This document provides a guide for achieving marketing automation success. It outlines 4 milestones in the marketing automation journey: 1) The Journey Begins, where the objectives are set and early campaigns are run; 2) Reaping the Rewards, when processes are established and results are shown; 3) Marketing Comes Into Its Own, when sales and marketing alignment emerges and lead scoring is implemented; and 4) The Journey Continues, focusing on continuous improvement. The guide stresses the importance of data quality, content, documentation, metrics, and sales enablement throughout the process.
Connect Marketing to Revenue With Performance MeasurementObservePoint
As your company becomes increasingly data-driven, it can be easy to get caught up in markers of success such as leads, bookings, or site visits. But what about the most important metric to your business—revenue?
In this tip sheet, Connect Marketing to Revenue with Performance Measurement, you'll learn how to:
- Gather clean, complete data
- Bridge the gap between marketing, sales, and service
- Increase the scope and capabilities of your attribution strategy
Agile marketing is based on a growth mind-set across the marketing team – one that allows for open communication across the team without fear of making mistakes. For a marketing team to truly become agile and growth-oriented, it needs to adopt the same agile ground rules from IT software development.
Marketing Velocity and the 5 Keys to Making the Cash Register RingThe Starr Conspiracy
What does Talladega Nights' Ricky Bobby know about marketing? Speed is the key. And that if you're not first, you're last.
Learn how to use velocity to close deals.
Download The Starr Conspiracy Tech Unit’s free white paper “Marketing Velocity and the 5 Keys to Making the Cash Register Ring.” In it, you’ll learn:
— The most important metric in turning leads into sales
— How to align your people, processes, and technology to make your marketing efforts more effective
— Steps to creating continuity and agility that will crush your business objectives
Connect Marketing to Revenue With Performance MeasurementObservePoint
As your company becomes increasingly data-driven, it can be easy to get caught up in markers of success such as leads, bookings, or site visits. But what about the most important metric to your business—revenue?
In this tip sheet, Connect Marketing to Revenue with Performance Measurement, you'll learn how to:
- Gather clean, complete data
- Bridge the gap between marketing, sales, and service
- Increase the scope and capabilities of your attribution strategy
Agile marketing is based on a growth mind-set across the marketing team – one that allows for open communication across the team without fear of making mistakes. For a marketing team to truly become agile and growth-oriented, it needs to adopt the same agile ground rules from IT software development.
Marketing Velocity and the 5 Keys to Making the Cash Register RingThe Starr Conspiracy
What does Talladega Nights' Ricky Bobby know about marketing? Speed is the key. And that if you're not first, you're last.
Learn how to use velocity to close deals.
Download The Starr Conspiracy Tech Unit’s free white paper “Marketing Velocity and the 5 Keys to Making the Cash Register Ring.” In it, you’ll learn:
— The most important metric in turning leads into sales
— How to align your people, processes, and technology to make your marketing efforts more effective
— Steps to creating continuity and agility that will crush your business objectives
In the last ten years, sales professionals have been asked to do more with less. Most businesses have experienced several rounds of reductions in force, as acquisition and bottom-line pressures eliminate human capital from business. Business has looked to improved technology to keep pace with competitors and run with minimal work forces, thus producing an increasingly stressful, and competitive environment.
8 ways to introduce personalisation into your marketing strategy CRMT Digital
Personalising enables modern marketers to create highly engaging customer experiences that have continuously proven to generate higher conversion rates and improved lead generation. Yet many of today’s marketers are still only using basic forms of personalisation in their campaigns, a stock email with a category field, whilst a survey on marketing messages conducted by Lyris revealed that 63% of consumers report this no longer has an impact due to the volume of emails they receive.
Here are eight easy ways to help you take the first steps towards improving campaign personalisation:
In today's sales world, technology is your friend. Without it, life is short, brutish and nasty as it was for the neanderthals!
Learn how to combine those tried and true sales tools with today's technology based tools to get the most out of all your sales activities.
There is no magic bullet, but there is a very straight path to successful sales results for those who learn to work multiple sales techniques.
This Mindmatrix presentation on sales enablement offers a step-by-step process for enabling your direct sales teams. Watch this presentation to learn-
-Why is sales enablement is so important?
-What does direct sales enablement involve?
-Why is it time to move beyond traditional marketing automation and CRMs?
-What are the 12 steps to holistic sales enablement
Marketing Automation is becoming one of the fastest growing, most valuable tools in the Marketing industry. With any technology, new on the scene, comes doubts and misconceptions. We’ve shed the light on 8 common myths to help you unravel the world of marketing automation.
Here are eight marketing automation myths exposed and dispelled by our marketing operations experts.
Sales have never been easy without sales tracking appSalesBabuCRM
SalesBabu CRM is one of the most trusted Sales Tracking CRM Software that facilitates you to have a clear vision of Sales Pipeline, Nurtured Leads and Qualified Prospects. You can have information on fingertips to use anywhere anytime about what is going on in your Sales Processes.
Three common mistakes in sales that may be costing you dear customersVikram3859
Common mistakes in sales process that could be preventing your own sales progress. By collectively addressing these problems you can improve your sales bottom lines.
