Datamine Guide to Marketing Automation · PDF fileDatamine uide to Marketing Automation 2 Are you interested in personalising your marketing communications, improving customer

Datamine Guide to Marketing Automation 1

Datamine Guide to Marketing Automation

Datamine Limited

Auckland +64 9 303 2300

Sydney +61 2 8022 8332

Melbourne +61 3 83 999 450

0800 DATAMINE (0800 328 264)

www.datamine.com

15 Faraday Street, Parnell, Auckland 1052 © Datamine 2016 — All Rights Reserved


Are you interested in personalising your marketing communications, improving customer engagement and conversion rates, and being empowered to easily scale up the complexity of your campaigns? Perhaps more than any other technological advance on the marketing landscape today, marketing automation (done right) has the capacity to deliver on all those promises — and more.

In this guide we’ll step you through the fundamentals of marketing automation. From what it is and who to buy it from, through to how to prepare for it, use it, and get the most out of it while you’re learning the ropes. Finally, we’ll lay out the fundamental things you can do today to both begin your marketing automation journey – and ensure it’s a successful one.

Mike ParsonsManaging Director

Index: Datamine guide to Marketing Automation

1. What is Marketing Automation? It’s much more than email It can drive process re-engineering

2. Making the Business Case Increased personalisation and relevance will drive incremental revenue and engagement Increased transparency and control, reducing risk 3. What can we automate? Campaign management Lead management Platform management 4. How To Choose A Provider Picking a system that’s right for you Usability Integration with Legacy Systems Support Pricing

5. Applying automation to the sales funnel Stage 1: Get discovered Stage 2: Nurture and engage Stage 3: Time to close Automation after the sale

6. Getting Started Plan, plan and plan some more Identify your touchpoints Sort your data Start getting to know your prospects

7. What now? Datamine contact details


1. What is Marketing Automation?It’s much more than email

It can drive process re-engineering


What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is the term used to describe a software and web-services solution that automates many of the marketing processes businesses have typically performed manually and in an ad-hoc manner.

Examples of such activity include campaign management, customer data collection, customer segmentation and new customer on-boarding programmes. By enabling software to manage these manual and recurring processes – across multiple channels – the overall efficiency of marketing initiatives can be enhanced and campaign performance improved. With a marketing automation solution in place, managers can monitor performance and gain insight — at a glance — using near real-time dashboards and analytics.

As a consequence of being freed from manual and repetitive tasks, staff and resources can be applied to more productive marketing activities such as improving customer acquisition and conversion rates, reducing churn and delivering more granular targeting logic. New automatic processes can be developed, tested and implemented more quickly than ever before, and their effectiveness accurately measured and evaluated.

Automation dashboards deliver marketing oversight at a glance


It’s much more than email

While email is an important component of marketing automation, true automation is much more than the scheduled dispatching of email campaigns — and departmentally will include activities undertaken by the Marketing, Sales and Customer Service divisions of the business.

Rather than a standalone tool or tactic, marketing automation should be viewed contextually through the lens of an organisation’s touchpoints and customer purchase cycle. Typical touchpoints include website visits and enquiries, email marketing replies, online advertising responses, visits to promotional web pages, and follows, comments & shares on social media. These touchpoints, therefore, are the navigational ‘waypoints’ on a potential customer’s journey from being entirely unknown to a satisfied buyer.

An example of such a journey might be:

Often these interactions aren’t tracked, or if they are, the actions taken in response are rudimentary and uncoordinated. With marketing automation, however, activity and interactions at a number of different touchpoints and channels are monitored. Prospects are identified and personalised relationships commenced, designed to nurture and assist the prospect through the sales journey.

Rather than focusing exclusively on ‘pushing’ information at the time that suits the business, marketing automation can instead more precisely align outbound and inbound messages for a marketing organisation. This allows for a complete customer journey from attracting customers with useful content specific to their needs — and then by engaging with them with targeted communications in reaction to specific events or behaviours.

