The 12 Pillars of Email and Marketing Automation - Part 2

The12Pillarsof
EmailandMarketing
Automation
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PART 2
OF A 3-PART
SERIES

2
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MARKETINGAUTOMATION
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About Digital Doughnut
Digital Doughnut connects the global marketing
community both on and offline. Members of the
community gain access to skills and resources,
the latest thinking on key marketing topics, crucial
insights and best practice learnings that enable
them to make better business decisions. Digital
Doughnut both leverages and provides value
to the community by tapping into the collective
intelligence of the network to create high-value
content that’s based on actual market conditions
and informed by practitioners’ experience.
About dotmailer
dotmailer is the email marketing platform of the
dotdigital Group PLC (LSE: DOTD). It enables
companies to use transactional and behavioral data
to design, test and send powerful email campaigns.
Established in 1999, dotmailer is a global company
with more than 200 employees and a portfolio of
B2C and B2B clients across 150 countries.
The contents of this report are the exclusive copyright of
Digital Doughnut, findings in this report can be used for non
commercial purpose as long as Digital Doughnut is attributed
as the source under the Creative Commons Attribution –
Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International licence.
Summary of contents 3
Introduction 4
Highlights 5
Survey methodology 6
Overview of results 8
Segmentation11

Lead nurturing 14

Marketing automation and 16
driving ecommerce revenues
Skills required for automation 19
The value of email
The pressure of content creation
on teams
Attitudes to email Can automation sound impersonal?
Proving the ROI of email Use of data
Personalisation in email Legal issues in automation
5
6
7
8
Contents
2
What we cover in the previous report, and next report in the series

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Summary of contents
Chapter 5
Segmentation
• Segmentation has two drivers:
o It allows a business to differentiate and specify the messages it wishes to communicate
o It creates an environment where insight can be more easily drawn from the data
• Benefits of segmentation:
o Makes messages relevant and prevents over-messaging
o Behaviour modelling
o Granular analysis
Chapter 6
Lead nurturing
• On some counts, 79% of marketing leads never convert to sales
• There are four valid ambitions for a lead-nurturing email:
o Education
o Connection
o Making relevant offers
o Re-engagement
Chapter 7
Marketing automation and driving ecommerce revenues
• At every stage of the ecommerce journey there are opportunities for enhancing the relationship
between the brand and the buyer
• Drive acquisition and initial engagement
• Onsite personalisation and targeting
• Manage cart abandonment
• Upsell
• Post-transactional relationship
• Build analytics and data
Chapter 8
Skills required for automation
• Modern marketing teams are changing quickly. There are a whole host of new skills and functions
required to work with the technology, data and new channels that are becoming available. This is
true across marketing as a whole and never more true for email teams
• Function-based changes
• Approach-based changes
• The operational environment is different
• Team management processes and KPIs are different

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Introduction
The 12 Pillars of Email and Marketing Automation,
published by Digital Doughnut in partnership with
dotmailer, is being serialised as three shorter reports all
released in early 2017.
We hope you enjoyed the first part of the series, which
focused largely on email which is very much its own
discipline, as well as being a central part of successful
marketing automation.
This second instalment focuses on the second set
of pillars we have identified, namely segmentation;
lead nurturing; marketing automation and driving
ecommerce revenues; and skills required for marketing
automation.
There is no doubt that we are in an age of increasing
automation in marketing. Over the last few years, survey
after survey has indicated that well-planned automation
has a huge impact in driving business revenues.
At the same time, there has been a trend for other
research to suggest that email is falling out of favour.
This survey shows this is not the case.
The aim of these three reports is to investigate business
attitudes to both email and the broader picture of
automation. It also aims to take key topics and create
practical guides outlining what organisations need to
consider about both these topics.
The report series is designed to be a hybrid, containing
both primary research and guidance on best practice.
We reveal the results of research recently conducted
by Digital Doughnut for dotmailer. The survey was
marketed to an audience of 87,000 members of the
Digital Doughnut community with more than 600
respondents in 75 countries.
Around two-thirds of these respondents (65%) were
‘C’ Level or business directors. The size and seniority
of the survey sample indicate that this has produced
an excellent snapshot of current attitudes to email and
automation.
The results of the research show that email is vital to
business success, with more than three-quarters of the
audience (77%) saying it is an important part of their
marketing strategy.
Within automation there are some obvious and widely
accepted key drivers: personalisation, segmentation and
content marketing all have enormous support.
Respondents recognise marketing automation’s role in
both lead nurturing and driving ecommerce revenues.
Although the survey data is central to this report,
the main goal is to give guidance across a range of
topics that are the foundations of email and marketing
automation.
We hope you enjoy reading this series and look forward
to your feedback.
By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their
relationship without talking to a human.
Source: Gartner Research
Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue
than broadcast emails.
Source: Jupiter Research
Personalised emails improve click-through rates
by 14%, and conversion rates by 10%.
Source: Aberdeen Group