In this guide, you will discover a distilled best practice approach to Shopper Marketing that will superpower your strategy and lead you in the direction of success.
NEURAL SALES is an intelligent (AI) solution that evaluates all aspects of your market in real-time, and learns from your interactions, successes, and set-backs.
The Complete Guide to Developing a Marketing BudgetRichard Hatheway
Marketing budgets are a business critical tool, as they help you determine what the costs will be for the various campaigns, programs and activities that the Marketing Department runs throughout the year. Unfortunately, most marketers don’t know how or where to begin creating a budget. While business courses in college may have touched on the subject, the reality is that most marketers learn how to develop a budget on the job, often through trial-and-error.
This blog will provide an overview and outline of the basic steps needed to develop a marketing budget from scratch.
It is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.
Explore what all could be done when you have ability to match leads against account in the real time. From routing to segmentation, account intelligence to competitive positioning. Possibilites are countless.
Are you really benefiting from the full capabilities of your marketing automation technology? The experts explain how you can make the most of your investment in this eBook guide.
In the last ten years, sales professionals have been asked to do more with less. Most businesses have experienced several rounds of reductions in force, as acquisition and bottom-line pressures eliminate human capital from business. Business has looked to improved technology to keep pace with competitors and run with minimal work forces, thus producing an increasingly stressful, and competitive environment.
8 ways to introduce personalisation into your marketing strategy CRMT Digital
Personalising enables modern marketers to create highly engaging customer experiences that have continuously proven to generate higher conversion rates and improved lead generation. Yet many of today’s marketers are still only using basic forms of personalisation in their campaigns, a stock email with a category field, whilst a survey on marketing messages conducted by Lyris revealed that 63% of consumers report this no longer has an impact due to the volume of emails they receive.
Here are eight easy ways to help you take the first steps towards improving campaign personalisation:
In today's sales world, technology is your friend. Without it, life is short, brutish and nasty as it was for the neanderthals!
Learn how to combine those tried and true sales tools with today's technology based tools to get the most out of all your sales activities.
There is no magic bullet, but there is a very straight path to successful sales results for those who learn to work multiple sales techniques.
This Mindmatrix presentation on sales enablement offers a step-by-step process for enabling your direct sales teams. Watch this presentation to learn-
-Why is sales enablement is so important?
-What does direct sales enablement involve?
-Why is it time to move beyond traditional marketing automation and CRMs?
-What are the 12 steps to holistic sales enablement
Marketing Automation is becoming one of the fastest growing, most valuable tools in the Marketing industry. With any technology, new on the scene, comes doubts and misconceptions. We’ve shed the light on 8 common myths to help you unravel the world of marketing automation.
Here are eight marketing automation myths exposed and dispelled by our marketing operations experts.
Sales have never been easy without sales tracking appSalesBabuCRM
SalesBabu CRM is one of the most trusted Sales Tracking CRM Software that facilitates you to have a clear vision of Sales Pipeline, Nurtured Leads and Qualified Prospects. You can have information on fingertips to use anywhere anytime about what is going on in your Sales Processes.
Three common mistakes in sales that may be costing you dear customersVikram3859
Common mistakes in sales process that could be preventing your own sales progress. By collectively addressing these problems you can improve your sales bottom lines.
In this guide, you will discover a distilled best practice approach to Shopper Marketing that will superpower your strategy and lead you in the direction of success.
NEURAL SALES is an intelligent (AI) solution that evaluates all aspects of your market in real-time, and learns from your interactions, successes, and set-backs.
The Complete Guide to Developing a Marketing BudgetRichard Hatheway
Marketing budgets are a business critical tool, as they help you determine what the costs will be for the various campaigns, programs and activities that the Marketing Department runs throughout the year. Unfortunately, most marketers don’t know how or where to begin creating a budget. While business courses in college may have touched on the subject, the reality is that most marketers learn how to develop a budget on the job, often through trial-and-error.
This blog will provide an overview and outline of the basic steps needed to develop a marketing budget from scratch.
It is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.
Explore what all could be done when you have ability to match leads against account in the real time. From routing to segmentation, account intelligence to competitive positioning. Possibilites are countless.
Are you really benefiting from the full capabilities of your marketing automation technology? The experts explain how you can make the most of your investment in this eBook guide.
Driving Value with Marketing Automation How-To GuideDemand Metric
Executive Summary
B2B marketers have enthusiastically adopted marketing automation, with industry revenue growing at 50% per year according to Raab Associates estimates. The reason for this adoption is simple: marketing automation works. Users consistently report growth in quantity and quality of leads, in lead acceptance rates, and in marketing revenue contribution. Recent acquisitions by major software vendors including Oracle, Salesforce.com, Microsoft and Adobe further confirm that marketing automation is becoming a standard part of every company’s technology foundation.
But simply deciding you want to make better use of your marketing automation doesn’t end the discussion; it just raises the much more difficult question of how. This How-To Guide will provide you with some answers.
