I think a lot about what’s coming next in the world. I focus a good bit of that time on the area where I spend most of my waking time - Mautic and marketing automation. When I set out to create Mautic I wanted to create a marketing automation platform that had never been seen before. I wanted to give the world the tools and the power of a platform that not only excelled in feature and functionality compared to existing proprietary products but also did so in a revolutionary way.

I am excited to see and hear the growing and continual positive response that Mautic receives. The reviews keep piling up and the compliments speak to the fact that we are accomplishing our goal (notice the verb tense? Active. Because we’re not done yet). If you haven’t had a chance to explore the Mautic marketing automation campaign canvas then you’re really missing out.

What we’ve created is something that was more robust, more functional, and quite honestly more beautiful than anything marketers had ever seen before. And that’s not just marketing speak. The blank white canvas you start with is a breath of fresh air. From here you can create a simple or complex marketing campaign with the ease of dragging and dropping items onto the page. It’s just like sketching on a whiteboard (and we all know how much fun that can be).

But this is only the very first step in our marketing automation journey. There is so much more to be done. We have to keep digging deeper and we have to continue to explore what should be done with marketing automation and doing smarter marketing.

What follows are my ideas. They are incomplete, they are my sketches and my thoughts. I want to engage you in my future-looking focus. I want to encourage you to expand your mind and think more about what the future might look like.

Old Marketing

Let’s talk about old marketing first. I know I’m calling this old marketing but unfortunately the oldest of these sketches is what some current marketing automation platforms still sell today. Mautic v1 was the revolutionary marketing automation platform our community created over 2 years ago. Today it is still one of the most talked about aspects of our platform.

So, with all that hype why am I considering V1 and V2 to be outdated? Let me explain. Marketing automation should be automated. We all agree with that concept. The above marketing campaign solved some of the problems with marketing automation but not all of them. Mautic did some amazing things with multi-channel messaging. We also created some really advanced campaign canvasing that allowed marketers to send those segments down a variety of paths with different channels for communication.

But there’s a fundamental piece that has been overlooked. We also all agree that marketing automation should be personalized. With that in mind why do we continue to do marketing in groups? (By groups I mean of course segments)

This is where I believe the next step in marketing need to be realized. Let me elaborate.

New Marketing

First, I want to be sure that I don’t think I’m suggesting something new that’s never been thought of before. There are many smart people that have done bigger and better things before. I want to make it a reality. I believe Mautic and the open source community is capable of making those ideas a reality. The above sketch is what I believe the future of marketing automation looks like and in the next 6-9 months I am confident the Mautic community can achieve this.

Okay, now what does it look like? Let’s get real. Instead of the marketer having to create these elaborate paths that segments or groups of contacts have to navigate together there should be a more personalized route Here’s what that looks like broken down.

Marketers should instead create marketing messages which are a number of variants of the same message created for several channels (e.g. email, sms, web push, mobile notification). These variants are collectively called a marketing message. The marketer outlines an objective and success for each message. Finally, the marketer then creates a number of these marketing messages. After creating these messages the marketer defines what success for the campaign should look like. Success does not necessarily mean 100% completion of every message. Instead a marketer may decide upon a number of outcomes based on various percentages of completion.

This may sound mildly familiar and somewhat similar to existing marketing but here’s where it gets different, very different. Marketers shouldn’t have to market to entire groups as one; better that each contact received a personalized marketing campaign based on their particular specific interests. Mautic V3 does this.

Because Mautic v3 creates customized journeys for each contact based on their preferred contact channel. In addition to sending the message on the preferred channel, Mautic also accomplishes one other important marketing objective: right time.

I know, it sounds a bit like a marketers dream - right time, right message. But that’s exactly what Mautic offers and we’re able to do this because we’ve been planning for it all along. We launched version 1 with multi-channel messages. We released version 2 with the ability to create marketing messages as well as a preference center for contacts to select their preferred channel. From day one we’ve been carefully creating a marketing automation solution that is world-class and second-to-none. Mautic version 3 continues that journey and brings about the next step in amazing marketing automation.