Do you require engineering support for your marketing automation solution?

Agreed, the main challenges are around "process thinking" - how do you whiteboard the right processes for lead nurturing, lead scoring, and sales handoff. This requires a more "operational" style of thinking than more creative marketing, but not an IT skillset.

It depends on which marketing automation package you select.

From what I hear, Eloqua requires knowledge of scripting to implement campaign programs.

Marketo required very little technical support, and we were able to do it without an engineer. We needed to modify our DNS, SPF, and A record settings, which required access to the DNS server and our mail hosting provider. Integrating with SFDC required a token which could only be obtained by someone with SFDC administrator rights, but setting up the token in Marketo took only a minute. We also needed to implement the tracking code on our website, but a web developer handled that with no need for engineering support. Knowledge of HTML is vital, and knowledge of java script would be helpful to do some of the more advanced work.

We probably would have completed all this more quickly if we'd had a savvy IT person, but our non-technical team got it all done in a day with a little guidance from Marketo support.

Candyce,
thanks for the comment - just to clarify, there's no need for scripting with Eloqua (I'm with Eloqua). It's very easy to launch basic campaigns. There are many advanced processes that can be built in Eloqua, and those can get complex, but basic campaigns are very simple and require no scripting.

Thanks for the opportunity to clarify!
Steve

Steve,
Good to know. Thanks for clarifying!
Candyce

Apart from tracking code implementation, and potential writing to our API for CRM integration (for those not using SugarCRM, Salesforce.com or DynamicsCRM), none.

Again -- as in earlier posts, if you use your own domain (recommended), and you don't have an easy way to update your DNS records, then someone from IT or your DNS host, will need to update the SPF records, CNAME, and A-Record. There is also tracking code implementation in the footer of your existing website or blog pages.

Other than that, there is no IT support necessary - and that includes complex lead nurturing, landing page templates (or full website templates), and email templates.

Our Salesforce.com integration takes less than 20 minutes to get set up, and does require that your SFDC admin generate a token, or provide the token if it's already been generated for other SFDC apps you may have already installed.

The majority of our customers are marketers, and we find that most if not all are not using any IT folks to help them setup, run, and manage their campaigns.

Hope this helps,
Kim

Jamie, it completely depends on the marketing automation solution you plan to use.

From a technical point, I don' think you need engineering support, but yes you will need access to the person who administrates your company website, also setting the Marketing Automation platform for your company usually takes anywhere between 10 to 30 mins before you start getting your lead data, at least in the case of LeadFormix.

But the point is, for your marketing automation solution to be effective, like Steve said, it requires some bit of 'process thinking'.

But today even that is taken care of to a major extent, now with next-gen marketing automation platforms offering intent identification of anonymous and other website visitors, and scoring enterprises and their activities on the website at a company level, all it takes is to set up a process which enables your Sales & marketing teams to reach out in time to Sales-ready leads (Hot leads) with customized (intent-driven) sales pitches or to the promising leads with customized nurturing and help them speed up the decision making process.

Cheers
Merlin

It's only when you need to integrate functionality outside your solution's current feature set. Then you will need your API guy.