1. A prospective customer conducts a Google search looking for the solution to a problem they face

2. Your business or products are included in the search results

3. The prospect opts in to follow your company on social media — Linkedin, Facebook or Twitter for example

4. The prospect spends some time on your website and downloads a brochure or some other collateral specific to their issue

5. The prospect opts in and subscribes to an email newsletter about your product or service

?


It can drive process re-engineering

Broadly speaking, good marketing automation should deliver a return on investment in two major areas. The first is by increasing the efficiency of existing operations. There is a qualification to this statement, however, which was perhaps best summarised years ago by Bill Gates.

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an

inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

Too often businesses implementing automation will do so without first looking for efficiencies in their existing processes. In such a scenario an organisation may indeed increase the speed at which its processes are completed, but in reality it is still doing the wrong thing, only now it is doing so at scale. A better idea is to take the opportunity that the move to marketing automation presents, and allocate time to examining your existing processes (perhaps with the assistance of an external partner) for efficiencies. While this will delay your system’s ultimate deployment, the return on investment will be well worth it.

The second is adding new marketing capability that was not available before — enabling functionality like in-depth analytics, deeply granular customer segmentation and personalised behaviour-based triggered communications. It is important to note, though, that in most companies beginning an automation journey the low hanging fruit principle applies. Specifically, there will usually be a number of more elementary marketing functions to get right first — like good on-boarding programmes, customer lifecycle communications and smarter acquisition strategies.


2. Making The Business CaseIncreased personalisation and relevance will drive incremental revenue and engagement

Increased transparency and control, reducing risk


1. Increased personalisation and relevance will drive incremental revenue and engagement

Marketers looking to implement an automation solution will frequently not be the ultimate decision maker and may have to ‘sell’ the concept to sceptical CFOs and CEOs. It is important then that the business case is convincing, lest automation be viewed as just another expensive vanity project with dubious ROI. To that end, the core business values of automation should be communicated —and they fall into two key areas:

As a broad concept this is hard to dispute, but how do you business case it? Consider demonstrating the impact of communicating more relevant messages and offers to customers in a bite-sized test-and-learn programme. This can include trials such as next-best-offer promotions to a target group of customers, tailored web content presentation based on previous actions to drive the sales funnel, or behaviour-based email subject lines to increase engagement.

Once the ROI is clearly demonstrated at a smaller scale, it is easier to project the likely gains from scaling up through marketing automation.

2. Increased transparency and control, reducing risk

A marketing automation platform can be easily configured to capture all contact and response history, giving you automated reports about the performance of your inbound and outbound campaigns. This allows you to see activity and your results - and ROI - in a central place and gives you more control over how often you contact your customers (and what you say to them).

A central platform and the building of re-usable component parts for campaigns allows you to save time and do more with the same skilled people. Often marketing automation allows for the deployment of more campaigns within the same contact frequency rules because of the increased targeting and personalisation.Marketing automation helps bring structure and consistency to the customer experience, enhancing your brand reputation.


Campaign management

Lead management

Platform management

3. What can we automate?


So what can be automated? While the specific functionality of platforms will vary, a ‘true’ marketing automation solution should include the following key features which can be grouped under the broad headings of Campaign Management, Lead Management and Platform Management.

Campaign Management

Email marketing

Like we said, it’s not everything but it’s got to be there. Users should be able to easily create personalised rich content emails and dispatch lists that are integrated with the solution’s databases and opt-in marketing channels and that can be scheduled for dispatch automatically.

Multi-Channel Capacity

You must communicate with your prospects in the manner they prefer. Marketing automation therefore must work across multiple channels — direct mail and email, SMS, social sites, company websites, at retail POS, telephone, and catalogues, for example.

Opt in & Registration Forms

Your marketing automation system should facilitate the capture of customer information via email subscription preference centres.

