How to Test Marketing Automation Software
What is a better way to maximize the efficiency of repetitive and laborious marketing and sales activities than to use marketing automation tools? But that is only if these tools work properly. A good way to ensure the quality of marketing automation solutions is to thoroughly test them. In this article, we reveal the secrets of efficient QA of marketing automation tools.
Read further to find out the main capabilities of marketing automation software that affect its QA, the most essential testing types for marketing automation tools, and the important functionality that you should pay attention to during testing.
Capabilities of Marketing Automation Tools
Marketing automation software can vary a lot in terms of its functionality. Some tools are more universal and strive to be all-in-one marketing solutions, while others are more specialized. But here are the capabilities typically associated with marketing automation tools:
- Email marketing: It includes such options as automatic segmentation of prospects, sending mass emails and emails triggered by certain customer behavior, creating email forms, dynamic personalization of emails based on information from the CRM, split testing of emails, etc.
- Lead management: It implies automatic generation, nurturing, segmentation, and scoring of leads.
- Social media automation: It includes automatic scheduling, posting, and tracking of content on social media, social listening that checks the information that appears about your brand on social media, etc.
- Analytics: Marketing automation tools collect data about your customers, marketing and sales activities, and their results and then analyze this information, identify patterns in it, and visualize it for your convenience.
- Digital advertising: It implies automation and optimization of the processes of promotion, bidding, and ads creation across multiple digital channels.
- SEO: It includes collecting analytics about your website and your competitors, presenting the findings in a convenient and easy-to-follow interface, and providing recommendations on how to improve your website’s placement on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Testing Types for the QA of Marketing Automation Tools
As with any kind of software, the types of testing necessary to check the quality of a particular solution will depend on the individual characteristics of this solution and the specific goals you need to achieve. However, there are certain types of testing that are especially important and should not be left out when checking a marketing automation tool.
Functional testing
This type of testing is essential for any solution, and marketing automation software is no exception in this regard. The main thing you would want to check in any solution is whether it actually performs its functions properly and works as expected. This becomes particularly important with marketing automation platforms as they usually have complex functionality, so the chances that something might go wrong increase. That is why a thorough functional testing is a must.
Usability testing
Marketing automation tools are supposed to make the users’ lives easier, so the easier it is to use them, the better. A convenient interface, user-friendliness, smooth and easy-to-follow navigation and workflow, and clear design are crucial. In fact, many companies consider usability almost as important a factor as functionality when choosing a marketing automation tool. Proper usability testing can help you ensure that your marketing automation platform is up to the users’ expectations and can win the competition in the market.
Integration testing
There are two sides to integration testing when it comes to marketing automation software. On the one hand, this type of solutions is complex and consists of many interconnected modules. So integration testing should check if all the modules of a marketing automation tool smoothly integrate with each other and work well together as a whole.
On the other hand, integration with third-party systems is extremely important for marketing automation platforms. In particular, proper integration with a CRM is essential. But the ability of a marketing automation tool to work correctly as a set with other third-party marketing and sales software is also very important as many companies use a combination of different solutions for their business. So this type of testing should also check if the marketing automation platform properly integrates with external software.
API testing
API testing is closely related to the previous point about the ability of the solution to integrate with third-party systems as such integration is usually achieved through APIs. But access to the marketing automation tool itself is often also provided through an API, so one should check if the solution’s own API works correctly too.
Performance testing
As marketing automation tools are used for business and directly affect companies’ profit and productivity, they should work fast, efficiently, and with no interruptions no matter how many users access them. Performance testing can check if these and other parameters of marketing automation platforms are adequate and satisfactory.
Compatibility testing
End users can access marketing automation solutions through all kinds of different browsers and devices. Compatibility testing will check if the tool works correctly and in the same way no matter in which environment it runs.
Penetration testing
Marketing automation software contains and has access to the users’ corporate data, so security is very important for this type of solutions. The clients’ information must be protected and no data breaches should be possible. To ensure this, regular penetration testing is essential.
Functionality to Test in Marketing Automation Tools
While the functionality of different marketing automation platforms can vary a lot, there are some important tests that will be relevant for most tools.
When performing functional testing of a marketing automation tool, make sure to check:
- If the emails display correctly and if all the required elements are present in them
- Whether the emails sent through a marketing automation tool end up in the Inbox folder and not in Spam or Junk
- If all the elements of the landing page (such as CTAs, images, videos, headlines, etc.) are present and working correctly
- Whether the tracking code for checking lead activities is working as expected
- If contact forms function properly, can be filled and submitted, and correctly collect the information about leads entered in them
- Whether program requirements are validated in the marketing automation platform and lead to the expected results
- If all the workflows of the marketing campaigns are according to the requirements and deliver the required results
- Whether the logic and processes applied in the marketing campaign are working correctly
- If the segmentation of customers is working properly and generating the correct list of contacts
- Whether lead scoring is functioning properly and the correct score value is assigned to every lead
Conclusion
Testing can help marketing automation platforms get to the new level and become absolutely indispensable for the customers’ businesses. But the QA of this type of solutions can require significant effort and skills due to the complexity of software. We hope that this article helped you to identify all the main areas and aspects of the QA of marketing automation tools to make your testing effort well-rounded and efficient.
Should you need any assistance in the quality assurance of marketing automation software, feel free to get in touch with us. The QATestLab team has much experience in testing this type of solutions and is always ready to help.
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