Read this 12-page guide to learn about:
The Marketing Automation Maturity Model
The levels of Marketing Automation Maturity
How to evolve your Marketing Automation strategy at each level
Demand Metric's How-To Guides are designed to provide practical, on-the-job training and education and provide context for using our premium tools & templates. If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please contact us at info@demandmetric.com
White Paper: successful with marketing automationrun_frictionless
Marketing automation is more than merely automating your workflows, even though – as the name suggests – this clearly is the point. However, if you just do what you are doing now but with the help of a fancy tool, the results will not be that dierent. Nor does marketing automation mean mass marketing, i. e. providing the same content to all the leads you have got, regardless of their engagement history, progression in the sales process, or preferences, and hoping some will bite
https://runfrictionless.com/b2b-white-paper-service/
Getting started with marketing automation may seem complicated, but with a little preparation, you’ll see results right away. In fact, 44% of companies achieve a positive ROI within only six months - with a whopping 28% average overall return.
Our quick start guide will give you a 6-step strategy to prepare your organization for adopting marketing automation and help you accelerate your return on investment.
On average, 51% of companies are currently using marketing automation. Companies that have an effective marketing automation strategy observe high-profit figures and enhanced efficiency amongst their employees. Marketing automation, when aligned with strategic objectives, can take your organization to the next level!
Marketing automation is powerful technology, but how do you build a business case for it in your company? This presentation highlights key features of marketing automation platforms, and shares tips for planning and implementing your new system.
Learn how marketing automation can grow your pipeline, make your customers happy and close the gap between marketing and sales.
Marketing Automation for Nonprofits - Heller ConsultingHeller Consulting
Nonprofit supporters are looking for more and more personalized ways to support the missions they love. And nonprofits are realizing that it’s time to take the plunge to deliver deeper relationships through sophisticated constituent relationship management systems, access to big data, robust dashboards, relevant and inspirational content, and the latest and greatest that marketing technology has to offer. In fact, when it comes to email marketing, digital fundraising, advocacy and acquisition, it’s no surprise that marketing automation technology is at the top of many nonprofit’s wish lists. But where do you start? Heller Digital’s forthcoming paper is designed to give you helpful tips how to take on marketing automation and learn from nonprofit pioneers who have already blazed the trail. We conducted interviews with leading organizations and gathered insights on how to approach a new marketing automation effort, what to look out for, and how to make the most of this technology (without tearing your hair out)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a provider of digital marketing automation and analytics software and services. It was founded in 2000 under the name Exact Target
10 Sanity-checks for Efficient Data Management CRMT Digital
Marketers know that data is important yet it isn’t always the most appealing aspect of marketing for creative individuals. Everyone knows how important it is, but nobody wants to deal with it. Like it or not, data is crucial, the lifeblood of campaign success or failure. Without it, marketing automation will not deliver awesomeness. Here are ten things you need to remember in order to manage your data efficiently and keep your sanity while doing so.
The Super CIO: The Hero Your Data Strategy NeedsCRMT Digital
Find out how marketing operations tools can help you to drive your business forward with big data strategies.
In the age of data driven marketing a new superhero is emerging - the super CIO or IT manager. This new superhero is stepping up and rising to the challenge posed by big data - pushing into the realms of strategic planning and driving excellence throughout their company. It is this new superhero’s mission to prioritise data management, create cohesive and flowing data channels and transform the customer experience through a data strategy that also aligns to the business’ needs.
Continual user experience optimisation: A guide to excellenceCRMT Digital
Aiming for continual improvement of marketing performance with data aggregation techniques.
Marketing operations brings together two or more departments to unlock business value. Done right, it works brilliantly. But there’s another idea that goes even further… uniting ALL departments for the benefit of the customer.
The basic ideas behind customer experience management (CEM or CXM) go back to old masters like Caples and Kotler. But it’s only in the last decade or so that technology has made them quantifiable. Modern data aggregation techniques, informing campaign creativity with data-driven customer insights, means CI for CX isn’t an end-of-project tickbox any more. It’s now a continual process.
This Slideshare shows you how it works.
Best practice for data interoperabilityCRMT Digital
IT should assume responsibility for data interoperability in an age when marketing campaigns generate and depend upon top-quality information from increasingly diverse sources and technical marketing training.
Data interoperability is becoming essential for organisations who want to run successful marketing campaigns. As strategies evolve, an increasing amount of data is arriving from multiple sources, which needs to be managed, organised and used responsively. With this increase in data, Marketing are moving in on IT spend to narrow silos, but this runs the risk of inconsistencies across data handling. We've created a Slideshare that provides organisations with best practices for data interoperability, with a focus on why providing technical marketing and training to Sales and Marketing is so important.
The ideal IT budget: Best Practice vs RealityCRMT Digital
Best practice and reality are often at odds when it comes to winning the ideal IT budget. But collaboration can bridge the gap and deliver great results for marketing and other key business areas.
Closer collaboration between Marketing and IT can help your business make better use of its IT budget, boost the impact and ROI of successful campaigns, and take IT to the strategic heart of the enterprise.