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5
Highlights
email and automation are
central to driving modern
marketing and successful
businesses
80% believe
marketing
automation is a
central part of
lead nurturing.
Email is an
important tool
for 77%.
Segmentation,
lead nurturing,
personalisation and
driving ecommerce
revenues are the top
benefits offered by
automation.
84% feel
that marketing
automation drives
better segmentation.
93% believe that
segmentation is
important.

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6
Survey methodology
Participants by seniority
KEY
l C Level
l Director
l Manager
l Other
30%
35%
20%
15%
The survey was conducted through the Digital
Doughnut community in the second half of 2016. It
consisted of 12 key themes. For each theme there was
a statement (sometimes provocative) that we asked
the audience to react to and a question about how
important that topic was to their business. Marketing
for the survey was via email and newsletter to a target
audience of 87,000 recipients and was conducted in
two waves. This produced 625 participants from 75
countries.
Seniority breakdown
In keeping with the seniority levels of the Digital
Doughnut community, these survey results are the
opinions of a predominantly senior audience. Almost
two thirds (65%) of those replying are ‘C’ level or
Directors.
Regional breakdown
The map on the following page shows the global
breakdown of respondents, with the proportion of
participants from each major region.
The best represented countries were the United
Kingdom (22% of the total sample) and the United
States (17%).

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Survey methodology
Asia
13%
Middle
East
1%
North
America
22%
Latin
America
5% Australasia
7%
Africa
4%
Europe
48%
Regional breakdown

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Overview of results
The aim of the survey was to understand audience
attitudes to 12 specific topics about email and
automation. Those reactions are shown at the start of
their relevant chapters below.
Reactions to the core topic statements
Looking at the results on a comparative basis, it is
clear that the potential of automation is recognised.
Segmentation (84%), lead nurturing (80%),
personalisation (77%) and driving ecommerce revenues
(72%) are the top four areas where the audience agreed
that benefits are offered by automation.
It is refreshing to see that the audience’s confidence in
their capability appears to be growing. Where other
surveys have shown that people are under-confident of
their businesses’ skills to cope with the technology and
skills required for automation – the number that agreed
in this survey was ‘only’ 39%. (Obviously, this is still a
substantial minority, and one that needs addressing.)
There are many statistics that show how effective
email can be at driving revenues. It is, therefore, a
surprise that only 60% of the audience agreed that
the ROI of email was easy to prove. There are a
couple of reasons why this might be the case:
• Email is often used as an integrated part of another
process and thus its benefits are wrapped up in other
platforms’ achievements
• Much of the email sent has no specific link to
commerce and thus the link to ROI is more difficult to
measure
But there is also a sense of a general lack of
confidence in email itself. Only 53% agreed that
customers like getting email from them. One
might also point out that nearly half the audience
(49%) agreed that automation may produce
communications that seem impersonal. Perhaps this
lack of confidence is partly driven by the fact that
audiences are becoming ever more aware and vocal.
Segmentation (84%), lead nurturing
(80%), personalisation (77%) and driving
ecommerce revenues (72%) are the four
areas where the audience agreed that
automation offers most benefits.
The results clearly show that email and automation are increasingly valued tools
in the marketer’s armoury. The sentiment about email itself and the possibilities of
automation is overwhelmingly positive. Even the old fear – that automation required
skills that business found hard to support – appears to be no longer an issue.
Looking
at the results
on a comparative
basis, the potential
of automation
is clearly
recognised.

