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Marketing Automation Best Practices Published May 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Copyright Econsultancy.com Ltd 2011 Econsultancy London 2nd Floor, 85 Clerkenwell Road London EC1R 5AR United Kingdom Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7681 4052 http://econsultancy.com help@econsultancy.com Econsultancy New York 41 East 11th St., 11th Floor New York, NY 10003 United States Telephone: +1 212 699 3626
Contents 1. Introduction... 1 1.1. About this report... 1 1.2. About Econsultancy... 2 2. Background... 3 2.1. What to expect when you re expecting marketing automation... 4 2.2. Selecting marketing automation solution, or not... 4 3. Why Marketing Automation?... 6 3.1. Realistically, how long will this take?... 6 3.2. Who should be in charge?... 8 3.3. Does marketing automation really work?... 9 4. Marketing Automation Concepts Explained, Then Expounded... 10 4.1. Listening tactics... 12 4.2. Preference centres, surveys, and progressive profiling... 13 4.3. Database integration... 15 5. Individualised Content Tactics... 18 5.1. Dynamic segmentation... 19 5.2. Lead scoring... 21 5.3. Medium as message... 22 5.4. Timing tactics... 23 5.4.1. Auto-responders or triggered email... 23 5.4.2. Lead nurturing... 23 5.4.3. Frequency and cadence... 24 5.5. Bringing it all together... 25 6. Continuous Testing and Optimisation... 27 6.1. B2B vs. B2C considerations, length of purchase cycle... 29 6.2. Workflow considerations... 30 7. Getting on Your Way with Marketing Automation... 31 Marketing Automation Best Practices Opportunity and Operational Reality
1. Introduction 1.1. About this report This report was created to provide an unbiased look at the burgeoning marketing automation industry. While optimistic about the potential of marketing automation (MA) software and services, the report will not endorse any one vendor, service, or product. It intentionally skews towards the experiences and needs of a B2B marketer, but will also address B2C marketing automation. We began the research process by interviewing many marketing automation third-party service and software vendors. We talked to the individuals within those organisations that are currently involved with hands-on implementation of marketing automation. We strived to get their unvarnished opinions on what specific tactics and strategies have been most successful for their clients, and what headaches a marketer can expect when attempting to implement them. We also turned to high-level individuals within these companies for their opinions on strategy and bigpicture issues. In addition to speaking with vendors, we turned to an online focus group of marketers that are currently using marketing automation software/services for their opinions. This group was randomly recruited from the current client base of multiple marketing automation vendors. They anonymously contributed their stories of success as well as their frustrations with marketing automation implementation within their own organisations. The online focus group consisted entirely of B2B marketers. The end result is a view of the industry that takes both vendor and marketer opinion into consideration, and spans the services of many vendors and the experiences of many marketers. All interviews were conducted between August and November 2010. Participating marketing automation vendors included Eloqua, Manticore Technology, Marketo, and Neolane, to whom we offer our sincere thanks for their candour, transparency and help. Marketing Automation Best Practices Page 1
1.2. About Econsultancy Econsultancy is a digital publishing and training group that is used by more than 200,000 internet professionals every month. The company publishes practical and timesaving research to help marketers make better decisions about the digital environment, build business cases, find the best suppliers, look smart in meetings and accelerate their careers. Econsultancy has offices in New York and London, and hosts more than 100 events every year in the US and UK. Many of the world s most famous brands use Econsultancy to educate and train their staff. Some of Econsultancy s members include: Google, Yahoo, Dell, BBC, BT, Shell, Vodafone, Virgin Atlantic, Barclays, Deloitte, T-Mobile and Estée Lauder. Join Econsultancy today to learn what s happening in digital marketing and what works. Call us to find out more on +44 (0)20 7269 1450 (London) or +1 212 699 3626 (New York). You can also contact us online. Marketing Automation Best Practices Page 2
2. Background Marketing automation, using technology to manage, scale and measure marketing, is not a new concept. In fact, at its most basic level, marketing automation has been around for many years. For example, using software to perform a mail merge, dynamically inserting the names of people in a database into a form letter, has been a common practice among direct mail practitioners since IBM made the technology available in the 1980s. While conceptually similar to the original mail merge program, what makes contemporary marketing automation software and services different is that Marketing Automation Best Practices Page 3
2.1. What to expect when you re expecting marketing automation When first evaluating marketing automation software and services, there are a variety of technical and strategic decisions that must be made. Internal politics are nearly as important at this stage as are marketing considerations. You must identify an Executive Sponsor to secure support and enforcement. Then identify what your initial goals and objectives are. Which other teams should participate in the selection process? How will success be measured / which metrics are most important? Which skills are needed for the individual in charge of automation implementation to have? What skills are needed on the team moving forward? To answer these and many other questions, we asked both vendors and their marketer clients to tell us what to expect when first getting started. 2.2. Selecting marketing automation solution, or not While the various vendors we interviewed were unsurprisingly bullish on the benefits of their own solution, what they all agreed on is that individuals shopping for marketing automation should go with an option that enables easy growth and additional sophistication over time, not the cheapest option to complete the few specific tasks that are immediately pressing. The point is valid, because Marketing Automation Best Practices Page 4
