In order to get their many software tools to work together, marketers often have to act as orchestra conductors.
This has led to the emergence of workflow automators, like Zapier, Workato, Azuqua and Bedrock Data. Similar to IFTTT for consumers, these products allow business users to easily set up steps that are automatically carried out between tools. If you get a lead from an online form on SurveyMonkey, for instance, automatically drop it into Salesforce’s customer relationship management (CRM).
Today, Seattle-based startup Usermind is upping the ante in this category, with the announcement at our MarTech conference of the launch of its new platform. The company has been building the platform for the last two years, including a six-month beta phase.
The cloud-based service lets a user set up a similar automation of “if this/then that” multiple steps between a variety of software tools, like a more elaborate version of Zapier. About 20 tools are currently supported for analytics, transactional email, marketing automation, CRM and billing systems, including Eloqua, SurveyMonkey, Slack, Salesforce and others.
But, CEO and co-founder Michel Feaster told me, the platform is also designed to provide insights about what is happening to customers as they pass through that integrated workflow.
For instance, she said, the platform will not only connect actions to automatically take a trial signup, process a credit card and send out a pre-written welcoming email, but it can also answer a question like: What is the impact of a support call if the credit card billing fails during a trial signup?
Here is a screen to set up a flow of actions relating to a trial subscription, for instance:
And here’s a screen showing various insights about the success of specific actions in the process:
In other words, it’s Zapier plus business data collection platform Domo, she said. “We’re a glue between systems, with a reporting capacity” focused on the ultimate goal of showing “what actions work.” By contrast, she said, the other workflow automators are focused primarily on workflow only.
The main idea, Feaster said, is not only to improve revenue, customer acquisition and other bottom-line business goals, but also to improve business process efficiency.
“We don’t say [to prospective clients that] we’re an integration platform,” she said. “We say we help you optimize your business goals, [by focusing on] process optimization.”
A client company like expense management provider Tallie, she said, is working with inbound marketing platform HubSpot, Salesforce CRM and user analytics provider Mixpanel. With Usermind, the company can set up automated workflow steps between them, so Tallie can see, for instance, what actions are most effective in collecting from late-paying customers.
The company says Usermind is designed for the person who “owns the marketing stack,” and that its workflow steps and data/software connectors can be set up by a non-technical user. Pricing starts at $10,000 annually and is based on such factors as the scale of the data or the number of connectors. At launch, Usermind said, the platform has about 15 client companies.
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