How long does it take to fully implement a basic marketing automation system?

It took us about one full week to implement our system, and about one month for us to have it fully stabilized. We use Net Results (http://www.net-results.com) and have been doing so for almost a year now. Getting the system set up took our web developers about 10 minutes and our marketing team had no problem learning the system. In fact, I would say that the learning curve was lower than any system I have used recently, and whenever there was a question the support team at Net-Results was eager to help.

Once the marketing team was comfortable with the system we started to introduce it to our sales team. We did this through an integration with salesforce, but I believe they also offer integrations with sugar and other CRMs. The CRM integration is a strong value add for us. Net-Results gives our sales team more information than they could ever wish for, and it is right at their fingertips in a format that is useful to them.

We took a look at a lot of systems and the factors that influenced our decision making process were:

1. Fast implementation
2. Full integration
3. Marketing precision, and
4. An all around good company to work with

If we decided to go with any of the other systems we were evaluating we probably would have been able to meet only one or two of the four criteria listed above. Implementation time depends on the product you choose and the robustness of it's feature set. We found that Net-Results gave us the best mix of powerful features with a quick ramp up period to ensure a good ROI and an increase of both the marketing team's, and sales team's, productivity.

Since our system has stabilized we have been doing a continuous review of the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. We have had good success with them, but we have also been able to do a better job at qualifying our leads as they come in as a result of the system.

I would say that the implementation time of a marketing automation system should be no more than a month. More importantly though, you should make sure that the system has a robust enough feature set for your organization, and that the company that is supplying your system is one that you can easily do business with (their ability to support you is key to your success).