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Overview of results
General findings
Marketing automation drives insight by allowing users to
create more accurate segmentation of their audiences
Marketing automation is a good tool to use in a
lead-nurturing programme
Marketing automation helps you deliver personalised
communications
Marketing automation is a driver
of e-commerce revenues
Email is a high-value marketing
communication channel
Marketing automation puts heavy pressure on the content
creation functions within a business
It’s easy to prove the ROI
of email campaigns
Your customers and potential customers
like receiving emails from you
Marketing automation relies on large amounts of data to
make it effective
Automated communications can
seem impersonal to audiences
Marketing automation relies on technology and skills that
you do not currently have in your business
Legal issues around data make you less likely to choose
email as a communications tool
84%
80%
77%
72%
68%
64%
60%
53%
52%
13%
17%
15%
26%
20%
28%
18%
39%
28%
39% 31% 30%
49% 27% 24%
12%
8%
22%
8%
20%
52%32%16%
3
3
8%
2
KEY l Agree l Neutral l Disagree

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Importance
Is segmenting your audience
important for you?
Is increasing the levels of personalisation
an important aim for you?
Is content creation an important
part of your marketing mix?
Is audience reaction likely to influence the
tools you choose to use to communicate?
Is email an important part of
your marketing strategy?
Does the collection and use of data feature
highly on your marketing priority list?
Are customer views of this sort likely
to change the way you communicate?
Is the ROI of email something that’s
important for your business?
Is it important for you to automate
interactions in an e-commerce action?
Do you use technology
to nurture leads?
Are legal issues a consideration in
your marketing planning?
Are these capability gaps key
priorities within your business?
93%
93%
89%
88%
77%
75%
75%
71%
70%
68%
68%
45%
6%
5%
9%
11%
18%
21%
21%
20%
21%
22%
22%
44% 11%
10%
5%
1
2
2
1
4
4
9%
9%
10%
KEY l Important l Neutral l Don’t talk about it
What’s important to marketers
When it comes to email communication and marketing
automation, there are three topics that are clearly
important to marketers. Both segmentation and
personalisation are high priority and, for each, 93% said
it was an important topic in their organisation.
Content creation is also seen as being a vital part of
the marketing mix, with 89% saying it’s important
and less than 2% saying that they didn’t talk about it
within the business.
It’s also refreshing that capability gaps are not seen
as key priorities by the majority, as in-house skills
have been a major worry for many businesses over
the last decade.
Overview of results

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5Segmentation
Effective segmentation is a prerequisite for effective marketing
and a key benefit of marketing automation. This chapter lists
out the different kinds of segmentation available to marketers
and explores how businesses can use this fundamental tactic to
improve their marketing effectiveness.
“Marketing automation drives insight by allowing users to create more accurate segmentation of their audiences”
Is segmenting your audience important for you?
Agree
Disagree
Neutral
84%
13%
Agree
Disagree
Neutral
93%
6%
The
overwhelming
majority of
marketers (84%)
believe that marketing
automation drive
insight and better
segmentation.
Segmentation
is a cornerstone of
marketing for virtually
every business surveyed.
Only 1% of respondents
said it wasn’t
important.
3%
1%