Customer Segmentation

Your products and services are probably not ‘one size fits all’ so your marketing automation system should be able to segment customer lists based on demographic & behavioural information. This can be achieved in a number of ways, for example, field values like ‘industry’,’ location’ or ‘interest’ could be inserted into an opt-in form on a website or landing page, enabling primary level segmentation and differing offers and communications to be dispatched to unique customer groups.

Landing pages

Landing pages are likely to be a fundamental component of your online marketing and your marketing automation system should have an integrated landing page editor.

Content Storage

In order to drive inbound marketing your prospective customers will have to be drawn to your quality content (user guides, blogs, newsletters, whitepapers, webinars and so on). You’re going to need somewhere to store all this content, or easily access when delivering messages, so your marketing automation system should be able to do that.


Lead Management

Lead scoring

Lead scoring is a system for rating prospective customers in terms of their potential value to your business and then prioritising them accordingly. Prospect variables to consider will include their industry, their role and position, and their interactions with your company (visits to your website, content downloaded, comments on blogs etc.). Prospects with the highest scores can be prioritised and communicated with in a particular way.

It is a technique that good salespeople have always used when evaluating potential clients — ticking mental boxes for criteria like ‘has the funds,’ ‘could use our product,’ ‘has made an inquiry in the past’ etc. Combined with today’s smart analytics and AI, however, the benefits of lead scoring can be extended far beyond the restraints imposed by a need for one-on-one insights based on a sales person’s unique customer knowledge. For example, the behaviour of prospects who ultimately became customers can be reviewed, and automated marketing communications sent to other prospects who exhibit similar behaviours. Relevant behaviours could include how many pages on your website a prospect visited, or if they downloaded an e-book, whitepaper, or price list. This type of information combined with other potentially known demographics such as a prospect’s seniority, company and location, contribute to a prospect’s weighted ‘score’.

Sales Dashboards

Sales specific dashboards should enable sales teams to easily access a client view showing a prospect’s action summaries.

Automated Alerts

Notifications should be sent to sales team members when prospects with high lead scores take specific actions (see examples above) that have been identified as a sale precursor.

A successful marketing campaign can generate a significant response – and with that comes the potential for your sales team to be overwhelmed by unqualified low-value leads. For this reason, any marketing automation solution should add value to your sales teams by delivering the following functions:


Platform Management

Database integration

Your marketing automation system should contribute to your company’s ability to grow and manage its databases. While the database itself may be separate from the platform, the integration must be seamless and robust.

At its core, your marketing automation system will enable users to manage all your important touchpoints and marketing channels in a single location. To achieve this, the following data management attributes should be present:

Sales management & CRM integration

For companies operating sales management and Customer Relationship Management systems, your marketing automation system should be able to integrate with your existing solutions — either out-of-the-box or with the minimum of customisation.

Website tracking

Your website will be the focus point for much of the interaction between your company and its prospects. To that end, your marketing automation must be able to track site visitor interactions and provide detailed analytics. You should also look to be able to deliver content based on this behaviour.


Picking a system that’s right for you

Usability

Integration with Legacy Systems

Support

Pricing

4. How to choose a provider


Picking a system that’s right for you

The range of potential marketing automation providers is huge — from mega companies like Oracle (Eloqua) and IBM (Marketing Cloud / IBM Campaign (formerly known as Unica) to smaller specialists like Marketo, Pardot, Aprimo and many others. Although this guide is system agnostic there are some important points to make regarding software solutions — particularly with regards to how a prospective solution would ‘fit’ with your organisation.

Certainly the functionality discussed above should be present in any marketing automation solution, although the degree of sophistication required will vary depending on the unique characteristics of your business. Ultimately, every organisation is faced with the same challenges, which are; developing the capability to assemble the right data, segmenting and targeting well, executing communications and measuring and evaluating performance. While a marketing automation system will deliver significant new capacity to your marketing initiatives, it is nonetheless important not to buy more than you need.

