Do Marketing Automation Better\ guide

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Do Marketing Automation Better

Do Marketing Automation Better

Do Marketing Automation Better

The great promise of marketing automation is the ability to segment customer databases and customize

communications to produce better results. These communications are highly tailored and deliver more

conversions and better leads.

The statistics provide an interesting picture. Most companies realize a 10 percent or greater increase in

revenue in six to nine months, according to the Gartner Group. However, 85 percent of companies feel

like they are not using automation systems to the fullest potential, according to Research Underwriters

and Ascend2.

Earlier this year, industry analyst David Raab compared four marketing automation reports from analysts

Aberdeen, Gleanster, Schulze and Winsper, head-to-head. 1 The results were astounding, as you can see

from David’s chart below.

1 http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/2013/10/which-b2b-marketing-automation-features.html

Almost every company is using email and some form of nurturing in its marketing automation solution.

After that, the drop is dramatic. Only a minority of companies use important automation tools like social

media interaction and web tracking.

Raab’s comparison shows that many companies treat marketing automation tools like glorified email

programs. To maximize marketing systems, companies need to go further, taking a strategic approach to

their customer ecosystem and the tools they use to communicate.

This Vocus guide offers productive tips for companies looking to maximize their marketing software

system. We’ll help you take a strategic approach, using ad tools to manage campaigns, deliver key

performance indicators (KPIs) and maximize return on investment (ROI).

Winsper Gleanster Aberdeen Schulze Average

Email 100 100 100 91 98

Nurture 80 63 93 79

Analytics 49 70 100 73

Landing Pages 53 65 88 82 72

Scoring 57 56 73 62

Web tracking 29 82 55

Social 14 47 30

Do Marketing Automation Better

Use Lead Paths to Put Outcomes First

Rather than simply saying “we want more conversions

from our emails,” companies should take a step back

and look at how a marketing solution can impact

their entire ecosystem.

To achieve ROI, most companies have to

build awareness, generate leads and quali-

fy them. Only then can they close. After the

sale, companies need to retain customers and

resolve customer needs with strong service.

The larger impact of marketing communications produces

a need for marketers to examine how automation touches all

of these functions. How can marketing software maximize

speed, efficiency and results? This is where starting with KPIs

and analytic dashboards can make a big difference.

Considerations for Marketers

Software and process can do seemingly mag-

ical things to optimize your marketing, but

you need to understand what you’re optimiz-

ing first. Understanding your Key Performance

Indicators – such as opens, likes, list growth,

website visits or simply leads generated– is

your first step.

Spend some time looking over your current

metrics and think about how you would use

them to optimize your marketing plan. What

can you measure? Social? Email? Web? What

will you use to determine the design and suc-

cess of your marketing?

Understand your KPIs and design a pro-

gram to maximize what is most import-

ant to you. Use your automation soft-

ware to design campaigns and drivers that

deliver the right message, at the right time,

to most effectively nurture and convert

your prospects.

- Brendon O’Donovan – Product Marketing Manager, Vocus, Inc.

#1 Begin your marketing automation system by building KPIs

and outcomes from the beginning, spanning the ecosystem.

To succeed with campaign management and KPIs you must

understand lead flow. You can’t create KPIs for a market-

ing automation system if you don’t know how leads come

into the system, by what means and how they successfully

become more interested and convert.

From Lead Paths to KPIs

When you can identify the components of the lead path, it

becomes possible to optimize individual pieces within the

marketing system and increase revenue.

Let’s build a hypothetical example to

illustrate our point.

An aerospace company uses

social media to attract potential

airplane buyers to its website. It

uses blogs and infographics to

keep people on the site, and white

papers and blogs to encourage

them to identify themselves as leads.

Because buying airplanes can take years

from initial interest through RFP to close, the

lead is not called when first identified. Instead, they enter a

nurturing system with specific types of email and content.

Only after they exhibit certain behaviors, such as register-

ing for a company trade show event or downloading specif-

ic information, does the lead receive a phone call.

If the aerospace company was only using marketing auto-

mation for email, it would not be able to analyze its larger

performance. However with systems like the Vocus Market-

ing Suite, it could do a lot more. A company can see how

individuals are interacting with it on social media channels

like Twitter and LinkedIn, and determine which of those

people visit the site and what types of content they prefer.

From there, the company can see how these social leads

identify themselves and convert.

