How to Leverage Drupal for Marketing Automation

In today’s always-on culture, digital marketers need to be able to respond rapidly to swiftly changing market conditions. Marketing automation software — technology that automates marketing workflows and campaigns — facilitates that by freeing teams from time-consuming manual tasks, allowing them to focus on higher priority goals.

When using a flexible content management system (CMS) like Drupal, organizations can easily integrate the marketing automation platform of their choice. An integration with a CMS helps marketers win in multiple ways:

• Content governance. When a CMS and marketing automation platform are brought together, teams can more easily execute their processes for developing, creating, publishing, and maintaining content. Ensuring the same content and messaging across channels. 
• Reduced time to market. With content and marketing automation in one place, marketers no longer have to jump from team to team to publish content. For instance, instead of submitting a ticket to WebOps to set up a page, which could take days or weeks, a marketer has the ability to do it themselves. More pressing concerns can be addressed instead of time spent with more minor tasks. Teams can also get their messages out faster. Have a coupon or sales promotion to get out fast? A dynamic and flexible CMS will be your new favorite toy.
• Ease of use. The combination of a CMS and marketing automation platform means marketers can achieve a number of tasks more quickly, like spin up forms or produce data-driven, personalized customer experiences without toggling between different tools. Marketers will also need to submit fewer operational requests to internal teams.
   

But those are just a few of the benefits of connecting marketing automation software with your Drupal CMS. Because it’s open source, Drupal has thousands of community members who continually improve its security and development, so users can enjoy the introduction of features, extensions, and integrations that respond to the latest advancements in marketing technology (martech) at a greater clip than closed or proprietary systems do. 

With more than 50,000 extensions and integrations, Drupal offers users numerous options. Plug-and-play with the latest apps and tools and avoid lengthy and expensive implementation projects. 

Drupal marketing automation modules

Given the platform’s openness, it makes sense to study some of the more well-known marketing automation modules available in Drupal today. Below are just a handful of the marketing automation modules that can be linked to the CMS. 

• Webform. While not technically marketing automation software, this module is a critical element in the link between Drupal and other third-party marketing automation platforms. It allows marketers to create forms, such as webinar sign-ups or surveys, with the data collected then pushed to a marketing automation platform.
   
• Mautic. The world’s only open source marketing automation and campaign management platform, Mautic — also known as Mautic Self-Hosted — is free to anyone. It includes 100+ out-of-the-box martech integrations and gives marketers the ability to segment contacts as well as connect with them through channels such as email or SMS.
   
• Campaign Studio. Built on the Mautic platform, Campaign Studio from Acquia is a SaaS solution that’s especially good for multinational organizations or retailers with large subscriber lists that involve a high number of daily emails, communications, and campaigns. Unlike the community version of Mautic, it offers features like custom objects and more advanced segmentation and A/B testing capabilities.
   
• HubSpot. A widely used marketing automation platform, HubSpot readily integrates with other automation tools like customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, and its Drupal module works with Webform directly to transmit forms to HubSpot’s lead management system. Also a CMS, it allows marketers to create content directly in HubSpot and for it to display on a site’s front end.
   
• Marketo MA. Another popular module, Marketo MA is available in Drupal 9 and above. With it, users can automate ads, social media marketing, email marketing, and more. Through an integration with Webform, the Marketo MA module also allows marketers to capture lead data.
   

If the platform your organization currently uses or is considering adopting doesn’t appear on the above list, you can search the list of all Drupal modules available here.

What’s next?

Integrating marketing automation software with Drupal is a snap because users have multiple integrations to choose from when building their martech stack. After initial set up, marketers will enjoy the control they have apart from developer and IT teams  to produce web pages and forms, personalize messages, and create seamless customer journeys through orchestration tools available in many marketing automation technologies.

Organizations that empower their marketing teams in this way elevate their business operations by automating repetitive, daily tasks. To find out how your organization can optimize productivity and focus on higher order business goals, learn more about Campaign Studio.