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What are the main barriers to a successful deployment of a marketing automation solution?
By most accounts, 2009 has been a breakout year for the marketing automation space. And while the category itself is not new, we now have a robust and growing ecosystem of vendor solutions, resellers, agencies, consultants, integrators, and marketers with deployment experience. However, as we discovered over the 10-year evolution of the Hosted CRM market, there are always hard knocks and lessons learned on the way to excellence. So as we head into 2010, let's hear from those who've been there and done marketing automation: what are the key issues for marketers to prepare for (and overcome) when implementing a solution?
Best Answer
- Recommended by:
- Josh Margolis,
- Ian Webb,
- Joby Semmler
Since tomorrow is xmas eve and my wallet has felt the sting of Legos for my son....i'll relate my answer to what is consuming my household...legos....
You give your child 2 lego sets. The first lego set is simple...it has pieces to build a truck....that's it. It costs $14.99. The second set is the lego mega city set and includes 10 vehicles, a couple of buildings a few streets and a lego starbucks (they don't have this yet but give them time). The second set costs $299.99. Which set will jr. (age 5) be successful with?
The first set, he builds the truck...it rolls, it has wheels....it does exactly what junior wanted it to...he's get's his $14.99 worth right there, under the Christmas Tree. The second set, he builds half a building, 3 trucks, part of a road, has no clue what to do w the starbucks thing since he doesn't drink coffee(yet).....he gets frustrated, there's lego pieces in Dad's office, the bathroom, and one in the freezer (no clue how it got there).
Herein lies the problem w/ marketing automation, an industry I've toiled in since 1994 when segmentation and fax broadcasts were all the new rage.
Problem is, most platforms like to present the user with widely fancy campaign design tools, this feature and that...when at the end of the day, 90% of users really need to execute relatively simple and trackable campaigns. Users cannot possibly process all of this and learn how to use the technology quickly enough to justify the 2500-$10,000 per month spend. Frustration occurs and the experience is bad for all.
People evaluating marketing auotmation need to have a very clear understanding of the programs they want to launch and back into a solution from there and keep the dollars to a fraction of thier total budget.
Millions of marketing pros understand PPC and Email Marketing.....few understand completely integrated marketing automation. Go slow, don't pay too much out of the gate, get your feet wet and grow with the solution...that will dividends.
The barrier = complexity and cost
- Recommended by:
- Tom Scearce,
- Ravi Shrestha
Great points by all of the commenters above, and I agree with all of them, so let me add to them with the following way of thinking about it. Marketing automation really is a technology that enables you to change your marketing processes, so if you don't know what those processes should (roughly) be, no technology in the world can help you.
In essence, the process change allows you to (a) understand what your buyers are interested in, (b) get those who are sufficiently interested in contact with your sales team, and (c) nurture the rest while their interest builds.
Start with a whiteboard, and have your team layout their thoughts on what those processes should look like and dig deep into many of the areas talked about above:
- how will a lead be scored? What defines the right "fit" (role, industry, etc) and "engagement" (interest). Do you have the right data to do that? Is it up to date? Is there interesting enough content on your website to tease out interested vs not?
- what will the lifecycle of a qualified lead be? How will sales be notified? how long will they have to follow up? What then - is it clawed back? What if sales does not connect, or is told to "call back in 90 days"? How is a lead dispositioned back to marketing?
- how are leads nurtured? Do you have enough content? Is your database fresh/accurate? Do you have the industry/role/etc information needed to personalize as you would like to? How will you get it if you don't?
As many have mentioned above, it has to fit with *your* business, so those are just rough guidelines, but go deep on data, content, process, sales-handoff, and lead-lifecycle questions and you'll soon have a much better understanding of where there are gaps, challenges, and risk factors.
Hope that helps
Thanks Paul - and I know from reading your name in the acknowledgements of Steven Woods' book, The Digital Body Language, that you qualify as a seasoned veteran of this space!
- Recommended by:
- Tom Scearce
Tom, Thanks for the great question. We have been evaluating a number of these services lately. We use Pardot and have been very happy with it. One area where I think every one of these tools fall short is the ability to add in offline touches. They also fail to really bring in the sales team.