This creates an opportunity to use the analytics dashboard to

measure specific components of the company’s marketing

ecosystem by using automation software.

#2

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Do Marketing Automation Better

Let’s say that LinkedIn leads identify themselves as plane

buyers faster than Twitter followers. Even more interesting,

they tend to buy jets for private corporate use. The company

decides to create specific content to share for this particu-

lar type of customer on LinkedIn, from updates and info-

graphics to webinars and nurturing emails. The company

can measure the following KPIs, among others:

O Increases in LinkedIn followers

O Click throughs from LinkedIn

O Leads who come from LinkedIn AND share the

company’s aerospace information on the network

O Webinar conversion based on the specialized

content

O Nurturing email open and click-through rates

O Speed of sales cycle (quicker to close?)

O Number of sales

Considerations for Marketers

KPIs are different for every marketer. For exam-

ple, the B2B aerospace scenario is very different

from B2C e-commerce. While leads arrive in

both through a similar path - either account cre-

ation or information submission - the type of en-

gagement is very different. Unlike the aerospace

marketer, the B2C marketer will immediately en-

gage, providing information (and maybe a spe-

cial offer) to close that business.

Using your analytics dashboards to under-

stand customer behavior will help improve

your strategy. To determine what KPIs are

important, start by segmenting your most suc-

cessful wins and looking at the commonalities.

Can you build a profile based on these? Where

did they come from? How did they engage

with you? What is their demographic profile?

Answer these questions to begin the building

a profile of your ideal customer – one that you

know you can market to successfully.

- Brendon O’Donovan – Product Marketing Manager, Vocus, Inc.

Empowering a Campaign Point of View

When you build out your marketing automation system,

you can label data points. This lets you build out personas

and qualify where someone is in the nurturing process

(think the old funnel metaphor).

Let your data drive your decision-making when someone

is ready to receive different types of content, and when they

should receive an email request to buy or a phone call.

You have worked hard to build custom lists

and databases. Let these tools do the work.

With a persona in mind and a clear

nurturing path based on data, you

can create campaigns.

For example, if you are a restaurant

chain, Valentine’s Day is one of your

busiest nights in Q1. You should build a

custom campaign for that night, integrat-

ed with your overall brand and sales initiatives.

Let’s say you’re trying to cater to buyers with a higher income

and a desire for healthier foods. Knowing that women usual-

ly determine menu choices in the house (93 percent, accord-

ing to she-conomy2), you could create a campaign that helps

men make their special ladies happy on their dinner date.

The campaign specifically targets married men, who are

more indoctrinated into the day-to-day routine of the

house’s diet. They know what their wives want.

If your team is advanced, you already collect data on which

customers have kids (offering special kids’ events and deals

is the way to capture this data). Now you can run two cam-

paigns: one to married men with kids and one without kids.

The campaigns both feature the same creative and con-

tent theme: Make Valentine’s Day Romantic, Delicious AND

Healthy. However, the campaign for fathers with kids offers

an extra discount to help pay for a babysitter.

Imagine the primary message, “Don’t get stuck in this Val-

entine’s Day; have a romantic healthy meal with your wife.

Let us help pay for the babysitter with this 25% off coupon.”

#3

2 http://www.she-conomy.com/facts-on-women

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Do Marketing Automation Better

The restaurant can execute the campaign in a variety of ways.

They can build the custom landing pages first. It may make

sense to have extra content about what makes a romantic

and healthy Valentine’s Day meal, capturing the company’s

ethos on the day. Another data-capturing call-to-action is a

sign-up for future holiday events and discounts.

From there, the restaurant can build a press release, blog

post, email campaigns and social network updates to bring

people into the site. They can nurture potential reservations

through value-added content and sign-ups for discounts,

and then of course, take reservations through the site. Their

social media manager responds to inquiries online, because

in today’s complex buying process, people have questions.

Because brands who deploy campaigns like this already

have KPIs and website tracking in place, they can compare

performance of individual tactics and the overall campaign

to their larger marketing efforts. This shows how efficien-

cies and automation produce better results.

Considerations for Marketers

The data you need to create a targeted cam-

paign must come from your customers. You

can acquire it with a variety of tactics, usually

involving a form.

You can include forms on landing pages, blogs

or your website. A good form is tailored to reflect

the page content and asks the prospect or cus-

tomer for relevant information (such as an

email address, phone number or demographic

information.)