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Marketing segmentation enables businesses to
target their products or services more effectively, by
identifying the different requirements and interests of
different groups of prospects and customers.
The fundamental importance of segmentation as a
linchpin of marketing and key benefit of marketing
automation is reflected by the survey results.
An overwhelming 93% of survey respondents said
that segmenting their audience was important for
them. Additionally, the core statement that marketers
were most likely to agree with was that ‘marketing
automation drives insight by allowing users to create
more accurate segmentation of their audiences’. Some
84% of respondents agreed with this, versus only 3%
who disagreed.
The research shows that a huge majority of marketers
recognise that the ‘spray and pray’ approach to
marketing, the antithesis of a customer-centric
philosophy based on segmentation, isn’t a viable way to
grow a business.
Segmentation is very closely linked to the concepts of
nurturing and personalisation. In one sense, it is another
face of the same core thinking. Segmentation has two
drivers:
• It allows a business to differentiate and specify the
messages it wishes to communicate
• It creates an environment where insight can be more
easily drawn from the data
Where personalisation is seen, in the first instance, as a
benefit for the audience, segmentation can generally be
viewed as a benefit for the business. As such, it drives
several benefits for the organisation.
Benefits of segmentation
Makes messages relevant and prevents over-
messaging – one of the common uses for segmentation
is to help structure the logic flows in an automation
process in order to deliver targeted messaging.
Segments can and should be created around messages,
e.g. ‘has been sent’, ‘has opened’ and ‘has clicked’. This
will allow emailing teams to exclude or include subsets
of the data in future emails.
Segmentation CHAPTER 5
Behaviour modelling – breaking audiences into
segments allows a brand to map user journeys more
accurately. At the same time, it allows that brand to
draw true insight from those journeys. Segmentation
at this scale also provides a fertile environment for
predictive analysis.
Granular analysis – segmentation also drives insight
of cohorts and clusters for more detailed analysis. In
effect, segmentation is about breaking up an audience
into smaller groups that share at least one characteristic.
An examination of those groups will give a business an
enormous opportunity to drive insight and additional
value, both internally and for the customers who are
being profiled in this way.
It should be noted that segments aren’t personas, not
least because someone can be a member of more
than one segment. In fact, one of the better uses of
segmentation is using overlapping segments to generate
better insight or relevance. (Overlapping involves
bringing two segments together to produce a third view.
For instance, you might overlap geography and seniority
to see who is a director and based in London to decide
whom you will invite to a networking dinner.)

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Segmentation CHAPTER 5
Possible areas of segmentation
There are a large number of potential areas based on
which you might segment your data. The art is selecting
those that will either drive most insight to your business
and/or that you think you can best use to differentiate
your messaging.
Geography
Age
Gender
Persona
Organisation type
Industry
Job function
Seniority level
Past purchases
Purchase interests
Buying frequency
Purchase cycle
Content topic
Content format
Interest level
Education level
Change in content engagement level
Change in buying behaviour
Stage in the sales cycle
Email type
Reaction to email
Behaviour online
Satisfaction index
Customers who refer
Customers who haven’t reviewed
In-store vs. webstore visitors
Shopping cart abandonment
Form abandonment
Usage
Segmentation, like personalisation, is something that
is best started at a simple level. Organisations should
never underestimate how much value can be found in
combining relatively simple data sets. The keys to good
segmentation (and using it to drive value and ROI within
the organisation) are as follows:
• Ask the right questions
• Develop in-depth insight over time
• Don’t try to combine too many data sets
• Ask ‘so what’ for every insight that is
generated through segmentation – if
it doesn’t in some way influence the
actions of the business, it’s worthless
insight
• Don’t get carried away with creating
ever smaller segments (unless they are
driving good insight!)
Segmentation,
like personalisation,
is something that is
best started at a simple
level. Organisations should
never underestimate how
much value can be found
in combining relatively
simple data sets.

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Automation and
lead nurturing 6It is widely recognised that automation can aid lead
nurturing, with 80% agreeing that it’s a good tool to
use. However, it’s also clear that a large number are not
using automation in this way, with only 68% saying that
technology is important to them in nurturing leads.
“Marketing automation is a good tool to use in a lead nurturing programme”
Do you use technology to nurture leads?
Agree
Disagree
Neutral
80%
3%
17%
It’s important
Neutral
We don’t talk about it
68%
22%
10%
80% agree that
marketing automation
is a good tool for
lead nurturing.
32% are neutral
or don’t talk about
using technology
to nurture leads.