We have found that not one really allows the manager to add an offline touch like a call or a letter. All I want to see is a note either in SMS or email saying to call the prospects or send a letter. I know marketing teams tend to be adverse to talking to clients, but it has to be done and it has to be done as part of the nurturing process. Also, every one should have an open API so the data can be accessed and manipulated in whatever way we deem necessary.
As for the customization that's why clients hire firms like mine that can implement any one of them and make the necessary connections to the disparate systems that need the data.
My two cents.
Ben
- Recommended by:
- Scott Mersy
A couple of months ago I write a blog post with the 7 reasons why marketing automation projects fail:
- unclear prospect profile(s)
- no interesting content
- not enough leads
- sales & marketing don't get along
- lack of expertise
- bad business model
- selling simple products
This is the full post:
http://www.leadsloth.com/blog/marketing-automation-projects-fail/
Let me know your feedback!
- Recommended by:
- Tom Scearce
From my experience the #1 challenge is quality of data. The data migration aspect is vital to successful marketing automation integration. The challenge is, most companies are dealing with disparate databases containing redundant, stale, inaccurate data. Not enough emphasis is placed on front-end cleansing, thus resulting in profound inefficiencies once the painstaking process of integrating poor data into your marketing automation system is complete. The end result in force feeding data that is of poor quality into a marketing automation system is missed deadlines due to the prolonged roll-out, as well as a greatly reduced ability to produce the business processes necessary to create a “lights out” system. My recommendation is to invest time and resources into cleansing the data accordingly before importing it into the system. Once integrated, make sure that data integrity is enforced at every step of your marketing process.
Dan: your experience is not uncommon. The powerful capabilities of marketing automation platforms give marketers the opportunity (and challenge) to customize those features to be benefit their "revenue factory." As with any other key process, companies need to prioritize the work that extracts full value out of the marketing automation process. Oil and gas companies provide a useful metaphor here. If leads were the marketing/sales equivalent of "light sweet crude" there would be a lot of discipline around the refining, distribution, inventory controls, and monetization.
On a related note, Steve: great suggestions on how to start defining the marketing automation process in a collaborative way with marketing and sales stakeholders.
Remarkable content is the fuel for marketing automation. Or it is the bait on a hook.
How do you create remarkable content? You need to get out there and talk to customers. Where are their pains? What language do they use?
Study your prospective buyers closely. Create great content for those buyers. And use marketing automation to deliver that content and track digital body language -- then watch your business grow.
Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor and President
Find New Customers
http://www.findnewcustomers.net
25% of people in your database will move in the next year. They may or may not retain their current email address. If you have 1000 people on your mailing list, that's 250. If you have 100,000 or more people on your list, that's a lot.
Automation is having a machine do something for you so you don't have to do it yourself.
Keeping a mailing list in an electronic database is not automation.
Creating content requires discussion and thought. Using a word processor to write down your thoughts and ideas is not automation.
Automation is having a machine contact groups of people on a scheduled basis, sending different groups different messages as appropriate, tracking responses, alerting sales reps when new or existing customers respond, replying to responses with additional, targeted information based on the prospect/customer's response, providing metrics to help you plan the next phase or campaign. So in order to automate, all of the above has to be worked out in advance, and as mentioned earlier, everyone does this differently. The barrier presents itself when you go out and buy a solution before you've addressed these issues.
Marketing is a process. Focus on the process first and the automation second.
I tell my clients that I can find or adapt technology to fit any process. But if the clear understanding of the process is not there, you're cooked.
Make sure you do not take the personality out of the communication. Too much marketing speak will kill any marketing automation campaign.
Also, if your company is like our company, you don't use the full functionality of MA due to other priorities. This is a problem we are trying to fix right now but it is a constant battle.
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Top barrier is getting the tool tuned to meet YOUR companies marketing/sales process. All the tools can do email, forms, create programs, etc. out-of-the-box, but it takes customization to make it work wihin your process. And this typically means a consultant.