Imagine a marketing strategy so powerful it feels like having an entire team of experts working behind the scenes.

Only this team never sleeps, never eats, and simply lives to make you more money.

This my friend, is Marketing automation. 

Marketing automation involves the distribution of digital marketing materials according to a customer’s specific interactions or independent triggers.

Marketing automation literally grows your brand while you sleep.

Automate repetitive marketing tasks like email campaigns, social media posts, lead nurturing, and customer segmentation, the list goes on.

The Vexa Blog

Welcome to the first edition of “The Vexa Blog”, my blog series on marketing automation and specifically on Salesforce Account Engagement. 

What is Marketing Automation?

If the way you engage with your audience feels stale, or you’re not seeing a return on your efforts. Marketing automation might be the answer to all your problems, and then some. 

In this space, I will teach you everything you need to know to take your organization to the next level.

Let’s give some backstory:

I found my way into marketing automation completely by accident. 

I started a new role on a marketing team for a consulting firm and was put in front of software I knew nothing about and told to learn it inside and out.

That software was Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, formerly known as Pardot. 

I began tinkering, studying, and using the surprisingly scarce amount of resources on the internet to begin developing my understanding of Salesforce’s Account Engagement.

Five months later I had passed my specialist exam and I was hooked.

Account Engagement allowed me to build email programs, segmentation lists, and lead nurturing experiences from the ground up. The ability to test a theory, move forward with a data-driven decision, and then automate the process blew my mind.

This hands-on approach to marketing strategy is one of my favorite aspects of marketing automation and one of the reasons I believe this is an amazing opportunity for other marketers looking to do the same. 

Receiving my specialist certification put me into a small group of experts and allowed me to stand out from the crowd as I built my career. 

Regardless of where you are in your career, marketing automation is an amazing opportunity to do something truly fulfilling.

Who is Vincent Holm?

As of today I currently serve as an Account Engagement admin. I support several organizations and specialize in automation strategy, email marketing, and Account Engagement training.

I am about a month out from taking the consultant-level exam for Account Engagement, and I will be documenting the process along the way.

I want this community to be a transparent safe space for people to grow and learn together.

No fluff, no bullshit.

It took time and effort to reach this point and I’ve spent my fair amount of nights studying just because I wanted to know more. If you’re reading this you’re probably the same.

During my journey, I constantly felt a lack of online resources that taught marketing automation strategies in an engaging format.

If you’re familiar with the Salesforce community, you may know of “Trailhead” their training system. 

Don’t get me wrong, Trailhead was a huge asset for me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.

In case you’re not familiar, trailhead is a robust training platform for all Salesforce tools, but it’s all text. It’s essentially written in textbook format.

Anytime I would study, I found myself wanting more, something a bit deeper.

I found myself compiling notes, my own best practices, and giving tons of overviews to colleagues.

Fast forward to now, a month out from taking my Account Engagement Consultant exam and I’ve again been deeply underwhelmed by the amount of resources teaching this incredibly valuable skill.

I want to pave a better road for others like me, who are driven to learn, build, and dominate through the power of marketing automation.

By providing deep dives, tutorials, strategies, best practices, and more I hope to make the learning curve a bit shorter for you.

Whether it’s for your business or your role in an organization, I promise to deliver you the most engaging marketing automation content on the internet. 

Now that’s a big promise, why should you stick around?

Around here I don’t just give you boring text to read, each newsletter will be recorded in video format for all my visual folks.

I want to create the types of resources I was hunting for when I began my marketing automation journey.

Now let’s talk about platforms for a second.
This newsletter is meant to help anyone trying to learn Account Engagement.

That being said, if you’re using another tool, my content will still be valuable for you.

Whether you’re on Account Engagement, Hubspot, Marketo, etc you can apply the principles discussed here to virtually any marketing automation tool.

So stay tuned, because we will be getting into the nitty gritty of this tool specifically. 

If you go this far, here’s a sneak peek at some of the content we’ll be diving into over the next couple of weeks:

• What is Account Engagement
• What is a prospect
• How to create a segmentation list
• When to use a dynamic list vs. a static list
• Email marketing best practices
• Understanding uses cases for automation
• Integrating Sales and Marketing Automation: Lead scoring and grading
• Optimizing the Customer Journey

I want this newsletter to be a resource in your toolbox. One that you can count on for tutorials, strategy, best practices, and let’s be honest ROI.

You get out of marketing automation what you put in.
And I’m along for the ride with you.

I’m no guru.

But I was in your shoes.
And I found a lack of unique content teaching true marketing automation strategy.

I’m building tools for the marketer I was years ago, and if that’s of value to you I’m honored to provide you with high-value content every week.

Thank you for reading, I’ll see you next Tuesday. 

– Vincent