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CHAPTER 6Automation and lead nurturing
According to MarketingSherpa, 79% of marketing leads
never convert to sales. Lack of lead nurturing (or poor
lead nurturing) is an oft-cited cause. On the other hand,
leads that are nurtured lead to a 47% increase
in order value (The Annuitas Group). Lead nurturing is
the process that addresses those of your leads that are
qualified, but are not currently ready to purchase.
Nurturing through email can be seen as a development
of good habits with regard to communicating with
potential audiences. The assumption is that you already
know something about the audience, and they about
you. This means that whilst there is an enormous
opportunity in nurturing – particularly by email – there
are potential risks involved as well.
There are four valid ambitions for a lead-nurturing email:
1. Education – These are emails that talk to the context
and/or market that you occupy. They should not be
‘salesy’ or even closely aligned with your products.
Instead, they should aim to grow the recipients’
knowledge in usable ways. To do this, they should be
driven by knowledge of those recipients – it is important
to target the education as much as possible.
2. Connection – It is a valid nurturing thought process
to encourage potential future customers to connect
with your brand through other useful channels. The
more they know about you, the more likely they are to
think about you when the time comes for buying, thus
encouraging the sign-up to social, newsletters, blogs
etc. can be invaluable – both for you and them.
3. Making relevant offers – The crucial word
here is relevant. Offers that are based on their
previous behaviour that take into account a genuine
understanding of what they were trying to achieve or
that show a real awareness of who they are will work.
Those that don’t, will be seen, at best, as marketing. At
worst, they will be annoying and will wither relationships.
4. Re-engagement – This is one of the key objectives
of any lead-generation programme. It’s essential to
remember that engagement is something that is done
almost entirely on their terms. It is not something a
brand can enforce. With that in mind, re-engagement
emails and messaging have to be very largely driven by
listening first.
Any nurturing message is likely to include some mixture
of these ambitions in varying percentages. But it is
helpful for communications
teams to establish which is
their prime ambition at
any given time.
Against this list of
ambitions, there are a
number of factors in a
nurturing programme
that will help bolster
success. Nurturing
messages should be:
1. Trustworthy – Above all else, nurturing messages
have to be seen to be trustworthy, and the brand behind
them worthy of continued attention. This is driven by
setting expectations in the initial interactions, being
consistent, doing what you say you will do and being
sure to be (and not just say you are) customer-centric.
2. Relevant – Messages that fail the relevance test –
especially in the context of a nurturing programme –
are caustic to the brand/recipient relationship. This is
all about saying the right thing to the right person at
the right time. Failure to achieve this leads to recipients
believing you don’t care about them and, at the very
minimum, emotionally opting out of the relationship.
3. Multichannel – Inconsistent messaging across many
channels can be very destructive in a lead-nurturing
programme. Wherever possible (and accepting that
this is a big challenge to many organisations),
nurturing should be seen as a multichannel
exercise.
4. Strategic measured – All messages
in a programme are part of a strategic
objective of converting the lead to
customer. Nurturing is a thought process
that builds upon a steady drip feed of
value and good behaviour that ensures at
any given moment the recipient thinks well
of the brand. As a result, short-term thinking
can be very damaging.
The one really consistent theme
in considering a nurturing programme is that of
personalisation. This is dealt with in another chapter
of this report. However, it should never be far from
marketing thinking, as it is the absolute bedrock of lead
nurturing.
Nurturing
is a thought
process that builds
upon a steady drip
feed of value and good
behaviour that ensures at
any given moment the
recipient thinks well
of the brand.

