What are the top things 3-5 things that buyers should know about marketing automation?

Great question Carlos.

I'd like to see companies think more about the message (marketing) and less about the medium (automation).

Far too much of the marketing automation discussion is about the automation. The marketing piece is (still) more important, but it often gets drowned out by discussions of the cool things that automation can do.

The context for a buyer-seller interaction matters, but it doesn't matter nearly as much as the interaction itself. Regardless of how buyers and sellers exchange information, there still has to be value on the table, or the exchange won't happen. That's marketing - facilitated exchanges of value between buyers and sellers.

Automation is more about scale/efficiency/competitive advantage. Those things are absolutely worth having, provided everyone is getting what they need out of the buyer-seller exchange.

I'd encourage any company considering marketing automation to first do a study of recent leads and deals that have flowed through their pipeline, whether they were won, lost, or put on hold. The study should attempt to answer questions along these lines:

- do we understand the key moments in the buying process, from our target buyer's perspective?
- do we know* why our marketing and sales efforts succeed or fail at those key moments, whether the medium is pre-programmed (web site, email, advertising) or human-oriented (sales team, customer service, event)?
- do we have some innovative ideas for new content, new positioning, and new offers that, if delivered to the right buyer in the right way at those key moments, would increase our success rate?

* - (or at least think we know - guessing / reasoned hypotheses are ok in the absence of the rich data that a future marketing automation system will provide)

There are more questions that could be asked. These are just a few. Answering these kinds of questions will help more accurately define the problem you want to solve. Marketing automation can help enable a solution - but it is NOT the solution.

Lastly, after the marketing automation purchase is made, please instruct the person building your first campaigns to build the simplest campaign that will produce data for your team to analyze. Simple means DEAD simple, e.g., a 3-5 email nurturing campaign with no conditional logic other than the processing of opt-outs. A simple campaign like this gets you in the game quickly, so you can evaluate the marketing without getting confused by the automation.

Marketing automation is a tool, not a cure-all. Before implementing automation re-engineer your process, finalize your initial campaign plans, clean up your data, clarify roles and responsibilities, agree on metrics you'll measure progress by, and get agreement from sales on compliance. Ok, that's 6, not 3-5. But those are the biggies in my experience.

I would add a few best practices - start small. Run a small test campaign. Set up simple lead scoring. As you learn more, add complexity.

1) Start small: pick the low hanging fruit and have a quick win. This will help you bootstrap your marketing automation initiative.
2) Don't overbuy: Since it is impossible to use all of the features in a marketing automation suite right out of the box, it is silly to pay for features that you will not use for a number of years.
3) Don't assume that the marketing automation suite will solve all your problems: Marketing automation requires a good understanding of your existing processes and the impact that changing them will have on your customers and on your staff.

If you are a first time buyer
1. make sure you have a system and process in place that works for you in a manual context /have something to automate
2. get your people aligned to the concept of data capture
3. get your people comfortable with the wide array of web collateral materials
4. get your people comfortable with mobile tools, social network proliferation
5. make sure the people at the bottom /on the front line have a direct line of communication to the top

Most newbies tend to think that automation is a solution. It's not.
Most companies do not collect their data in a meaningful / useful /with identifiable intent and will find it hard to make the transition to automation.
Also I have noticed that most automation systems seem to run on an admin perspective with very little focus on the behavior of the process

One of the biggest challenges for many organizations is making the case for marketing automation in the first place.

If others in your group or organization need convincing to give marketing automation software a go, here are nine proven ways to get the thumbs-up.

1. Do the math
Demonstrate quantifiably what a lift in some of your key response and sales pipeline metrics could do to sales and revenue growth. Don’t just talk about automating marketing. Doing more with less is interesting, but not nearly as interesting as increased response, higher volumes of engaged sales prospects for your sales team, larger qualified sales pipelines to work with, and more monthly/quarterly closed business. Build a simple model that demonstrates the impact of improvement at a handful of key funnel points your organization already has a focus on.

2. Show the math from others
Use the marketing automation vendors you’re talking with to gather examples and case studies of how other companies have already done what you’re modeling. Especially look for companies that look close to you – online businesses, B2B businesses, SaaS businesses, etc.

3. Think about customer retention in addition to acquisition
There’s no reason you need to justify marketing automation purely based on new customer acquisition. Most software suites can manage the entire customer lifecycle, including early-customer onboarding, behavior and usage-based communication scenarios and more. The result is higher engagement, lifetime value and referral potential – all of which can also be modeled into your before-and-after ROI.

