Marketing automation is how a small team covers the channels a large one does, and its return is measured in time and budget rather than in features. This article explains what marketing automation is, what it gives a business, and then goes through VBOUT — an all-in-one platform for it — feature by feature, with the plan and the trial as they stood when this was published in August 2021.
What marketing automation is
Marketing automation means software platforms that automate marketing engagement and sales engagement processes in order to generate more leads. What a company buys with one is control of its own time inside a fixed budget: the repetitive work stops being done by hand, and the hours that frees go somewhere else.
What automation gives a business
Five advantages come up most often, and they compound rather than sitting side by side:
- Efficiency — posting to social media by hand is time a team does not have, and automating those posts frees it for work that needs a person.
- Better qualified leads — combining several criteria with a lead scoring system is what separates a sales-qualified lead from a contact, and it makes it straightforward to see what a consumer is looking for and offer it at the right moment.
- Reach on every channel — the same platform targets prospects with personalised ads across social networks and sends a company-wide email campaign, on whichever device the audience is using.
- Alignment of sales and marketing — running both from one system aligns the goals, so the two functions are working from the same picture rather than negotiating over it.
- Conversion rate improvement — tracking leads and retargeting them is how they become customers, and the data it extracts about who is interested is useful on its own.
What VBOUT is
VBOUT is an all-in-one marketing automation platform that puts social media, landing pages, lead management and email marketing into one system, with analytics across all of it. Managing everything from one place is the product’s whole argument: a lead can be captured, scored, emailed and reported on without changing tools.
- Automation workflows connect repetitive tasks across channels
- Lead management captures, segments, enriches and scores contacts
- Email marketing combines templates, personalisation, testing and delivery analysis
- Landing pages connect customised content to the wider lead journey
- Social media management schedules, monitors and assigns profiles from one place
- Analytics brings website, social and email reporting into configurable dashboards
Automation: workflows without programming
VBOUT ships ready-made workflow templates, so a marketer can run a workflow without first building one. Repetitive tasks can be automated in seconds with no programming knowledge, using a drag and drop visual workflow builder, and cross-channel automation connects the channels so a lead meets one continuous experience rather than several disconnected ones.
Lead management: forms, segments and intelligence
Lead management starts at the form and ends at a score. VBOUT’s drag and drop form builder customises lead capture forms for landing pages or popups; contacts can be imported without limit and segmented into lists with smart filters, all from one place. Integrated Lead Intelligence then fills in the behaviour behind each contact — the IP Locator reports where a visitor came from and which browser and device they used — and Lead Scoring ranks leads by progress so effort goes where it converts. An integrated meeting scheduler closes the loop: share a link, let the guest pick a time, and it is set in Google Calendar in real time.
Email marketing: templates, personalisation and testing
Building an email campaign from scratch is the slowest part of the job, which is what ready-to-use templates and pre-designed blocks are for — or upload your own HTML and design with custom layouts. Personalisation comes from merge tags and active content: animated GIFs, countdowns, CTA buttons, add-to-calendar events. Before it goes out, preview it across devices, browsers and clients, and use the in-depth analytics and A/B testing to find what actually gets engagement.
Landing pages, white-labelled and personalised
Landing pages are built in one click and then made yours: customise pre-designed blocks to match your branding, or upload an HTML template and change it. The pages can be white-labelled onto your own domain names rather than VBOUT’s default URL, and their content can change based on a visitor’s data, which is how attention is held past the first screen. They integrate with automation, email marketing, lead scoring, user tracking and analytics, so a page is measured as part of the funnel rather than on its own.
Social media management from one platform
Every social channel runs from one screen rather than from several accounts opened in turn. Profiles can be organised into groups, and multiple brands and profiles assigned to individual team members, which is the part that matters for an agency. Monitoring and replying work from any device at any time, recurring content and scheduled posts go out on a timetable, and the analytics report how each channel is doing — including what people are saying, found through hashtags or keyword geo-search.
Analytics: dashboards you build yourself
Reporting covers the website, the social profiles and the email campaigns in one view, which is what makes it possible to see whether leads are converting and whether landing pages are sending people where they should go. You build the dashboard rather than accept one: over 30 drag and drop reporting widgets, one dashboard per team member if you want, with your own metrics, calendars, lists, funnels and KPIs. Custom parameters can be defined against specific business objectives, scheduled to send automatically, shared by public URL or exported to PDF.
What the plan includes, and what the trial costs
The Professional Plan is built around the word unlimited: unlimited contacts in lead management lists, unlimited social profiles, unlimited landing pages, unlimited analytics reports, plus automation and custom branding, and 5,000 personalised emails a month with the option to send up to 500,000 a month. The trial is 14 days, with no obligation, no contract and no credit card — so it ends on its own rather than needing to be cancelled.
Our verdict
We rate VBOUT because it is easy to use, the contacts are unlimited and the plans are flexible — which is a different set of reasons from the ones a feature list gives. It suits eCommerce, education, enterprise, small business and SaaS alike, for the same reason in each case: it saves time and effort. There is a personalised, dedicated support team behind it and a FAQ section that is genuinely useful for the first steps into automation.
We test new software continuously so you do not have to. Read more on our blog, or find us on Instagram and Facebook — and if you would rather have the automation set up than shop for it, leave us a message.
Frequently asked questions
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation means software platforms that automate marketing engagement and sales engagement processes in order to generate more leads. The reason companies adopt it is time and budget: the same team covers more channels because the repetitive part of the work stops being done by hand.
What does VBOUT do?
VBOUT is an all-in-one marketing automation platform that brings social media, landing pages, lead management and email marketing into one system, with analytics over the top. The point of the single system is that a lead can be captured, scored, emailed and reported on without moving between products.
What is included in the VBOUT Professional Plan?
The Professional Plan includes unlimited contacts in lead management lists, unlimited social profiles, unlimited landing pages, automation, unlimited analytics reports, custom branding, and 5,000 personalised emails a month, with the option to send up to 500,000 emails a month.
Does VBOUT have a free trial?
VBOUT offers a 14-day free trial with no obligation, no contract and no credit card required. Because nothing is charged and no card is held, the trial ends by itself rather than by being cancelled.
What are VBOUT Lead Scoring and Lead Intelligence?
Lead Scoring ranks leads by their progress so a sales team works the ones closest to converting. Integrated Lead Intelligence builds the picture behind that score from visitor behaviour, and its IP Locator reports where a visitor came from and which browser and device they used.
What reporting does VBOUT provide?
VBOUT reports across the website, social profiles and email campaigns in one place, and lets you build a personal dashboard, or several for different team members, from over 30 drag and drop reporting widgets. Custom parameters can be defined for specific business objectives, scheduled to send automatically, shared by public URL or exported to PDF.
