RAMP Marketing Automation Checklist Are you ready to implement Marketing Automation? Are you struggling to keep your sales funnel full? Do leads you generated months ago fall through the cracks because they weren t ready to buy when you first talked to them? Do you know prospects are researching you on your website but don t know when or what they are looking at? Is your sales team frustrated working unqualified leads generated by your marketing efforts? Is your website conversion rate (lead generation divided by visitors) in the average range of 2% to 5% and you know it should be higher? Do you lack a systematic lead follow up process that effectively nurtures leads for months or years until they buy from you? If you checked YES to any of these, and you want to grow, you are ready to consider a Marketing Automation solution.
Which of these benefits of a well-run Marketing Automation system are you most interested in? Improved conversion rate for leads to sales Shortened sales cycle by accelerating prospects research and trust development time frame Increased productivity of your marketing staff (generating and nurturing leads) and your sales staff (closing deals) Reduced costs by eliminating over 90% of the manual effort required for effective lead follow up Real -time insight into which marketing efforts are providing ROI and creating sales Flexibility to make your team more responsive to market changes and new communications tools Deep understanding into what works, what doesn t, and why. Future marketing campaigns are constantly improved Personalization of your marketing efforts so that each prospect gets information tailored to their exact interest, just when they are looking for it
Do you suffer from any of the common shortcomings of Marketing and Sales Processes? You don t have much insight into what your prospect is looking for when you make that first important phone call Your marketing and sales teams are out of synch, lacking integrated processes, common and easily understood goals, or an agreed-upon data set for leads, prospects and customers ROI of your marketing efforts is difficult or impossible to measure Resources are short and you are looking to get the maximum return for your investment in lead generation Your CRM System is a manual data input, placing a burden on your sales team and creating conflict with management
Determine the Best Marketing Automation Path for you: Outsource or Not? Do you have strategists with marketing automation experience who can identify, build and continually refine the necessary elements? Do you have marketing staff that you can dedicate to operating the marketing automation platform? Do you have content marketing expertise and capacity to produce and sustain a stream of relevant and effective content?
Choosing the right Marketing Automation Software Tool Manage multi-channel campaigns like email, SEO, SEM, and Social Media Insure that it easily integrates with other open source comment tools like your CRM tool and email marketing system Ability to set up market segments and information flows easily for a wide range of possible prospects Detailed yet easily understood analytics Easy to create, copy, and modify business rules for your lead follow-up Email marketing integration is the cornerstone of Marketing Automation. Insure your software will: Run email campaigns across your business with shared templates, campaigns, and contacts with templates designed just for your business Easily handle video and other multi-media Full testing for readability in all email systems and spam compliance
Personalization of the IDs and send by sales team member Full integration with your ISP and mailbox monitoring Can-SPAM compliance Automated database cleanup and rule based list creation Ability to easily customize the supplemental contact information you will need Lead Nurturing features: Auto alert to respond instantly to hot leads as defined by your scoring rules Pull or push campaign management nurturing cans start either from a known list or based on prospect s actions Lead scoring for sales team prioritization and work only on qualified and ready leads Reporting integrated with CRM for end-to-end analytics
Anonymous website visitor data: Identify website visits and behavior for every action on your site Company demographic sorting based on size or other criteria to help qualify visitors Easy contact information delivery when scoring triggers an action Company level data analysis and scoring for situations where the buying is done by a team rather than an individual Landing pages and forms where the action happens: Create landing pages without extensive HTML expertise (if you are going to execute this without a support team) Carefully choose where landing pages and forms are hosted, be secure and reliable Reliable lead capture and routing for action Automatic integration of data into CRM Data routed into YOUR database, not the vendor s
Lead Scoring and Prioritization Rules that support automation and manual qualification Customization of rules to fit your company processes, not change your processes to fit the tool Automated prospect lead routing, based on business rules, to your Sales team Support for multiple CRM systems to give you future flexibility Sales Process Enhancement Ability to view detailed prospect information in CRM with no manual data entry required (allowed but not essential to success) Defined alerts to launch sales team action based on prospect activity on your website, to emails, or other Easily able to add prospects manually to the lead nurturing campaign to support traditional lead generation with minimum data entry Analytics and Reporting Dashboard for viewing key metrics as chosen by senior management
Unique reports by individual sales and marketing team members to fit their exact needs Integrated reporting end-to-end with your CRM system Campaign level analytics are easily set up and reported on Data export in multiple formats to meet your needs Support and implementation consulting Security API level integration capability with other systems as you grow your marketing automation Professional support for strategy, implementation, and execution Strong referrals from satisfied customers Service Level Agreements and clear understanding of uptime and problem resolution expectations Data backup and multiple location redundancy Scalable as you grow and the activity volume increase, any support cost increases fully understood in advance Transparency of investment
Base prices and discount levers Any module based pricing for extras Per-user level pricing Professional services pricing Support pricing options Any custom pricing other customers have used More Information & Questions We hope you ve found this checklist a valuable resource as you research marketing automation solutions. If you have any questions about this list, implementing a marketing automation tool or the pros and cons of the many platforms, feel free to contact us at 1-866-732-0363 or on the web at gamechangingsales.com.