Rethinking Sales and Marketing alignment: [How Marketing will help close deals]CRMT Digital
Better Marketing and Sales alignment improves profits, customer services and internal relationships. Most organisations have already realised that traditional business unit divisions hinder more than they help and are now seeking to improve internal relationships between departments. For successful alignment between Marketing and Sales, employees need to be empowered by technology.
Core Web Vitals SEO Workshop - improve your performance [pdf]Peter Mead
Core Web Vitals to improve your website performance for better SEO results with CWV.
CWV Topics include:
- Understanding the latest Core Web Vitals including the significance of LCP, INP and CLS + their impact on SEO
- Optimisation techniques from our experts on how to improve your CWV on platforms like WordPress and WP Engine
- The impact of user experience and SEO
It's another new era of digital and marketers are faced with making big bets on their digital strategy. If you are looking at modernizing your tech stack to support your digital evolution, there are a few can't miss (often overlooked) areas that should be part of every conversation. We'll cover setting your vision, avoiding siloes, adding a democratized approach to data strategy, localization, creating critical governance requirements and more. Attendees will walk away with actions they can take into initiatives they are running today and consider for the future.
In this presentation, Danny Leibrandt explains the impact of AI on SEO and what Google has been doing about it. Learn how to take your SEO game to the next level and win over Google with his new strategy anyone can use. Get actionable steps to rank your name, your business, and your clients on Google - the right way.
Key Takeaways:
1. Real content is king
2. Find ways to show EEAT
3. Repurpose across all platforms
The digital marketing industry is changing faster than ever and those who don’t adapt with the times are losing market share. Where should marketers be focusing their efforts? What strategies are the experts seeing get the best results? Get up-to-speed with the latest industry insights, trends and predictions for the future in this panel discussion with some leading digital marketing experts.
The digital marketing industry is changing faster than ever and those who don’t adapt with the times are losing market share. Where should marketers be focusing their efforts? What strategies are the experts seeing get the best results? Get up-to-speed with the latest industry insights, trends and predictions for the future in this panel discussion with some leading digital marketing experts.
The session includes a brief history of the evolution of search before diving into the roles technology, content, and links play in developing a powerful SEO strategy in a world of Generative AI and social search. Discover how to optimize for TikTok searches, Google's Gemini, and Search Generative Experience while developing a powerful arsenal of tools and templates to help maximize the effectiveness of your SEO initiatives.
Key Takeaways:
Understand how search engines work
Be able to find out where your users search
Know what is required for each discipline of SEO
Feel confident creating an SEO Plan
Confidently measure SEO performance
Come learn how YOU can Animate and Illuminate the World with Generative AI's Explosive Power. Come sit in the driver's seat and learn to harness this great technology.
Everyone knows the power of stories, but when asked to come up with them, we struggle. Either we second guess ourselves as to the story's relevance, or we just come up blank and can't think of any. Unlocking Everyday Narratives: The Power of Storytelling in Marketing will teach you how to recognize stories in the moment and to recall forgotten moments that your audience needs to hear.
Key Takeaways:
Understand Why Personal Stories Connect Better
How To Remember Forgotten Stories
How To Use Customer Experiences As Stories For Your Brand
A.I. (artificial intelligence) platforms are popping up all the time, and many of them can and should be used to help grow your brand, increase your sales and decrease your marketing costs.In this presentation:We will review some of the best AI platforms that are available for you to use.We will interact with some of the platforms in real-time, so attendees can see how they work.We will also look at some current brands that are using AI to help them create marketing messages, saving them time and money in the process. Lastly, we will discuss the pros and cons of using AI in marketing & branding and have a lively conversation that includes comments from the audience.
Key Takeaways:
Attendees will learn about LLM platforms, like ChatGPT, and how they work, with preset examples and real time interactions with the platform. Attendees will learn about other AI platforms that are creating graphic design elements at the push of a button...pre-set examples and real-time interactions.Attendees will discuss the pros & cons of AI in marketing + branding and share their perspectives with one another. Attendees will learn about the cost savings and the time savings associated with using AI, should they choose to.
The Secret to Engaging Modern Consumers: Journey Mapping and Personalization
In today's digital landscape, understanding the customer's journey and delivering personalized experiences are paramount. This masterclass delves into the art of consumer journey mapping, a powerful technique that visualizes the entire customer experience across touchpoints. Attendees will learn how to create detailed journey maps, identify pain points, and uncover opportunities for optimization. The presentation also explores personalization strategies that leverage data and technology to tailor content, products, and experiences to individual customers. From real-time personalization to predictive analytics, attendees will gain insights into cutting-edge approaches that drive engagement and loyalty.
Key Takeaways:
Current consumer landscape; Steps to mapping an effective consumer journey; Understanding the value of personalization; Integrating mapping and personalization for success; Brands that are getting It right!; Best Practices; Future Trends
Monthly Social Media News Update May 2024Andy Lambert
TL;DR. These are the three themes that stood out to us over the course of last month.
1️⃣ Social media is becoming increasingly significant for brand discovery. Marketers are now understanding the impact of social and budgets are shifting accordingly.