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7Automation and
ecommerce revenues
Marketers recognise that automated email campaigns play an increasingly
vital role in helping online retailers maximise their revenues through more
effective use of tactics such as cross-selling and upselling. Integration of
marketing automation and ecommerce technology is required to ensure
that personalisation is based on the right data in real-time.
“Marketing automation is a driver of ecommerce revenues”
Is it important for you to automate interactions in an ecommerce platform?
Agree
Disagree
Neutral
72%
26%
It’s important
Neutral
70%
21%
9%
Almost three-
quarters of survey
respondents (72%)
say that marketing
automation helps
drive sales for the
business.
The importance
of automated
ecommerce platform
interactions is recognised
by 70% of marketers
surveyed.
2%

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The integral role played by marketing automation in a
successful digital business is underscored by our survey
of marketers, which found widespread agreement
(72%) that this practice is a driver of ecommerce
revenues.
Correspondingly, more than two thirds of marketers
surveyed (70%) agree that it is important for their
business to automate interactions in an ecommerce
action.
It is encouraging that marketers understand that they
can maximise their success with automated marketing
techniques such as triggered emails in response to
certain actions and milestones.
Translating this understanding into success means
recognising that marketing automation isn’t a stand-
alone discipline and that many of the activities
described in other chapters are its natural bedfellows.
Segmentation, nurturing and good use of data all
play their part in this process.
Automation and ecommerce revenues CHAPTER 7
There is a huge role for automation in helping to drive
revenues from those potential customers or customers
who have, for example, reached the website, signed up
for emails or already made a purchase.
At every stage of the ecommerce journey, there are
opportunities for enhancing the relationship between
the brand and the buyer.
Drive acquisition and initial
engagement
The use of automation becomes essential
as online retailers approach large-scale
operations. The success in this phase comes
from combining volume with effective
conversions.
To do this, marketers need a combination of
great data (and use of data) and tools that
allow them to target, personalise and create
relevant communications. As with so much
of marketing automation, the machines will do a lot –
but real success comes from a rigorous focus on the
customer and from marketing teams putting themselves
in those customers’ shoes.
On-site personalisation and targeting
Good use of data also drives effective on-site
engagement. Once a visitor has been brought into
the sales environment online, success is driven by
understanding why that person is there.
This demands recognition of the final response driver
that brought them onto the site, but also of previous
interactions between the brand and the individual.
Key to success for ecommerce marketers wishing to
deliver with their email marketing strategies is the ability
to integrate their marketing automation and email
technology with their chosen ecommerce platform.
Integration here can help with acquisition and upselling
through better personalisation and targeting. Access
to live data means that companies can respond in real-
time and reap the benefits all year round, especially
during peak shopping periods such as holiday seasons
and bumper sales days such as Black Friday.
At every
stage of the
ecommerce journey,
there are opportunities
for enhancing the
relationship between
the brand and the
buyer.

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Manage cart abandonment
The management of shopping cart abandonment has
proved to be a key driver of incremental ecommerce
revenues. Saving and reacting to what people have put
into their basket delivers several key things:
• An opportunity to go back to the user to try and
reinvigorate the sale
• Data about the user’s intentions and the beginning of a
conversation with that user
• It creates the opportunity to make offers and
sweetener deals
• It also acts as an invaluable UX indicator (e.g. many
people put things into baskets to find out add-on costs
such as postage)
To deliver these benefits and to drive those revenues
really does require the integration of a range of
marketing automation functions.
Cross-sell and upsell
Customers and brands are now very used to the ‘people
who bought x, also bought y’ approach to upsell first
pioneered by Amazon. It now feels, in some ways, like
a hygiene factor in ecommerce – no retailer would miss
out on an equivalent approach. There are also those
who take the bundle approach: ‘buying an electronic
device? Have some batteries as well’. In many ways,
these tactics replicate what goes on in any offline retail
situation.
But upsell in online sales has the potential to be much
more sophisticated. Where customers’ activities
are captured, recognised and referred to in future
interactions, there is the opportunity to develop some
very intricate and successful upsell tactics in order to
increase average order value.
Beauty brand ELEMIS, which specialises in anti-ageing
skincare products, is a good example of a brand that has
reaped tangible benefits from marketing automation
as a result of the integration of its ecommerce platform
Magento with dotmailer.
Its post-purchase programme, which involves following
up on transactions to prompt customers to make further
purchases, has resulted in email campaigns with 50%
higher open rates than general newsletters.1
Apartment decor etailer
Dormify is another good
case study of a company
successfully using
marketing automation.
Its welcome programme
features a three-part series
of emails delivered to new
website visitors who provide
an email address. The first,
including a dynamic coupon code and tailored content
depending on where the subscriber signs up, generated
22% of Dormify’s total email revenue in 2015.2
Post-transactional relationship
Every merchant knows that it is easier to sell to an
existing customer than to convert a new one.
Retaining customers should be a core focus for any
business. Marketing automation plays its role in this by
ensuring (when done well) that the post-transactional
messaging is excellent. It should recognise individual
preferences, the product the customers have bought
and their history with the brand.
Post-transactional communications are an excellent
opportunity for brands to move beyond ‘sales’ mode
and into ‘give value’ mode, thus setting up the next
round of revenue from that customer.
Build analytics and data
Throughout this report, the marriage of data
and automation is inescapable. Analytics and
automation allow brands to build and react to customer
demographics and profiles. The next generation of tools
are offering exciting potential in predictive analytics,
for example starting to understand micro-niches and
what they are likely to do. This will continue to refine
the ability to say the right thing at the right time, to
focus marketing effort and to continue to build online
revenues.
1. https://www.dotmailer.com/media/24039/elemis_case-study_web.pdf
2. https://www.dotmailer.com/media/24038/dormify-case-study_web.pdf
Automation and ecommerce revenues CHAPTER 7
Retaining
customers
should be a core
focus for any
business.

