Over the last few years, Marketing Automation has sure caught marketers’ fancy, given the phenomenal benefits it provides to its users, particularly in the medium and enterprise business segments. However, it also needs to be borne in mind that just randomly choosing a software for marketing automation and implementing it for your business may not yield the desired results. One should, therefore, always keep the following three fundamentals in mind when choosing and implementing a marketing automation system:
1. Successful Implementation of Marketing Automation Does Not Happen Overnight:
Firstly, selecting the appropriate Marketing Automation solution requires time, given the plethora of solutions available in the market and maybe about which you just don’t have the right knowledge. Seek help of marketing automation experts, take your time to research your pick and shortlist a number of solutions that may be appropriate for your business. Look for vendors who will offer helpful advice and even customize solutions that suit your specific needs.
Always remember that marketing automation is certainly just not about automating mundane marketing tasks. It’s about understanding consumer behavior and deriving marketing intelligence to meet a specific goal like increasing website traffic or more inbound leads etc.
Most of the marketing automation systems available in the market are fairly robust and have basic or advanced functionalities. While, these companies help you with implementation, do keep in mind that it’s very basic implementation coupled with a few of hours of training on the tool. I haven’t come across any company which spends time to understand the customer’s product, market and marketing automation requirements in depth. That’s why most marketing automation implementations fail or do not meet the customer’s goals.
The solution to this is pretty simple, work with a marketing automation company, which helps you identify the right tool, implement the workflows and works with you to make marketing automation work for you. Once the implementation is complete, monitor key metrics like email open rate, lead nurturing conversions, improvement in website traffic and leads. Marketing Automation systems require monitoring and improvement of the content, automated workflows, analytics, offers and interactions. While the system automates the tasks and campaigns, take the targeted, human and personal dimension into consideration. Without this, the implementation will be unsuccessful.
Your Marketing Automation system and CRM depend wholly on basic data. This calls for maximum attention to be paid to the data available in your system as also the workflows and processes that are being built around them. Most first time users of Marketing Automation systems tend to ignore this after implementation and fail to create a monthly quality report on their data which highlights gaps and successes in the house list. It also goes without saying that Marketing Automation per se encompasses multiple departments, particularly sales. Thus inputs and buy-ins from Sales as well as other associated departments is mandatory. This in turn, involves the participation of almost every other departmental head as the initial mapping of the implementation plan begins, and which may be overlooked by most first time users. Remember, their feedback is extremely important for the system’s ultimate success.
2. Communication Frequency, Keep it Optimal:
First and most importantly, right communication- message and frequency is the key to marketing automation success. Too-frequent or too little contact may prove futile and even annoying to the customer and thus, calls for the right balance. Out of sight is out of mind and too frequent emails are equivalent to spam. Fewer interactions with more relevant and useful data that pleases the customer are, therefore, called for. It also shows that you understand their specific needs and intend creating value. It is also commonly mistaken that Marketing Automation primarily reduces the human and personal dimensions. Rather, personalization features improve customer experience substantially.
3. Integrate, Integrate, Integrate!
Marketing Automation is successful only when its implementation is carefully planned to work with existing systems you have in place. It also certainly doesn’t pay to overlook that even though the IT administrator may know the system well, knowing your instance and how well it works with the website, CRM and the product in particular is as important.
It is also seen that numerous Marketing Automation users fail to realize that they are the stewards and guardians of a living system which requires constant monitoring of the skills of other marketers and need to be nurtured constantly without harming the system. This also calls for taking full responsibility for the workflows and data.
Plan your Marketing Automation system implementation in such a way that it integrates seamlessly with your website/app, CRM or any other lead management system, EPBAX, other marketing software like landing page builders, email, social media, PPC management tools etc. Never forget to integrate existing landing pages, particularly in PPC or pay-per-click campaigns with you marketing automation system, otherwise you will loose track of valuable leads. Try to achieve two-way synchronization which either happens instantly or periodically with the user being able to also control synchronization frequency.
Is your marketing automation system integrated with other tools? Leave your comments in the comment section below.
Are you planning to implement marketing automation or looking to integrate your marketing and sales automation tools? At Esanosys, we implement and integrate marketing and sales automation tools for companies of all sizes- startups, growth stage and enterprises. Do get in touch us today to improve your marketing.