3. Why Marketing Automation? Most vendors tout marketing automation as a way to make marketers more efficient, better align sales and marketing departments, and increase the effectiveness of marketing through greater relevancy. We were curious, however, to know what it was that attracted their clients to marketing automation prior to purchase, so we asked why they had invested. It turns out that marketers 3.1. Realistically, how long will this take? According to our focus group of automation users, on average it took 3.2. Who should be in charge? We asked our focus group of marketing automation buyers who had been most important during the purchase and implementation of their marketing automation service. The most common answer was the 3.3. Does marketing automation really work? Simply put: yes, marketing automation works. The caveats, of course, are that how well it works depends largely on how well the user wields it, and that it takes time for automation to build up to its full potential. It is important to note that if a company invests in marketing automation but best practices (such as those outlined in this report) are not adhered to, it is entirely possible that the investment may produce few, if any, results. We polled our focus group of marketing automation users to see if and how Marketing Automation Best Practices Page 5
4. Marketing Automation Concepts Explained, Then Expounded In this section we ll get into the specifics of marketing automation implementation and tactical effectiveness. It is important to understand on a conceptual level how marketing automation joins the technological back-end to the marketing front-end and sales CRM systems, as well as how that enables various marketing tactics and improved sales intelligence. Many tactics are multi-step, meaning some back-end process must first be in place before a front-end process can take place. The following sections will present topics in roughly the order they must be completed. Nearly every marketing automation tactic is designed to help improve marketing in one or more of the following Marketing Automation Best Practices Page 6
4.1. Listening tactics Marketing automation needs accurate data for it to work well, which means before you start using it on the front-end, you ll need to get your back-end in order. If you don t already have a robust database in place with good information about your prospects and customers, you ll need to set up a way to consistently collect information about them. For digital marketers, listening means 4.2. Preference centres, surveys, and progressive profiling Just about anyone that has ever signed up for an email newsletter has encountered an email preference centre. Usually, you have just a few options, which are to subscribe, unsubscribe, or to indicate interests from a list of topics. However, there is no reason to so narrowly limit the options you give your prospects and customers. 4.3. Database integration A good marketing automation program pulls in lots of data from many different data sources with the end goal of creating a centralised database of organised, easily usable information about every individual to whom you are marketing. An integrated centralised database is Marketing Automation Best Practices Page 7
5. Individualised Content Tactics Once the foundations of a useful database have been laid on the back-end, automation software can deliver much more relevant information on the front-end: individualised content in real-time. The goal of delivering customised content is to 5.1. Dynamic segmentation Segmentation has long been touted as an extremely effective tactic among marketers, but when automation software allows for segmentation on the fly using whatever data works best, segmentation starts to more closely resemble individualisation. There is a direct relationship between 5.2. Lead scoring So now that you are engaging leads in your database, how do you objectively determine the value of that lead and if it s ready to be passed to sales? Lead scoring is simply the process of 5.3. Medium as message The buying process has changed. Buyers are more educated long before you even know they are interested in your solution. In fact, it s been estimated that 70% of the buying cycle is complete by the time Marketing Automation Best Practices Page 8
5.4. Timing tactics An important part of message relevance is the timing of when the message is sent. Just as a warning not to step into traffic is much less useful after a bus has already hit the intended recipient, the right marketing message sent to the right person is nearly worthless if sent at the wrong time. People offer up all sorts of signs some obvious, some subtle that they are ready to receive a message. The key to relevance as a marketer is to be listening for these signs and then to react appropriately, often immediately. 5.4.1. Auto-responders or triggered email Auto-responders can take the form of any automatically triggered communication. However, the most common type of auto-responder is 5.4.2. Lead nurturing Lead nurturing is simply the practice of 5.4.3. Frequency and cadence Frequency refers to the number of messages sent to an individual within a specific timeframe. Cadence is the 5.5. Bringing it all together Getting one tactic up and running will have an immediate impact on your marketing program, but it s the combination of multiple tactics working together that is most likely to have a serious impact on the bottom line. The example below sums up how the combination of Marketing Automation Best Practices Page 9
6. Continuous Testing and Optimisation If you followed best practices when first setting up your marketing automation program, you should already have a list of metrics and closed-loop success metrics that marketing and sales have agreed to track. If not 6.1. B2B vs. B2C considerations, length of purchase cycle The technology that drives marketing automation programs for B2B and B2C companies is very similar, as is the technology used to set up analytics and closed-loop reporting. What will differ greatly, however, are 6.2. Workflow considerations While not the focus of marketing automation, one of the benefits of centralizing all your marketing resources into a single database and tool is that it allows Marketing Automation Best Practices Page 10
7. Getting on Your Way with Marketing Automation Marketing automation doesn t replace the marketer. Rather, it allows the marketer to increase their effectiveness by giving them much more information to analyze and utilise, as well as a realtime platform for delivering customised content. Nothing stays the same for long, however, so what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. It s the marketer s job to use these tools ensure their marketing is always primed to deliver the most relevant content to every individual at the time that they desire. Marketers in the process of evaluating whether marketing automation is right for them need to consider whether they have: 1. Enough budget and Marketing Automation Best Practices Page 11