Before implementing marketing automation software, define your objectives and requirements. Forget the 200 function system and instead hone your requirements down to 10 key features. If a solution can tick 190 out of 200 boxes but not four of your top 10, don’t buy it. Key areas to consider are usually price, supported databases and the capability to integrate (i.e. with Salesforce, CRM etc.), along with ease of use, decision and targeting capability, ability to export granular response data, and implementation costs. If there’s any doubt about a solution’s capabilities, ask for reference clients and conduct due diligence around any known problems. Evaluate your internal capability honestly and ask whether ‘user-friendly’ is actually an accurate description of a contender’s offering? Consider also, working with an independent implementation partner — and whether they are geographically close.


It’s worth noting that a solution that is otherwise perfect may lack in one or two specific areas. This shouldn’t necessarily disqualify it however, as even if a platform doesn’t quite fit the bill, it is usually possible to wrap a bespoke solution around it — for example, sophisticated analytics and targeting might sit better outside a lower-end platform. So be smart about where the smarts are. Once you get down to analysing a prospective solution, the following functionality ‘fits’ will be important in terms of whittling down your short list.

Usability

Usability is a critical selection factor. A system that is intuitive and easy to use is important specifically because the results it will ultimately deliver will be predicated to an extent by the competency of the people operating it. While all solutions do similar things, they are not identical, and a realistic appraisal of your staff’s capacity to ‘drive the gear’ will be valuable.

Integration with Legacy Systems

Integration with existing systems will be more or less important depending on the number and complexity of platforms you are already operating. For example, if your business is running a suite of sales management and CRM tools, then choosing an application with an inherent ability to integrate with those systems will be important. If native integration is not possible then another solution might be a better choice, or alternatively one that permits custom integration. It should be noted, however, that system integration today is not the roadblock it once was. Most marketing automation solutions can be integrated into a wide range of different legacy systems, with the right capability.

Support

Available vendor support should feature prominently in your decision making — particularly with regards to the implementation and initial go-live phases —when your internal capabilities will be at best rudimentary. While the technology is important, the training and support offered by your automation vendor is equally so, notably during the initial months of use. Questions to ask during the due diligence stage should include what training is offered, what testimonials and existing user feedback is available, and does the vendor manage their own support or work through implementation partners?


Pricing

Pricing models vary considerably depending on the depth of functionality required (remember, don’t buy more than you need), the number of users and whether your solution is cloud-based or in-house. It is also important to take a longer term view when evaluating solutions and be alert to the ‘true’ cost of a system. Some providers, for example, offer very attractive deals for the first 12 months of an installation, but then markedly increase the annual licensing fees once an organisation is committed to the product. Also worth noting is the fact that while platform selection understandably gets the lion’s share of attention during the move to marketing automation, overall the platform will be less important to the success of your solution than doing an outstanding job of your implementation. So over-invest instead in set-up, getting the right data, and building the right mix of capability to use it effectively. Be realistic about what it’s really going to cost as good marketing automation is going to include a lot more than the platform, no matter what anyone says.


Stage 1: Get discovered

Stage 2: Nurture and engage

Stage 3: Time to close

Automation after the sale

5. Applying automation to the sales funnel


Although there are those who think the traditional sales funnel should be relegated to history, a more accurate assessment may be that while social media, ubiquitous mobility and multi-platform content delivery have changed the landscape, the fundamentals of the funnel remain the same, and have merely been disrupted by the range of entry points and potential speed of transition to conversion.

At this stage you’ve done your plan, worked your processes, scoped your requirements and made a decision on a solution — congratulations! You’ve come a long way, and it’s time to start applying automation to your sales funnel. Exactly what you do will depend on your specific business and capabilities, but the follow sections will address what’s possible.