4. Show samples of metrics/reports possible
Get your team excited about the specific metrics they could use on a regular basis to help manage the business. Marketo, for example, has developed a set of metrics and reports in their automation system that looks beyond traditional marketing metrics (clicks, opens, etc.) and instead looks at a set of revenue performance and prediction measures. These speak directly to current and future revenue potential within your wider prospect pipeline. I’m guessing your boss and executive team would love this kind of future sales & revenue visibility.

5. Outline domain and black list risk
If you continue to do “batch and send” email marketing, vs. the more intelligent multi-track marketing that automation software systems enable, you’re putting your entire company’s reputation at risk with ISPs and email delivery watchlists. The risk of getting black-listed is real and getting more likely for companies that aren’t managing prospect relationships carefully. Make sure the organization understands this risk (not only to ongoing email marketing, but to the domain itself, corporate email deliverability, customer marketing, etc.)

6. More email (not less)
The most common objection I hear to investing in marketing automation software is that the company’s existing, batch-and-send strategies just need to get smarter. But usually, that just means harder and harder decisions about which messages and emails should go out to a prospect list that already gets way too much email. The more you send in bulk like this, the more your prospects will tune out…or unsubscribe. With more intelligent, multi-track automated marketing systems, you can actually increase your regular email volume while ensuring the right message gets to the right prospect at the right time. Higher volume plus higher response rates equals happiness for your sales team and executive team.

7. Long-term headcount reduction
Some organizations have been able to model long-term headcount reductions in marketing as well as sales with successful marketing automation implementations. This doesn’t mean eliminating roles in the organization immediately, but does mean that fewer marketing heads may be needed as the company continues to grow, but more of the marketing execution is automated. Those eliminated future heads are meaningful to your CFO.

8. Impact on inside sales performance
Your VP of Sales should be your strongest ally in pitching a marketing automation investment, as he or she should understand quantifiably what the likely impact will be on the team. Inside reps should be more qualified leads, leads that are ready to convert into and through the pipeline at a higher rate. Over time, fewer sales reps may be needed with higher individual productivity rates to achieve the same or higher sales outputs. Work with your sales counterpart to build this model and business case.

9. Don’t talk about software
As I said at the beginning, nobody likes to buy software. And although that’s what this is, it’s not about that. Build your case based first on what it does, not what it is. Paint a picture of the success and outcomes you’re trying to achieve, then once you have the entire team head-nodding in agreement, outline the solution.

1. Pick a solution that works for you. I think it all hinges on the key methods, objectives, and measures of the marketing organization. Evaluating and employing a marketing automation solution should be focused not on everything it can do, but what it can do specifically towards your objectives. For example, if you target multiple industries, you might be focused on data segmentation and targeted messaging with dynamic content. If an MA solution can enable that, the decision should be easy.

2. Once you pull the trigger, it's important to walk before you run. There's a lot of exciting stuff marketing automation can do, but you have to build the framework first. Once you do, you'll be able to experiment with new features and tactics without too much effort.

3. Dedicate resources appropriately. No matter how simple the solution, you'll probably be understaffed. Opportunities will be exposed all over the business that need the help of marketing automation, and you'll want to be able to seize them.

Only 1: Worry about your marketing practices first, polish them, get them right; and only then, figure out which recursive processes can be automated.

Great question Carlos. Here are some recommendations:

1) Content - more often than not, development of high quality content becomes your critical path item once you've committed to doing marketing automation. Content creation is time consuming and potentially expensive. Don't commit to mkg auto unless you've got the resources to create content.

2) Left Brain - marketing automation is complex and requires the DNA of a systems analyst, a love of configuring systems and great attention to detail. Make sure that there is someone on your team with this type of wiring otherwise there is no point in investing in an powerful system that no one will use.

3) Not Easy - I'd say that 70% of the companies that invest in marketing automation systems end up using 5% of its potential. Most end up using them as batch & blast systems - and there are much cheaper solutions to do that. Why do marketing automation tend to be under utilized? First, you need to map out the buying cycle, then map it your marketing and sales funnel and then design flows (that inevitably become complicated) that are triggered based on prospects' actions and demographics. In parallel, you've got to get the sales & marketing teams aligned against common metrics and processes. All of this is great to do. Its the right thing for a company to do. The problem is that its not easy if you don't have prior experience doing it.

So in a nutshell the decision to purchase a marketing automation system is really just the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath the surface is often profound and intimidating. I would strongly recommend considering points 1-3 before signing a contract with a provider.

Good luck,
Daniel
www.cmo-togo.com