2️⃣ Instagram’s new algorithm and latest guidance will help us maintain organic growth. Instagram continues to evolve, but Reels remains the most crucial tool for growth.
3️⃣ Collaboration will help us unlock growth. Who we work with will define how fast we grow. Meta continues to evolve their Creator Marketplace and now TikTok are beginning to push ‘collabs’ more too.
Most small businesses struggle to see marketing results. In this session, we will eliminate any confusion about what to do next, solving your marketing problems so your business can thrive. You’ll learn how to create a foundational marketing OS (operating system) based on neuroscience and backed by real-world results. You’ll be taught how to develop deep customer connections, and how to have your CRM dynamically segment and sell at any stage in the customer’s journey. By the end of the session, you’ll remove confusion and chaos and replace it with clarity and confidence for long-term marketing success.
Key Takeaways:
• Uncover the power of a foundational marketing system that dynamically communicates with prospects and customers on autopilot.
• Harness neuroscience and Tribal Alignment to transform your communication strategies, turning potential clients into fans and those fans into loyal customers.
• Discover the art of automated segmentation, pinpointing your most lucrative customers and identifying the optimal moments for successful conversions.
• Streamline your business with a content production plan that eliminates guesswork, wasted time, and money.
5 big bets to drive growth in 2024 without one additional marketing dollar AND how to adapt to the biggest shifting eCommerce trend- AI.
1) Romance Your Customers - Retention
2) ‘Alternative’ Lead Gen - Advocacy
3) The Beautiful Basics - Conversion Rate Optimization
4) Land that Bottom Line - Profitability
5) Roll the Dice - New Business Models
For too many years marketing and sales have operated in silos...while in some forward thinking companies, the two organizations work together to drive new opportunity development and revenue. This session will explore the lessons learned in that beautiful dance that can occur when marketing and sales work together...to drive new opportunity development, account expansion and customer satisfaction.
No, this is not a conversation about MQLs and SQLs. Instead we will focus on a framework that allows the two organizations to drive company success together.
10 Video Ideas Any Business Can Make RIGHT NOW!
You'll never draw a blank again on what kind of video to make for your business. Go beyond the basic categories and truly reimagine a brand new advanced way to brainstorm video content creation. During this masterclass you'll be challenged to think creatively and outside of the box and view your videos through lenses you may have never thought of previously. It's guaranteed that you'll leave with more than 10 video ideas, but I like to under-promise and over-deliver. Don't miss this session.
Key Takeaways:
How to use the Video Matrix
How to use additional "Lenses"
Where to source original video ideas
First Things First: Building and Effective Marketing Strategy
Too many companies (and marketers) jump straight into activation planning without formalizing a marketing strategy. It may seem tedious, but analyzing the mindset of your targeted audiences and identifying the messaging points most likely to resonate with them is time well spent. That process is also a great opportunity for marketers to collaborate with sales leaders and account managers on a galvanized go-to-market approach. I’ll walk you through the methods and tools we use with our clients to ensure campaign success.
Key Takeaways:
-Recognize the critical role of strategy in marketing
-Learn our approach for building an actionable, effective marketing strategy
-Receive templates and guides for developing a marketing strategy
1. M Y A W E S O M E G U I D E T O
MARKETING
AUTOMATION SUCCESS
MA My Automation
My Awesome
2. Marketing automation is no longer a ‘nice to have’ but well and
truly a ‘must have’. However, getting internal buy-in, fleshing
out high-level objectives, keeping up with processes and
aligning Sales and Marketing are all hurdles that have to be
overcome. If you can overcome them then you can transform
your marketing automation from average into awesome. In this
guide we lead you step-by-step on your journey to marketing
awesome, from your very first step all the way through to
campaign refinement. Read on to find out more.
YOUR GUIDE FOR MOVING
FROM MARKETING
AUTOMATION TO
MARKETING AWESOME
MILESTONE 1
THE JOURNEY
BEGINS
MILESTONE 3
MARKETING COMES
INTO ITS OWN
MILESTONE 2
REAPING THE
REWARDS
MILESTONE 4
THE JOURNEY
CONTINUES...
www.crmtechnologies.com
3. Once the decision has been made to implement,
the process of getting buy-in internally has
often been such a big step that typically the
actual implementation can suddenly come as a
bit of a shock ‘deer in the headlights’ moment
when marketers sit back for a second and
contemplate how they will deliver through this
new system. For most marketers, a move to
marketing automation means a fairly major shift
in approach, from the creative to the scientific,
from left brain to right.
Marketing automation
changes the focus to
inbound marketing,
looking at the buyers’
journey from start to
finish, from identifying a
problem and assessing
solutions to actual
purchasing and even
repeat orders, supported
by outbound marketing techniques to give
an extra ‘push’ where required. For this new
change in approach to work, a more methodical,
analytical approach to marketing is critical. If
you don’t adapt to this way of thinking, your
marketing automation is unlikely to deliver
what you expect from it. You would expect
some training requirement, but we are really
talking about a new mind-set, fundamental
to the success of your marketing automation
programme.
