FunnelMaker is a name that, you might be forgiven for thinking, describes a platform that offers a complete marketing funnel automation system.

It does not.

FunnelMaker is a very good, very comprehensive, CRM with limited email marketing capability but it is not a full blown funnel making system – which really makes the name “Funnelmaker” a bit of a misnomer. It’s a CRM that counts Salesforce amongst its integrations although I don’t have a clue why you would want to integrate with Salesforce or, more to the point, if you had Salesforce why you would also want to run FunnelMaker, when Salesforce have Pardot, which really is a marketing automation platform.

One feature of the FunnelMaker CRM that I liked a lot is the fact that it records all activities that have taken place for any given contact. So, if you sent a special offer email to a contact who had not purchased for a while, that would be recorded and could then be easily followed up on. The CRM also has an automated lead scoring system which looks very effective.

I would have expected to see integrations with the likes of Infusionsoft and Clickfunnels, which do have full-blown funnel automation facilities and powerful autoresponders and email sequencers, but they are, as yet, not there.

Another feature I couldn’t find is a landing page builder – an essential element of many automated marketing campaigns. Again, I didn’t see any integrations with the likes of Unbounce or Leadpages, both excellent landing page builders. This is a serious ommision in my opinion.

There is a library of email templates however, which seems fairly extensive but without good landing pages you are unlikely to be able to get the most from your email, (or any other), campaigns.

Now that more and more businesses realise that a well thought out automated marketing funnel is an important part of their digital marketing strategy, there is an inevitable increase in the number of online services designed to help them to build and operate one. As I explored the FunnelMaker website I followed a link for SEO services which seemed to take me to another part of the site which was full of pages with no content. I don’t think it is quite ready yet.

Neither, for that matter, is FunnelMaker. There is a free trial and there’s no harm in giving it a go but at the pricing level they’ve set I would have expected it to be a more rounded solution. FunnelMaker plans start at $149/month for the “Starter” which gives you up to 1,000 contacts and unlimited emails.

We’ve scheduled a full FunnelMaker review for the near future – watch this space.