News Marketing

Marketing Automation with “If This Then That”

ON November 8, 2013

ifft imageMarketing automation is a key application for the burgeoning Software as a Service market. There are no shortage of platforms to manage social media, email marketing analytics and more from a single dashboard. But, like any software application, users are limited to the available feature set. If you need to cook up your own marketing automation you’re almost out of luck. Almost…

enter If This Then That (IFTTT.com, pronouced like “gift”.)

The site lets you automate the use of certain web services by linking up their APIs to create “recipes.” A recipe, in this context, is a conditional statement following the syntax “If ___ Then ___.” For instance: “If a new post is added to my blog, automatically tweet a link to that post” or, more impressively, “If it is going to rain today, please send a text to my phone.”

That broad range of functionality should give some perspective on the power this service packs (it is useful for vastly more than automating posts across various social networks). For a quick overview of how it works, I direct you to this video from The Next Web:

(from The Next Web on Vimeo.)

The service has actually been around for years, but hasn’t gained a great deal of mainstream adoption. Its functionality can, admittedly, be a bit esoteric. But, spend an hour or so learning to create your own recipes, and you’ll be able to do things that make your co-workers treat you like the David Blaine of the Internet.

If you have any ideas for recipes, add them in the comments. We’ll post some of our favorites in the future.


Share this article: