Marketing Automation: Don't lose sight of the wood for the trees.

Keeping it Simple

With more and more companies adopting Marketing Automation solutions to replace repetitive and time consuming manual processes with a specially designed software solution, its often the case that end users get caught up in the complexity of what the systems can deliver and forget the big picture. Ultimately the purpose of this kind of solution is to help streamline the marketing department’s tasks, making it more scaleable and to help marry these activities with the objectives of the sales department – not to make things more difficult.

So here are Profunnel’s top tips to keep your marketing automation simple.

Understand the power of Exclusions:

For those new to marketing automation, an Exclusion List or exclusions are instructions that ensure that a specific segment or group of existing or prospective clients do not receive specific campaigns or responses based on their behaviour. For example, I’m unlikely to want to send the same offers to existing paying clients as my prospective customers. No brainer right?

But beyond this obvious exclusion, its worth considering a couple more noteworthy examples - sending webinar sign-ups more information on your upcoming webinar, or an e-brochure for those who have already downloaded said brochure is an exercise in futility. Once these obvious exclusions have been addressed, the temptation is to start getting super complicated and start excluding according to all sorts of complex metrics – trying to ensure prospects don’t get the same email twice, or excluding whole lists according to behaviour on specific triggers...the list is endless and our recommendation would be to leave this to the pro’s (e.g. your account manager )

Just remember, over-thinking or in this case over-excluding can create both unnecessary work and can impact long-term marketing strategies. Simple strategies are most effective unless you have dedicated resource to run your marketing automation platform full-time.

Don’t overdo your audience segmentation!

Segmenting prospects and customers is a hugely valuable strategy allowing you to deliver specific offerings to a targeted audience who need it the most. Some companies are happy to distinguish between clients and prospects and others create veritable libraries of different segments. For the majority, once again, the simpler the better.

What most marketers overlook when brainstorming a new and innovative way to segment their audience is that for every segment you may need to create landing pages, e-shots, call-to-actions and offers as well as tying all these into separate campaigns. These then all need refining and tweaking and you end up painting the golden gate bridge all over again. Creating compelling content for larger segments will not overburden your resource and will allow you to push on and actually ensure your campaigns are as effective as possible.

Big Picture

It’s crucial to remember that marketing automation platforms are there to help leverage existing sales and marketing capabilities, not as a tool to overburden and burn out all resources. Of course, there is a benefit in having dedicated resource from your platform in order to supply ad-hoc support or even take on a project on your behalf. However, for the majority keeping it simple is a surefire method of reaping the rewards of a marketing automation platform...don’t lose sight of the wood for the trees.

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Should B2B and B2C be Compared?

The editor of B2B Marketing, Joel Harrison, recently attended a round table with the Marketing Society, where the main topic was based on creativity. Delegates questioned if the level of creativeness achieved in B2C campaigns can be transferred to B2B marketing, as this was thought to be an issue. Key examples referred to as B2C successes were the ‘Compare the Meerkat’ campaign for Compare the Market and Cadbury’s Gorilla campaign.

As Harrison describes in his blog “B2B doesn’t need to ‘do a meerkat’ – it would be irrelevant and unnecessary. B2B needs and does focus on driving relevant, appropriate, timely and salient marketing activities to its niche audiences”.

Harrison clearly identifies how B2B marketing is crucially about timing and relevance, in order to generate sales. Businesses can integrate marketing automation solutions to improve the effectiveness of both of these elements. The technology enables marketers to tag and track website visitors, with information about their activity being relayed directly to marketers in real-time. Marketers can use this information to send automated, targeted emails relevant to prospects’ interests at a time when they are ready to buy. Consequently this improves lead generation and allows sales to achieve their targets while businesses can identify a clear ROI.

Visit Profunnel for more information on marketing automation.

It may be cold outside, but don’t rest on your laurels…

In today’s Telegraph the Centre for Economics and Business Research has suggested that the snow disruption will cost Britain's economy £1 billion for every day that the icy conditions disrupt travel and business operations such as retail.

With the cold weather continuing, many have decided to write off this period and look ahead to the New Year, but in terms of sales it’s worth being proactive. Despite the impact the snow has had on business operations, many people are still in the office planning and budgeting for 2011, so take advantage of what may be a quiet time to follow up warm leads and start building opportunities for the new year.

The leads are out there, and marketing automation software through Profunnel can help you nurture them for the future, so don’t rest on your laurels while the cold continues to bite – make the most of this time so you’re in a prime position for 2011.

‘Digital Finger Printing’ Now Core for Sales Success

Over the last decade the growth of the Internet has seen the customer buying process change dramatically. Now businesses that fail to capture, tag and track vital information about the many elusive visitors to their website are unlikely to survive.

Understanding who these visitors are, what motivates them, where they are in the buying cycle and more – the technology,such as demand generation, is now available to build this into an in-depth profile of your prospects – their ‘digital finger prints’ – that gives sales people the edge they need to win the business.

This ability to tag and track website visitors opens up a new world of opportunity, providing insight into prospects’ buying motivations and behaviour throughout the sales cycle. Rather than giving just an overview of the website’s performance, it builds knowledge of who wants to buy and when – creating the digital fingerprint, or DNA, that is crucial to sales success.

For more information the Profunnel White Paper on the importance of digital fingerprinting is available for free download here.