Gathering too little information, such as

just an email address, reduces your abili-

ty to segment your lists and target your mar-

keting. Conversely, asking for too much in-

formation can discourage prospects from

completing your form. A great marketer

understands the balance between the need for

information and the need for prospects. Ulti-

mately, consider a central marketing automation

database to target your prospects with different

forms over time, gradually improving your data.

- Brendon O’Donovan – Product Marketing Manager, Vocus, Inc.

The Role of Content

Content plays a huge role in the marketing automation process.

First, from a smart press release to the right infographic,

content brings people to your site. Next, more advanced

content on your site encourages people to qualify them-

selves as potential leads. Finally, highly-specific, custom-

ized content nurtures leads until they close, and retains

existing customers.

Many brands only lightly customize their content for perso-

nas and scenarios. This is a mistake. With so much relying

on content, it pays to be particular about

creating specific pieces for the right

persona in the right situation.

If a marketing software sys-

tem were a power drill,

using generic content is

like using thread-bare

screws. Marketers need

highly customized con-

tent to succeed.

Let’s go back to our restau-

rant example. Perhaps 5 percent

of the upscale healthy restaurant’s

patrons are gay men. The restaurant

knows this, thanks to special incentives and

targeted campaigns to the gay and lesbian community.

But for whatever reason, the restaurant fails provide a

customized message to gay and lesbian patrons in its

Valentine’s Day campaign. Instead, it lumps gay men into

the general “men without kids” category, where the creative

says, “Take your special lady out on Valentine’s Day.” Now,

the gay men are offended. They feel marginalized. Ten per-

cent of them opt out of the list. Several complain online

about getting spammed.

Imagine the opposite approach, with a persona for the

GLBT segment. A similar email is sent, part of the overall

campaign, but inviting gay men and lesbians to bring their

partner in for a romantic healthy Valentine’s Day Dinner.

Sales to this constituency double compared to its 2013 fig-

ures. Precision pays.

#4

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Do Marketing Automation Better

The power of marketing automation lies in its ability to

create highly customized segments and touches, based on

your lead path. To realize its potential, you must create the

corresponding content for each persona and situation.

Considerations for Marketers

Building customer personas can be tedious but

it’s crucial to understanding your audience and

providing them with customized, quality content.

Keep the number of your personas manageable

to your business. Start with two or three, and

build out from there as necessary.

To begin a persona, identify the major char-

acteristics that define these groups of cus-

tomers and prospects. Start by thinking

about the ‘average’ in each group. What

is their profile? Are they typically male

or female? What is their average level of

education? What is their average income?

Where do they live? How does their day to day

life relate to your business? Answer these ques-

tions and build a succinct, bulleted profile that

can tell you, your writers and the rest of your

team in 90 seconds or less who the target of

your marketing is.

Use these personas to shape your content, and

improve your marketing and conversion!

- Brendon O’Donovan – Product Marketing Manager, Vocus, Inc.

Conclusions and Takeaways

When it comes to marketing systems and

automation, you have access to tools

that make your communications

more effective.

Intelligent building of KPIs and mea-

surable objectives based on your lead

path will empower your brand to do

more with its campaigns.

Remember that your campaigns revolve around the

personas you build and the specific lead path your cus-

tomers tend to follow. Always use custom-built preci-

sion content for your personas and scenarios to gener-

ate the business your company needs from its marketing

software solution.

About the Author

Geoff Livingston is the founder of Tenacity5 Media, a mar-

keting consultancy serving companies and nonprofits. He

has advised organizations including AT&T, Cox, eBay, Ford,

General Dynamics, Google, PayPal, Pepsi Co., Procter and

Gamble, SAIC, Verizon and Yum! Brands, as well as numer-

ous start-ups, mid-cap companies and nonprofits.

A former journalist, Geoff has authored four books. He pub-

lished his first novel Exodus in 2013, co-authored Marketing

in the Round and wrote the social media primer Welcome

to the Fifth Estate.

About Vocus

Marketing can be hard. To help you succeed and generate

more revenue, Vocus offers an integrated suite of the most

powerful tools you need.

We help you attract and engage prospects on social media,

search engines and in the news. We get your message in

front of the right prospects at the right time with tools, cus-

tomized landing pages and targeted emails.

Our suite includes a social CRM to manage the activity of

your prospects and customers, and integrated analytics to

discover what drives likes, shares, opens, click-throughs

and conversions.

With our marketing consulting and services team ready to

help, Vocus delivers marketing success.

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