§ 2.2 Integrations

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What this is

CRM setup, email platform configuration, form handling, third-party tool connections, and the automations that route information between them. The plumbing. It is the least visible work in the manuscript and the most consequential when it is missing. A form that submits into nothing, a lead that arrives in an inbox nobody watches, a newsletter list that never syncs with the CRM—none of these look like problems on a dashboard. They look like a marketing operation that’s not working.

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The principle we hold

Fewer tools, used properly, rather than more tools. The stack we standardize on covers what nearly every partner needs, and the work is almost always rigor rather than addition. When a partner asks for a new platform, the first question is whether the thing they want is already possible in something they are paying for. Frequently it is, and the honest answer saves them a subscription and a migration. Where you already run something that works, we integrate with it rather than replacing it. Migrations are expensive, disruptive, and not always the actual solution to the problem that prompted them.

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What actually delays this

Not the build. Credentials. The reliable pattern is that a one-week integration takes three weeks because admin access to two systems has to be tracked down—one owned by a person who left, one requiring a plan upgrade nobody knew about, one where the only admin is on holiday. We ask for access at the start of the project rather than at the point we need it, and it is worth treating that request as urgent even though it does not feel it.

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What we need from you

Admin credentials, or an admin who can act, for every system in scope. Not a shared login where possible—proper access with your own audit trail. A decision about who owns each account, where it is not already settled. The rule we work to is that anything representing you in the world stays registered to you with us added as users, and anything that is production tooling sits on our subscriptions unless you already hold a license. The tools we use sets that out in full. A clear statement of what should happen when a lead arrives. This sounds obvious and is the question that most often surfaces an unresolved internal disagreement. Who is notified, how quickly, and what are they supposed to do.

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What you will have

Working connections, documented—what talks to what, what triggers what, and where to look when something stops. Written down rather than held in someone’s head, because an undocumented automation is a liability the moment its author is unavailable.

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Where each tool lives

Which platform does what, who owns the account, and which ones you will ever log into are all set out in the tools we use. If you are trying to work out where something lives or how to get access to it, start there rather than here.

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What this is not

Not analytics setup, which is § 2.3. Not email marketing execution, which lives in Chapter 3. Connecting your email platform to your CRM is this piece, and it is very often the hidden second half of an email automation project.