This paper provides a roadmap guide
to successful marketing automation
implementation, outlining key stages in your
on-going marketing automation delivery and
development. We will also look at best practice
tips and emphasise learning points during
the stages and propose
metrics that you should be
considering throughout.
If you are serious about taking
a buyer-centric approach,
your marketing needs to be
closely aligned with sales to
look at the entire customer
journey. Marketing and sales
automation systems provide
the technical capability to integrate, but to truly
achieve a seamless approach you need to
look at aligning the people doing the day job if
marketing automation is to achieve measurable
revenue attribution in the longer term.
Measurability is critical throughout
successful marketing automation
implementation. When you first start to
deliver campaigns through your new
system, focus on two critical success factors:
1. Delivering early wins; and
2. Laying the foundations for long-term
success with your marketing automation
system.
Without early success, your hard won trust
in investing in marketing automation is
at risk as key stakeholders may then feel
cheated if they don’t see results, especially
the sales team who tend to focus on short-
term results. On the flip side, if you don’t
plan for the longer term, you risk not setting
up the processes and best practices that
will ultimately make marketing automation
pay back in spades by being able to track
specific revenue generated back to your
marketing campaign spend. Unfortunately,
you will need both at the same time, not
forgetting that you will need to carry on with
current business. It’s a fairly big ask, but this
guide should provide some inspiration for a
structured approach to success.
If you don’t adapt to this
way of thinking, your
marketing automation is
unlikely to deliver what
you expect from it.
www.crmtechnologies.com
4. MILESTONE 1
THE JOURNEY
BEGINS
As with any good planning, it begins with
deciding what you are trying to achieve,
establishing objectives. Your initial business
case proposal will no doubt have addressed
this, so the next step is to flesh out those
high level goals into more tactical objectives.
Regular reviews and assessments will also aid a
successful outcome.
Once your objectives are set, an important area
to consider is your skill set. Often marketing
automation skills are not readily available within
your department, so how will you develop this?
If you can enable your team with the right skill
set and build their knowledge from the outset,
you will pave the way for long-term marketing
automation success.
It might also be helpful at this stage to look at
service providers that can boost your team.
Even if you don’t need fully outsourced support,
it is helpful to know who to turn to if you need
specialist support.
Introducing marketing automation is a major
change in approach and so there is a good
chance that you will not have team members
with marketing operations skills and experience
within your department already. Marketing
operations people are more likely to come from
a technical background, perhaps web/digital or
project management disciplines. It is important
to recognise that the skills required are quite
specialised and are likely to be beyond the
reach of your more junior team members to
start with – don’t expect your execs to turn into
marketing ops professionals after a couple of
vendor training sessions!
Key skills required of a strong marketing
operation professional include: a logical
mind, an eye for detail, web/ HTML skills, an
understanding of data, reporting and analytics
plus excellent communications skills at all
levels. Of course it helps if they also have
previous experience of your chosen marketing
automation platform.
When embarking on a marketing automation
programme, the first stage needs to focus on
demonstrating early success while also paving the
way for longer term strategies.
www.crmtechnologies.com
5. 1.2 Focus on data
Marketers know that data is important, but it isn’t always the most
appealing aspect of marketing for creative individuals. Everyone
knows how important it is, but nobody wants to deal with it. Like
it or not, data is crucial as without current, good quality data, your
marketing automation will not deliver your objectives.
Data completeness should be your focus; how complete are
your data records, especially for data that you will use for
segmentation and personalisation? How detailed is your data
on customers and prospects, do you know who they are? (this
might sound strange, but we have all received mailshots from
companies offering us incentives to sign up when we are already
customers which makes us feel a little unloved?).
Do you have all the data you need in the marketing automation
system? For cross or up-selling campaigns as an example,
your marketing automation system will need to know what the
customer has already purchased. For many companies this
is recorded in a back office system and so you may need to
consider how this data can be integrated into the marketing
automation platform. If not, how are you going to source that
data? You also need to be aware of your data compliance, are you
up to speed with the latest in data protection legislation? Your first
priority is compliance but preference management should also
be considered at this stage so that you can move towards a more
refined ‘opt-in’ approach further down the line.
Data cleansing will need to become a regular occurrence and
part of your on-going marketing automation processes.
1.3 Focus on content
Content is the second essential ingredient for ensuring marketing
automation success. It’s important to perform a content audit at
this early stage in your marketing automation journey, identify
what ‘assets’ you have, whether this is marketing collateral in the
form of case studies, white papers or video content for example
and where these apply in the buyer’s journey? Who does it apply
to? You will reap the rewards of this process in the long term as
it forms the basis of a central repository of information which you
can continue to build over time.
At the start of the project, make the most of the opportunity
to really look at where your data gaps are and define what
your ideal customer contact profile will look like, this will assist
you greatly in the longer term. It’s important to remember that
campaigns can also have a secondary aim of improving data
quality.
