updates ensure that the data is consistent across all platforms at all times, which is crucial for maintaining the integrity of reporting and decision-making processes.

Improved customer insights

Marketing automation integration enables a deeper analysis of customer interactions and behaviors. This leads to a better understanding of customer needs and preferences, which can inform targeted marketing strategies and personalized customer experiences.

Proactive sales engagement

With real-time data at their fingertips, sales teams can proactively engage with potential buyers. They can respond to customer actions swiftly, such as website visits or email opens, increasing the chances of conversion.

Related: Benefits of ATS integration

Benefits of customer-facing marketing automation integration

Here are some of the benefits of customer-facing integrations:

Decrease churn

By connecting to your customers' marketing automation platforms, you can enable your product to benefit from a single source of truth for marketing data which can increase the stickiness of your product. This, in turn, can increase customer retention since it eliminates the friction of switching between systems.

Additionally, your competition won’t be able to use 'the fact that their product doesn’t integrate with the client’s marketing automation platform’' as a competitive advantage.

Increase your sellable addressable market (SAM)

By integrating with a wide variety of marketing automation platforms, you’re able to increase your total addressable market. Think of it this way: Prospects are more likely to pay for your product if it already integrates with the software they use, such as ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, or HubSpot.

Continue first-mover momentum

If you’re first to market by offering integrations, you’ll have a “lock-out”— or key functionality that your competitor doesn’t offer — requirement over your competition. 

App integrations aren’t subjective, and offering more over your competition can be a major win in your go-to-market motion. Therefore, consider the platforms you’d need to integrate strategically and whether or not they’re already offered by your competitors.

Meet Merge

Merge offers a single way for B2B companies to offer multiple customer-facing marketing automation integrations at once. This allows your product to benefit from these integrations, while your engineers don’t have to build and maintain them.

Interested in learning more about Merge? You can schedule a demo with one of our integration experts to see the platform in action.