Stage 1. Get discoveredAnalyticsMessage schedulingCustomer SegmentationRefine the relevance of your collateral, identify your prospects and build your brand

Stage 2. Nurture and engage Dispatch triggered communicationsMonitor performanceBegin targeted engagement, nurture relationships and prompt actions designed to move prospects through your sales funnel

Stage 3. Time to close Close the sale and nurture the relationshipClose the sale and nurture the relationship

Applying Automation to the sales funnel


The top of the funnel is significant because it marks the beginning of your ability to really influence your customer’s journey. They have been drawn to your brand — most likely after a web search looking for solutions to a specific problem they face. Your approach at the top of the funnel, therefore, should be to offer content focused not entirely on your products or services, but instead on the prospect’s issues — for which you will offer solutions with your blog posts, how-to articles and case studies. Stage 1 should be less about selling and more about educating — aim to guide and assist while simultaneously building confidence in your brand and products.

Stage 1: Get discovered

Marketing automation actions to support this stage

Analytics

Use your marketing automation system’s search engine optimisation (SEO) tools to improve the pulling power of your content. Establish what keywords and phrases your prospects are searching for. Do they describe their issues differently to you and thus do your content keywords need to be adjusted? Use A/B testing to refine your headlines and improve the draw of your landing pages.

Message scheduling

Depending on your platform’s content management and social media tools, you should be able to adjust your marketing schedule and tweak the content of your messages, blogs, articles and shares based on the results of this analysis. It is important to have thought through the conversion process carefully and mapped out your potential customer journeys. Remember, an inefficient process automated will still be an inefficient process.

Customer segmentation

You can begin segmenting potential customers now. Use reverse IP lookup to provide geographic, demographic and perhaps behavioural insights into your prospects, while analysis of customer journeys through your website will provide insights into the type of content most in demand by different customer segments.

Wherever possible, your future interactions should be personalised, so offer your prospects premium content like whitepapers, reports, e-books and access to webinars in exchange for completing an online form and providing an email address. With customers profiled and a capacity for personalised content established, you can allocate prospects into a particular group and begin sending targeted content and offers.

Marketing objectives

Refine the relevance of your collateral, identify your prospects and build your brand.


In the middle stage of the funnel begin introducing the specific products and services your analysis has established are an appropriate fit for your unique customer groups. Your aim now is to nurture, engage and show prospects why your company is the right choice to do business with.

Stage 2: Nurture and engage

Marketing automation actions to support this stage

Dispatch triggered communications

Stage 2 is where the marketing automation rubber really hits the road. It is here that specified actions made by a prospect that indicate increased buying interest — such as downloading a price list or returning to a specific web page — will result in a triggered action by you. Examples could include, sending an email with further insights into a specific product, or a special offer with a targeted call to action.

At this stage, your messages are personalised and your communication is one-to-one. While all prospects in the same group may receive the same email content, marketing automation enables you to bring precision to the timing of that content delivery. You’re not dispatching an email to hundreds or thousands of prospects at once, instead, you are communicating based on a specific action by a unique potential customer — ensuring that the right prospect is receiving the right message at the right time.

Monitor performance

In the middle of the funnel, the data your marketing automation system collects will provide valuable insights into the performance of your campaigns and offers. Click-through rates, unsubscribe rates and spam complaints are your prospect’s way of telling you whether your offer is on target or needs further tweaking. While there will always be a certain percentage of users who opt out, what you should be paying attention to here is trends that indicate something more than just normal attrition.


Begin targeted engagement, nurture relationships and prompt actions designed to move prospects through your sales funnel.


Your prospect has arrived at the bottom of the funnel and it’s time to close the deal. Your marketing automation system has delivered the right message at the right time — but for some reason they haven’t crossed the line. If a prospect hasn’t purchased as expected you can automate communications designed to find out why, or make some final offers designed to prompt the sale. Some examples include:

• If you think their hesitation is pricing related, offer a discount code or a free trial• If your prospect isn’t sure your product is a good ‘fit’, present case studies of similar companies to theirs who are finding success using it • A call to action presented in an eye-catching infographic can summarise the ‘why they should buy’ equation at a glance

If the prospect still doesn’t purchase, move them to a ‘drip feed’ strategy. Sure, things haven’t worked out for now but there’s no reason why you can’t stay in touch — so automate sending the occasional email over the coming weeks and months designed to keep your company top-of-mind and edge them ever closer to a sale. Monitor responses for buying triggers and react accordingly.