Maintaining high standard of data quality is critical to the on-
going success of your marketing automation system. As your data
volume increases over time, your database is likely to consist
of: contacts that you cannot communicate with (such as hard
bounces or opt-outs), contacts that you can communicate with,
but who haven’t shown signs of life (sometimes called ‘emotional
unsubscribes’), responsive contacts (active prospects/customers)
and finally contacts that you haven’t included in any campaigns
and so their status is as yet unknown. Marketing automation
campaigns ultimately aim to reduce that last category to zero by
continuing to qualify and refine your data.
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6. 1.4 Building your bespoke user guide
In our experience, most marketers do not instinctively focus on
documenting processes, but for marketing automation, this is
vital. An important first step is to create a bespoke user guide.
This is not a generic user guide, but more of a specific guide book
that lays out how you do things in your organisation. In the same
way marketers are used to the concept of documented brand
guidelines, this is a similar concept but for every aspect of your
marketing processes. Your guide should cover everything from
naming conventions through to data standards and step-by-step
process documentation.
1.5 Tracking success
Marketing automation is ultimately driven by the need for
measurement of marketing success. Measuring from the outset is
an important part of the marketing automation adoption journey.
At this early stage, measurement criteria may be similar to metrics
for an email marketing campaign. Indicators include open rates,
click throughs, bounces etc. If you have been operating an email
marketing tool, you will have some previous statistics against
which you can benchmark to show success and feed this back to
stakeholders to validate the benefits of marketing automation.
One area that may be new to you in marketing automation is
the measurement /metrics related to your web site. Even if your
prospects did not click through from an email campaign, did it
generate additional traffic to your web site? Which are your main
sources of traffic to your website, emails, search engines, social
1.6 Sharing success with stakeholders
Throughout your marketing automation journey, it is vital that you
communicate with key stakeholders. During Phase 1, it
is important to validate their decision to go ahead with the
investment in marketing automation, for the most part a fairly
significant on-going investment. This is why it is important to
deliver early success, demonstrating that there is a tangible return
on investment and that the marketing automation system is well
on its way to achieving its long term goals.
media sites? It will become increasingly important to become
familiar with these metrics and to refine their interpretation over
time so it is worth familiarising yourself with these from the outset.
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7. MILESTONE 2
REAPING THE
REWARDS
The second stage of marketing automation success
is when you can start to see the results of your early
work in setting up processes initially, as this is when
we are trying to benefit most from automating a
proportion of the buying cycle.
2.1 Building your bespoke user guide
To get warmed up with marketing automation, there are
some simple, early automated campaigns you can deliver to
demonstrate the power of your new system. Some examples
include:
• A ‘welcome’ campaign for brand new prospects
• A re-engagement campaign for customers that have ‘gone
quiet’
• Events campaign templates – both on and off line. To
remove the previous manual effort associated to the
invitation, registration and follow-up process
2.2 Keep up the paperwork and processes
Documenting your processes becomes increasingly important at
this stage. Establishing a standard process for dealing
with offline campaigns, such as trade show attendance, will
become more important if you are to further develop your central
repository and create a standard practice within the team.
Once your guide book is comprehensive, you will be equipped
to enable less experienced members of the team to deliver
campaigns by following the guidelines.
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8. 2.3 Keeping contacts fresh
We have discussed the importance of good quality data and, as
part of good practices, you will need to have contacted everyone
on your database to ensure that the data is current.
The requirement to check data accuracy should always be a
consideration throughout your campaigns, rather than focusing
on campaigns just to check data accuracy. It is also good practice
to put in place metrics at this stage that will enable you to
measure quality and data completeness.
Preference management is an important area that is sometimes
neglected. It is important to ensure that you are adhering to
the rules on this. Encourage your contacts to express their
preferences on a regular basis and make sure that you act upon
their requests. This provides useful information on your contacts
and establishes best practice in terms of continuing the dialogue
with customers.
2.4 Getting to the heart of marketing automation
with lead scoring
Few would argue that lead scoring is one of the key features to
exploit within your marketing automation system. It is the key
to enabling you to measure the quality of the results you are
delivering to sales and ultimately to the business. At this phase in
your journey, take the opportunity to develop your lead scoring
ratings. Typically there will not quite be enough information
available in the earlier stages to develop fully effective lead
scoring and so it is a good idea to trial your scores, but perhaps
not share the actual ratings with sales at this stage.
The rationale behind this is the importance of creating trust and
building lasting relationships with the sales team. If you have
not quite got it right, sales will quickly note that not many of
marketing’s top rated leads convert. Clearly this risks them going
back to their old practices of their personal contacts during the
second stage, you need to evaluate your interim lead scoring
ratings by assessing sales conversion rates based on the results
in your CRM system. This will give you an idea of whether top
marketing qualified leads (MQL’s) are converting and, if they are
not, to go back to the drawing board and re-assess.
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9. Within the first nine months or so, you will no doubt have
built solid foundations with clear guides, well documented
processes and grown the skills and experience of your
marketing team within this new marketing automation mind-
set. You are now well positioned to make the most of your
achievements and demonstrate to stakeholders the amazing
power of your new marketing automation system.
