• Digital Marketing, Marketing, Reviews
• 3 March 2016

Marketing automation is here to stay and the Mautic marketing automation tool is one free tool, you need to start using now!  Before the marketing automation war is over, there will be some giants slain in the marketing automation field.

As marketing professionals, we toil to find the best tools to use in our craft.  Looking forward, first we must look back.  Back in 2001, there was a great need for a platform that would allow the common man to create a website.  The creation of  B2 Cafelog was born by Michel Valdrighi in 2001. From B2 Cafelog grew the now world-renowned platform “WordPress”.  The beautiful thing about WordPress is that the platform is FREE to everyone.  What happened in the website world is now happening in the Marketing Automation world.  History does repeat itself!

Mautic is standing in a crowded playing field with some marketing automation giants that include: Hubspot, Marketo, Pardot… the list goes on. Everyone offers a free trial period or a situation where it’s free until so many users.

2 Main Problems | Paid Marketing Automation Tools
1.  It’s not free and the cost continues to rise for every contact that’s in your lead database.
2.  They can be very difficult for a very seasoned Marketing Communications Director to learn.

Let’s start at Marketo.  Marketo is regarded as one of the best in the industry.  The price of Marketo is enough to hold any small business down. If you have a database of leads that starts at 10K, expect to be in a nice contract starting at 2 years for at least $20K to start.  To make matters worse, the more contacts in your database, the more it will cost you moving forward.  Getting out of the contract will take an act of God and your lawyer.
This is not much different for the other players in the marketing automation scene.

Marketing Automation Pricing:

• Pardot Pricing
• Hubspot Pricing

Marketo can be cumbersome to use(understatement!!!).  You have to have a team of people to run it properly AND on top of that, they have to know how to use it.  I have seen a Marketing Director sit in a conference room for 2 days a week at 2 hours at a time over the course of 3 months, attempting to learn Marketo.  She failed miserably. Crashed and burned.  If you are using Adobe Creative Suite and then attempt to use Marketo, you will be thoroughly disgusted with the way it functions.

I was once told that Marketo is a marketing automation tool built by developers for developers to use.  I’ve used many CRM’s, eCommerce platforms etc. in my time, but Marketo is by far, the most ridiculous platform I have ever used.  This led us to research an easier tool for our customers to use.  This then brought us to Mautic.  With Mautic, we feel comfortable implementing marketing automation for a small to medium-size business, setting it up, and then teaching the organization how to use it for their needs along with ours.

We at BRANDfluencer live by this one question.  If our company were not here tomorrow (because every employee won the lottery), how easy would it be for your company to continue marketing the way you had with what we built for you.  If we could not teach our own children to use what we had built, we are not going to build it for you.  This is exactly why we are IN LOVE with Mautic.

My recommendation to any company that is new to marketing automation.  Use Mautic to get into the game.  It’s very easy to learn, and always free.  You’ve got nothing to lose.  If you have questions about Mautic, ask away!

See How Mautic Compares to the Competition