Stage 3: Time to close


Close the sale and nurture the relationship.


Automation after the sale

There’s no doubt customer acquisition rates can be increased with the application of a marketing automation solution, but retention strategies can be enhanced as well, with automation contributing to the bottom line by prompting return purchase and reducing churn. After a sale is made therefore, consider automating the following interactions:

• Present an offer to join your loyalty scheme — include the purchase already made so your customer isn’t starting at zero

• Conduct periodic surveys — for example a check-in /feedback request — ask ‘How did we do?’ or ‘Anything else we can help with?’

• Make new product announcements or request a product review• Suggest incentives for additional purchases • Send a ‘thank you’ gift — a voucher, coupon or special discount offer


Retain existing customers and turn them into advocates.


Plan, plan and plan some more

Identify your touchpoints

Sort your data

Start getting to know your prospects

6. Getting started


As the preceding pages have shown, implementing a marketing automation solution will be a significant undertaking. Asked by DemandGen what aspect of their automation solution they would change if they had the chance to do it over again, 76% of marketers said they would spend more time on planning and preparation. Before even approaching a vendor therefore, attention to the following will pay big dividends in the long run.

Plan, plan and plan some more

As discussed earlier, an audit of existing processes and identification of opportunities for improvement is an excellent place to start. Concurrent with that, begin to outline your marketing strategy — what aspects of your marketing do you want to see improved first, what goals can be set for your system? Planning should include objectives for both your technology platform and your marketing strategy, as the two will be necessarily intertwined. The clearer your vision of what you want to achieve, the easier it will be to create a shortlist of vendors and solutions. At Datamine, managing director Mike Parsons suggests a three-year roadmap should deliver the right balance between short-term needs and longer-term foundational capability-building.

“It’s easy to focus on today, but with the extra capability and ROI a marketing automation platform will bring, the desire for more will quickly follow. A good rule of thumb is to under-utilise the system during the first year, then ramp up to full utilisation as your internal capability grows.”

Identify your existing touchpoints

Your customer’s engagement and automation journey begins with their first interaction via one of your touchpoints. So do you know where and what they are? Conduct an audit of your website and other communications channels (social media, email etc.) and identify occasions where you present an opportunity for a prospect to interact with you. These are your potential conversion points and include things like ‘Contact Us’ prompts , content subscriptions, and the requirement to submit an email address to access gated content like e-books, white papers and case studies.

Sort your data

Ensuring data quality isn’t the most glamorous part of the job but falling short here is a major reason why organisations fail to successfully implement or fully leverage their marketing automation solution. Typical hurdles include a lack of data standardisation and centralisation, inadequate policies about system or data access, poor data collection processes, and a lack of data ownership.


Start getting to know your prospects

Who’s interested in what you’re selling? It’s likely you’ll have a lot of data on your existing clients which you can use to begin segmenting them, beyond that, this is a good time to start building a more comprehensive profile of your potential clients as well. Install a web analytics tool on your existing website for a range of different insights including visitor location, demographics, interests, site use and user flow.


What now?

Contact details

7. What now?


What now?

Need some help on your marketing automation journey? Here at Datamine we’ve had over 20 years of experience in bringing all this together. We’re system agnostic and we’ll work collaboratively with you to deliver the right marketing automation solution for your business — whether you’re starting at zero or you’re a way down the track already.

Contact us today

Datamine Limited

Auckland +64 9 303 2300

Sydney +61 2 8022 8332

Melbourne +61 3 83 999 450

0800 DATAMINE (0800 328 264)

[email protected]

www.datamine.com

15 Faraday Street, Parnell, Auckland 1052


© Datamine 2016 — All Rights Reserved

Documents

Datamine Guide to Marketing Automation · PDF fileDatamine uide to Marketing Automation 2 Are you interested in personalising your marketing communications, improving customer