3.1 Alignment between sales and
marketing emerges
You have already shown some success with the new system and
have started to develop your lead scoring, laying the foundations
for sales and marketing to begin to work in closer alignment.
Conversion rates between stages of your lead pipeline will be
measured and assessed along with marketing’s contribution and
influence on revenue.
Now is the time to share your lead scoring mechanism with the
sales team, having already evaluated its effectiveness in the
earlier stages. This will help to build on-going trust with the sales
team and you can now look at conversion rates of highly scored
leads together with them for an accurate view of conversion rates.
In order to maintain a good relationship with the sales team, it is
important to consider a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with them.
When establishing your SLA, some areas to consider include:
• A formal definition of an MQL and Lead
Ratings
• The conditions by which a lead may be
“rejected” by sales. Typically “I already
know about this”, “Does not meet agreed
MQL definition” etc.
• The maximum time for a sales person to
accept or reject a lead
• The maximum time before initial follow-up/
contact with the prospect
• The maximum time for a sales person to
convert (or disqualify) an accepted lead
into a sales opportunity (SQL)
• Escalation procedure for non-conformance
to SLA.
MILESTONE 3
MARKETING COMES
INTO ITS OWN
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10. 3.2 Taking sales enablement a step further
Maintaining a strong relationship with the sales team can be
further reinforced by making the most of sales enablers, features
within your marketing automation system that strengthen your
aligned approach to lead management by allowing the sales
team access to the marketing automation system.
Through system integration with CRM platforms, the sales team
will be able to see detailed information about each customer
before making any contact. Access to the so-called ‘digital body
language’ helps the sales person to determine how engaged
the prospect is together with their interest areas before making
contact. Many systems include features such as the ability for
individual sales team members to send out ‘mini campaigns’
using the CRM system or their email client, perhaps inviting
some of their key contacts to visit your stand at an exhibition.
In this way, marketing can contain all customer and prospect
contact information in the same system and maintain brand
guidelines without restricting direct sales activity. Sales enablers
ultimately encourage the sales team to engage with the
marketing automation system.
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11. Having invested in a comprehensive, structured approach
and built your processes over time, by now your marketing
automation should be running efficiently and effectively. It is at
this stage that the operational side of maintaining success with
marketing automation comes into play and where process and
systems demonstrate their worth.
Prospects and customers should by now be categorised into where they are in the buyers’ journey.
This will assist you in segmenting and will equip you with excellent data for local campaigns. For
example, if you are running a webinar on a certain topic subject, you will be able to match the
relevance of that content to where the buyer is on their journey, providing an extremely tailored
approach at the right time for that buyer. If the webinar is focusing on fairly detailed product
information, it will be most relevant to contacts that are further along their journey as opposed to
thought leadership content which would be more relevant to those just starting out.
Maintenance is key to successful on-going marketing automation. Below are some tips for
maintaining high standards as your journey continues:When establishing your SLA, some areas to
consider include:
• Don’t get complacent – it is easy to sit back
and think that everything is in working
order. Continue to reassess your market
and customer behaviour, this is part of your
marketing automation journey
• Focus on regular reviews – this will ensure
that you are measuring results against
objectives
• Look at skills and ensure service providers
in place to support where necessary
• Continue communications with
stakeholders – reinforce their decision to
invest by measuring the results of your
marketing automation campaigns and
impact on revenues
• Continue to monitor and refine automated
campaigns
• Refine, develop and refresh appropriate
content assets
• Review performance and refine
measurement criteria
• Monitor and refine your lead scoring for
maximum conversion rate.
MILESTONE 4
THE JOURNEY
CONTINUES
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12. 4.1 Getting more prospects and speeding
up the process
Creating a powerful marketing automation engine is a significant
investment that can generate amazing returns. By this stage, you
will have automated much of the buying process and begun to
fine tune certain elements. Your next challenge is to focus on
improving the volume of prospects added to the system and to
speed up the movement of buyers through their buying journey.
Always look to future requirements while maintaining system
knowledge and making the most of new product developments
from your marketing automation tool vendor, such as social
networking integration . If you take the approach that the
marketing automation journey is on-going, requiring maintenance
and a philosophy of continuous improvement, then your
marketing automation system will continue to deliver revenue
growth for your business.
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13. ABOUT CRM
TECHNOLOGIES
CRM Technologies (CRMT) helps businesses align sales and marketing to increase demand and
grow revenues through best practice consultancy, technical integration and outsourced marketing
operations. As one of the first specialist marketing operations agencies in the UK, we have led the
way in helping all types of businesses transform traditionally siloed sales and marketing activities
into integrated programmes that deliver Return on Investment.
Our teams provide tailored services and solutions that support every stage of the marketing
automation journey, combining consultancy with technical and operational expertise in leading
marketing automation platforms including Eloqua and Marketo, and CRM platforms such as
Salesforce.com.
For more information, visit www.crmtechnologies.com or connect with CRM Technologies on one
of the following social networks:
CRM Technologies Ltd.
100 Longwater Avenue, Green Park, Reading. RG2 6GP
T: +44 (0) 118 945 0030
E: info@crmtechnologies.com
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