TEL: +44 (0)207 193 4600
MARKETINGAUTOMATION
FEBRUARY 2017
In partnership with
19
8Skills required
for automation
Marketing automation requires skillsets, processes and
technology that many businesses are not currently equipped
for. This chapter looks at the underlying drivers of this
evolution and the types of roles and business practices that
are consequently becoming more prominent.
“Marketing automation relies on technology and skills that you do not currently have in your business”
Are these capability gaps key priorities within your business?
Agree
Disagree
Neutral
39%
30%
31%
It’s important
Neutral
45%
44%
11%
Respondents
are divided when it
comes to whether their
businesses have the
requisite technology
and skills.
45% of the
audience agree that
it’s important to address
these capability gaps
relating to skills and
technology.

20
TEL: +44 (0)207 193 4600
MARKETINGAUTOMATION
FEBRUARY 2017
Modern marketing teams are changing quickly. There
are a whole host of new skills and functions required to
work with the technology, data and new channels that
are becoming available. This is true across marketing as
a whole, and has never been more true for email teams.
We surveyed marketers as to whether they agreed that
marketing automation relies on technology and skills
that they do not currently have in their business. The
results were somewhat polarised: 39% of respondents
agreed with this statement, but 30% disagreed.
There is also a split in terms of whether companies
are prioritising these capabilities. Just under half of
respondents (45%) said they were ‘important’, but a
similar proportion (44%) said they were neutral, perhaps
because the required skills and technologies are already
in place and, therefore, not a priority.
More concerning is the fact that 11% of respondents
simply ‘don’t talk about it’, suggesting that these
companies are burying their heads in the sand when it
comes to skilling up their teams and employing the right
technology.
While the survey data suggests different levels of
marketing automation maturity, it is important for all
organisations to understand the drivers of change, so
they can be better prepared to address any
capability gaps their organisations may be
facing.
There are three key areas of change:
1. Marketing moves from campaigns to
conversations – Structured broadcast
campaigns are unlikely to achieve the relevance
demanded by the modern consumer. The
increase in opportunities
for a consumer to ‘talk
back’ at a brand, and the
increasing likelihood that
this talk-back is heard and
valued by other consumers,
will force brands to adopt
a more conversational
stance.
2. Fast-reacting and
responsive – The
search for relevance
for the consumer –
Skills required for automation CHAPTER 8
These
companies
are burying their
heads in the sand
when it comes to
skilling up their
teams.
and trust from the consumer – will shorten the planning
time available for marketing communications. This
will mean that, increasingly, marketing success will be
measured as much by timeliness and responsiveness as
by creativity (although, of course, the killer combination
will continue to be timeliness and creativity).
3. Customer-driven – The rise of ‘word of mouth’
through social channels and the increasing demand for
personal relevance in marketing communications put
the customer in the driving seat. What they believe and
what they want to hear will drive their response. Brand
marketing that is out of sync with customer sentiment is
unlikely to do well.
There are a number of skills that are required in
a marketing team using automation. Many of
these are familiar, but there are some that are
new or have gained importance in the world of
automation. These can be divided into function-
based changes and approach-based changes.
Function-based changes
Function changes affect what people do. In
some cases, the title may be familiar, but the roles
encompassed by those titles are changing quickly.

