Marketing Automation with Mautic

Web Hosting Podcast

What is Mautic?

Mautic is a marketing automation platform. There is a paid version at mautic.com and a open source self hosted community version at mautic.org

First, lets talk about marketing automation. If you are familiar with applications like, hootsuite, hubspot and mailchimp, then you likely have already seen or used a marketing automation tools. The idea or concept is simple, marketing automation is the act of using software to automate marketing actions. This alleviates the repetitive tasks that are executed during a marketing campaign. These could include, email, social media, and other actions related to marketing your online presence.

Mautic is either a paid solution or a self hosted open source solution. I am going to specifically discuss the mautic.org version or self hosted version.

Requirements:

PHP 5.6.19 php 7.0 supported

Mysql with innodb 5.5.3

Web server: apache 2.x, nginx 1.x , iis

Pro:

Free with a paid option, active development and updates. Active community. Addons for just about anything you can think of. Works both in desktop browser and mobile friendly.

Cons:

Not the easiest to install. Must setup cron jobs correctly. Documentation is a little lacking in clarity. Easy to get overly excited about all the options, sidetrack syndrome.

mautic includes 31 integration plugins installed by default (list below). This can be expanded by installing additional plugins from the mautic marketplace located here. There are also many ways to integrate common CMS applications into mautic, like wordpress, magento or woocommerce by using CMS plugins.

Mautic plugins available after install.

Amazon s3

Clearbit

ConnectWise

Constant Contact

Dynamics CRM

Facebook

FourSquare

FullContact

Gmail

Google+

GoTo Suite

HubSpot

iContact

Instagram

Linkedin

MailChimp

Mautic Focus

OneSignal

OpenStack

Outlook

Pipedrvie

Rackspace

Salesforce

SugarCRM

Twillo

Twitter

vTiger

Zoho

I personally have been using the twitter plugin and a plugin for wordpress. The wordpress plugin allows my contact form data to be inserted into mautic. I use contact form 7 and the associated mautic plugin to do this. The twitter integration allows me to gather twitter data that is permitted by the twitter API and capture it inside of mautic.

The email portion of mautic allows you to do targeted email marketing using contacts you collect. The collection process can be any way you choose. A simple example would be from a contact form on your site, or maybe through a e-commerce platform that would allow you to collect your customers contacts for future campaign targeting. How you choose to get the contacts is up to you and your platform of choice.

Workflow concepts in mautic:

This is a big subject that I am still learning about. One of the interesting features of mautic is the ability to create a workflow of actions based on rules and triggers you setup. For example, I collect information from twitter. I can then decide to collect those twitter users inside of mautic. My rules I have setup collect information from hashtags. I use two distinct hashtags to collect my target. #wordpress and #webhosting, are my chosen tags to capture, and once a contact is pulled in, I can then define an action. These actions can be used to trigger other actions. For example, when I capture a contact through twitter their base points are 1, if they use the hashtag #wordpress they are given 2 more points, another 2 points for using #webhosting, and another 2 points if they mention me on twitter. If a contact reaches 8 points, I can choose to execute another action, if I have their email address I can send them a personalized email. Since I am collecting leads through twitter, I have their twitter name, I can now sent the contact a personalized tweet when they reach 8 points.

Forms and PopUp on your site:

With mautic, you can create static assets (Images, pdf), forms, dynamic content, and landing pages. This allows you to collect contact infomation by offering them a pdf, for example. You can have pop overs to promote something through the website. These are done by first creating your component, then adding a small bit of code to your site. Other ways of doing this is through plugins, wordpress has a supported mautic plugin that is free to use.

Other ideas:

e-commerce (woocommerce), target users from your store that order more than X times, you define what X is. Example: if you have a customer that orders 3 times, then you could send them a custom coupon code for being a loyal customer. If they order 5 times, maybe send them a free gift. You can also organize your customers by location. Maybe you want users that order 5 times that are located in the United States to get a free gift, while ignoring customers outside the defined area. Capture lead information in exchange for a free PDF download. This is often used by marketers that want to make something available but not charge for it. Capturing the lead becomes the actual cost and your contact database can be one of the most valuable assets for any business. Since mautic also uses the MaxMind GeoLite2 database, you can track IP addresses that come to your site. This gives a a very fine grain way to track customers point of entry. This same information can be obtained through normal web analytic software as well, no concern on privacy there. There are many many different ways you could use mautic through your current site.

Conclusion: Mautic is a excellent platform if you put the time in to setup, learn and use it. The learning curve can be a little steep for a new user, but the time you spend with it will pay off if you stick with it. Being a free application, the price is right. If you are looking for a way to do marketing automation, you really can’t go wrong with mautic. My only regret is that I do not have a way to try the premium paid version of the software at this time.

Final note.

I attempted to record a part about creating the cron entries for mautic. It was a train wreck and after hearing it, I decided to remove it from the episode. I fully plan on creating a youtube video that will cover cron entries. It was just too confusing to explain things with only audio.