Marketing Automation Governance Secrets

Companies are not new to marketing automation to increase conversions, sales, and retention.

Some of the best marketing automation platforms such as Marketo and Pardot offer powerful personalization and segmentation features that give these platforms their worth. When implemented strategically & tactfully, marketing automation results in:

• Lower cost per acquisition
• Improved customer engagement and nurturing
• Customer advocacy and higher retention rates
• Stronger brand traction

At times many companies do not use this technology to the fullest potential. Instead, the platform is used as a glorified email marketing tool nullifying the Martech investment & ROI.

There are three strategies you can use to turn your marketing automation efforts around:

1. Implement proper data strategy and governance
2. Invest in a good marketing automation plan (MAP)
3. Hire the right resources (in-house or agency)

These three factors are the secret sauce to successfully implementing marketing automation.

The Beyondiris Consulting Marketing Automation Truth: Data Governance

Marketing automation platforms thrive on data – the more data you feed it, the more bang you’re going to get for every dollar you spend. The more you can leverage your data to segment and personalize your customers’ experience, the more effective your marketing strategy will become. So before you begin thinking about implementing your marketing automation platform, you must look at your data first.

Insurance and financial services companies collect massive amounts of data from loads of different sources. Usually, this data gets stored in silos that are not always made to play nice, so centralizing customer data that is readily accessible to marketing systems becomes a bit of a nightmare.

For some organizations, this means that your IT and marketing departments must build key bridges to close the operational and systems gaps that may exist. You will need technology savvy marketers and marketing savvy IT resources to accomplish this.

The first step we took was a deep dive into the data collection to highlight all of the information we could leverage. Then, we devised a strategy to bring the data together into a central repository, in a manner that could easily be leveraged by our marketing automation platform.

One thing to keep in mind is, some marketing platforms force you to structure all of your data in a single table before importing, while others allow you to bring data from different sources. It is important to get a good understanding of your data because this will guide your decision in selecting a marketing automation platform that works for you.

With a proper data strategy and governance in place, you will have the information you need to build your Marketing Automation Plan (MAP).

The Marketing Automation Beyondiris Consulting Truth:  Marketing Automation Plan (MAP)

The MAP will form the foundation of your marketing automation platform implementation. This is a living document that will not only inform your implementation but will also guide your entire strategy moving forward.

There are a number of benefits that the MAP can provide to your business. First, it gives you the opportunity to design the customer journey. Take a look at car insurance, for example:

• A user searches “car insurance” online
• They enter your sales funnel by clicking on an ad or an organic search result and enter your website via a landing page.
• With a strong call to action, they may go into your online quoter and complete a car insurance quote.
• At this point, they’ve provided you with a goldmine of information that you can leverage to personalize their entire experience with your brand. From location to gender and even vehicle type, you now have the data necessary to make touchpoints more personal.
• When the quote is completed, they may decide not to call immediately.

The journey for most companies without marketing automation stops here. If the customer doesn’t call immediately, they are lost in a “black hole” of no return.

With a proper marketing automation plan, you can prevent the prospect from going dark. You can build personalized automated responses based on their behaviour to help them make a more informed buying decision and keep them in your sales funnel.

The important thing to note is, for every action the customer takes or doesn’t, there should always be a communication touchpoint that comes from you. Once you identify likely user actions, this is where your marketing automation plan comes in.

As you can see, understanding the customer journey allows you to anticipate the steps they might take and create a custom program. This enables you to engage with your customers more personally based on unique real-time behaviour, as you guide them through their entire path to purchase. With greater visibility of each users’ journey, you can create custom automated programs, targeted emails, and specific landing pages. This way, you’ll be generating and leveraging the platform for all it’s worth, and you’ll be in control of defining the most successful customer journey to close sales faster and identify leads more effectively.

This is what a map looks like:

Building the MAP also helps you develop what is called a lead scoring system. A lead scoring system helps your marketing and sales teams determine which leads are more promising or more likely to convert.

The marketing automation plan lays the implementation foundation

Your MAP also lays the foundation for the implementation of your marketing automation platform on two levels.

• User/Marketing Level – On a user level, it will help you understand what resources you need. From creative to content and web development, your MAP will provide you with a clear view of all the various implementation needs.
• Technology Level – A good MAP will inform your internal IT resources what is needed to support your overall strategy. This is also dependent on what marketing automation platform you decide to use. Some platforms such as Marketo require substantial IT support. You should consider the data you want to leverage, the various APIs you will need to bring together, and the number of landing pages and emails you will need to design. Some applications also require a developer for a fully customized solution.

MAPs can be as detailed or as simple as you want. Although, Ideally, you want them as detailed as possible. Organizations that do this well will have an entire wall where they visually map it out. The MAP is foundational, and that’s why we start with it.

The Beyondiris Consulting Marketing Automation Truth: Resources

Marketing Automation Truth: Resources

Finally, you need the resources to bring your MAP to life.

In my experience, a successful marketing automation implementation needs the following resources:

• Digital Strategist – This person understands digital strategy and can work with a cross-functional team including development, data, marketing, and so on to bring the whole Marketing Automation Plan together.
• Marketing Specialist – This individual handles the implementation on the user side. They’re responsible for creating the landing pages and emails associated with the automated programs. They play a pivotal role in implementing the customer journey.
• Tech/Dev Support – This role is vital to API implementation and connecting your data to the marketing automation platform.
• Data Analyst – This person is responsible for data governance and reporting, so you can report your ROI.