21
TEL: +44 (0)207 193 4600
MARKETINGAUTOMATION
FEBRUARY 2017
Strategy
The role of the strategist has existed as long as there have
been marketing campaigns. There is still a requirement
to ensure that the campaign matches the commercial
objectives of the organisation. But there is a growing
need to ensure that strategy is created and managed
across a broad set of departments and tools. Internal
integration is a key part of using technology effectively.
In a modern marketing team, the strategist will be
looking at:
• Strategy of the campaign itself
• Integration strategy (other channels, departments and
tools)
• Focus on the outcomes
Technologists and data scientists
Traditional marketing teams are being joined by a whole
new breed of staff. Many of these do not come from a
marketing background at all. Instead, they have science
and IT backgrounds and play an increasingly important
role, working between the traditional marketing teams
and the tools and technology resources those teams are
starting to use. Their role is crucial and may include:
• Data administration
• Insight development
• Creating viable segments
• Understanding interactions
• Technology management
QA and testing
In a world of technology-driven marketing, and
particularly of automation, the role of sign-off and
quality assurance is changing rapidly. The processes
that produce communication require testing processes
that are much more akin to traditional software testing
than has ever been the case beforehand. Modern
marketing teams require a blend of the programmatic
testing used by IT teams and the traditional human
checks that have been typical of marketers.
Traditional roles
The traditional roles within a marketing team remain
broadly familiar. Project management, design and
copywriting itself are functions that probably exist in
most marketing teams. The difference for these people
is how they go about their tasks and a whole new range
of approach-based skills.
Approach-based changes
Approach-based skills describe how team members
are working. New marketing drives a different set of
thought processes of this type.
Agility
Customer-centricity places demands on teams that tend
to negate drawn-out marketing planning cycles. Instead,
they have to become reactive and responsive in ways
that challenge old-fashioned structures and teams.
This, in turn, requires a new set of approach-based skills
that focus on speed of reaction and dialogue.
This presents a management challenge, a need
for a new mindset and a demand for appropriate
reactions that were unknown 15 years ago.
Growth of the hybrid
Marketing teams working across functions and
in a fast-paced environment increasingly require
team members who have a collection of skills.
The rise of the hybrid marketer – someone who
has good working knowledge across a number
of different skillsets – is a recent approach-based
phenomenon. It will become impossible to service
marketing needs at the speed required when teams do
not have members who are aware of the implications of
decisions across a number of different functional areas.
Collaboration and integration
The operational environment is different – there
should be no ‘stand-alone’ activities. Marketing activity
will become increasingly cross-fertilised across the
channels. (For example: what happens on the website
is important to the social channel and vice versa,
experiential marketing is innately tied into the follow-up
through digital channels, etc.)
Team management processes and KPIs are
different. Under these conditions, teams have to be
more collaborative rather than less so. This guides
management from a tendency to tell their teams what to
do, to an approach that lays out what has to be achieved
and allows the teams to work within a broader remit. As
a manager asks the team to take more responsibility for
the effectiveness of the team as a whole, personal KPIs
need to be changed to reflect these demands.
Skills required for automation CHAPTER 8
There
is a need for
a new mindset
and a demand for
appropriate reactions
that were unknown
15 years ago.

info@digitaldoughnut.com
digitaldoughnut.com
+44 (0)207 193 4600
Digital Doughnut
Shoreditch Building
35 Kingsland Road
London, E2 8AA

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