What is Make?
For the modern marketing manager, the tech stack is both a blessing and a curse. You have best-in-class tools for CRM, social media, analytics, and email, but getting them to communicate is a constant, manual struggle. Make, formerly known as Integromat, is a visual automation platform designed to solve this exact problem. It acts as the central nervous system for your marketing operations, allowing you to create powerful, automated workflows that connect your applications and data sources without writing a single line of code. It’s built for those who need to move fast, optimize campaign performance, and ensure no lead is left behind in a tangle of disconnected systems.
Key Features and How It Works
Make’s power lies in its visual, intuitive approach to complex automation. It transforms abstract processes into tangible, manageable workflows that you can build and modify on the fly.
- Visual Workflow Editor: The platform’s core is a drag-and-drop canvas where you build automations, called ‘scenarios.’ Each step in your process is a module you connect to others. Think of it like a digital switchboard operator for your apps; you visually plug a new lead from a Facebook Ad form (output) directly into your CRM’s ‘new contact’ field (input), directing the flow of information exactly where it needs to go, instantly.
- Extensive App Integrations: Make boasts a massive library of over 1,000 app integrations. For marketers, this includes crucial tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Ads, Facebook Lead Ads, Mailchimp, Slack, and Google Sheets, ensuring your entire marketing and sales ecosystem can be interconnected.
- Advanced Logic and Routing: Go beyond simple ‘if this, then that’ logic. Make allows you to implement routers to split workflows based on specific conditions (e.g., route high-value leads to a senior sales rep), use filters to process only relevant data, and handle errors with sophisticated, built-in mechanisms to ensure your lead funnels never break.
- Real-time Processing: Speed is critical in lead generation. Make can trigger scenarios instantly when a new event occurs, such as a form submission or a new purchase. This allows for immediate follow-up, dramatically increasing conversion rates.
Pros and Cons
Every tool has its strengths and weaknesses, especially when deployed in a fast-paced marketing environment.
Pros:
- Accelerated Campaign Execution: Automate repetitive tasks like data entry and lead routing, freeing up your team to focus on strategy and creative work.
- Enhanced Lead Management: Ensure every lead from any source is captured, enriched, and routed to the right place in real-time, improving response times and conversion.
- Deep Customization: The visual editor and advanced logic tools provide granular control, allowing you to build workflows that perfectly match your unique campaign processes.
- Scalable Operations: As your lead volume and campaign complexity grow, Make’s architecture is built to handle the increased load without sacrificing performance.
Cons:
- Initial Learning Curve: While visually intuitive, the sheer power and number of options can be daunting for absolute beginners. It requires a mindset shift from task-based to process-based thinking.
- Cost at Scale: The free tier is generous for testing, but high-volume campaigns that require frequent data operations can push you into higher-priced tiers quickly.
Who Should Consider Make?
Make is an ideal solution for marketing managers and teams who are tired of manual data silos. If you find yourself exporting and importing CSVs between platforms or manually updating your CRM, Make is for you.
- Marketing Managers: To automate multi-channel campaign workflows, from lead capture on social media to nurturing sequences in an email platform and deal creation in a CRM.
- Digital Marketing Agencies: To efficiently manage client campaigns, automate reporting, and standardize processes across multiple accounts.
- Sales Operations: To build robust lead routing systems, automate data enrichment, and ensure seamless handoffs between marketing and sales.
- E-commerce Businesses: To sync inventory, customer data, and order information between their storefront (e.g., Shopify) and backend systems like accounting and fulfillment.
Pricing and Plans
Make operates on a freemium model, making it accessible for testing and small-scale projects before committing.
- Free Plan: This plan is ideal for individuals and small projects, offering a generous number of operations per month to build and test core workflows without any financial commitment.
- Pro Plan (starting at $10/month): Aimed at professionals and teams with growing needs, this tier offers a significant increase in available operations, more active scenarios, and faster data processing intervals, which is crucial for time-sensitive marketing campaigns.
Disclaimer: Pricing is subject to change. Always consult the official Make website for the most current information.
What makes Make great?
Make’s single most powerful feature is its profoundly intuitive and flexible visual workflow builder. It democratizes the creation of complex, multi-step automations that were once the exclusive domain of developers. For a marketing manager, this is a game-changer. It means you can directly translate campaign strategy into a functional, automated process on your own terms. You can see the data flowing between your apps, add conditional logic with a few clicks, and troubleshoot issues visually. This level of control and transparency allows marketers to build and adapt their technology stack with an agility that is essential for modern digital marketing.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is Make better than Zapier for marketing automation?
- It depends on the complexity. Zapier is often praised for its simplicity and ease of use for basic, linear tasks. Make excels in building more complex, multi-step scenarios with branching logic, error handling, and more granular control over data, making it a preferred choice for intricate marketing and sales funnels.
- Can Make handle real-time lead processing from ad platforms?
- Yes. Make can use webhooks to receive data from platforms like Facebook Lead Ads or landing page builders the instant it’s submitted. This enables real-time automation, such as immediately adding a lead to your CRM and triggering a welcome email.
- How steep is the learning curve for a non-technical marketer?
- There is a learning curve, but it’s manageable. While building a simple two-step scenario is easy, mastering features like routers, iterators, and error handling requires some time and practice. However, Make’s extensive documentation and tutorials provide excellent resources for non-technical users to get up to speed.
- What kind of support does Make offer if my campaign automation breaks?
- Make has robust built-in error handling that can help you diagnose issues. Support options vary by plan, but typically include a comprehensive knowledge base, a community forum, and email support for paid tiers.