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What are the non-tech processes a business must have in place prior to marketing automation?
Before a business implements a marketing automation system, there are several non-technological processes that must be in place. What are the most important processes to have in place? How can these processes ensure a successful implementation?
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3 Answers
Important business processes include:
- marketing planning, to select the most appropriate programs and get them started. Planning requires an understanding of your buyers' purchase process so you can see which programs will have the greatest impaot.
- project management, to track the creation of the planned programs. This is especially important where programs will run in multiple channels that controlled by different groups both within marketing (e.g., email vs. keyword buyers) and beyond marketing (e.g. sales and call center).
- campaign development, to design the actual campaign flows and define the required marketing contents.
- content creation and maintenance, to develop the content itself. I'm calling out maintenance because you want to build a library of content and reuse it when appropriate -- a key way to reduce costs and improve effectiveness.
- reporting and measurement, to capture initial results and to relate them to actual business value (a.k.a. revenue).
Having these in place before marketing automation implementation is critical. Ideally, you'd define your system requirements based on the programs that your planning process has determined are most valuable. Then, you can do a lot of the campaign design and content creation before you actually implement the marketing automation system, so you are ready to go once it is actually deployed. Of course, measurement is critical to knowing what works so you can expand the winners and get the most possible value from your marketing automation investment.
I'll be doing a Focus Webinar on this very topic on Friday, March 11 at 1 p.m. Eastern. You can register at http://www.focus.com/webcasts/marketing/purchasing-marketing-automation/
Complete agreement with sales on what sales needs, what they should expect, and the feedback sales needs to provide marketing to make your sales & marketing machine as efficient and productive as possible.
Agreement on the definition of a lead ready to be delivered to sales and a plan to recalibrate lead scoring based upon sales failures and success.
The sales teams' understanding of the campaign(s) and a feedback loop to determine quality and effectiveness of the message; is the customer getting the message intended and is it producing the results intended, with flexibility to make modifications.
The bottom line is a strong working agreement with good communication between sales and marketing is essential to achieve success.
I echo Gary's sentiments here. I recently attended an Eloqua user group where Rally Software presented. One of Rally's key success factors is the foundation of sales buy-in and involvement. Many marketing departments shy away from including sales in the campaign development process, but giving front line sales more control over what customers receive significantly improves the process as a whole.
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