Marketing automation is more than just email marketing or even lead generation. It is increasingly the core marketing solution for a mid-size organization, the central hub from the marketing strategy gets started. The hub that takes data from several sources, launch tactics based on this data, and then offers an analysis of the performance. And as we move towards 2020, it’s only going to get even more complex.
This buyer’s guide is meant not only for fast-growing mid-to-large companies that are looking to make their first investment in marketing automation. But, also for those companies that are looking to upgrade their marketing automation solution to effectively deal with the need of the next decade.
Customers are changing, Marketing automaton should too
Back in the days, it all started with a simple need to automate email marketing. Customer onboarding, welcome sequences, offers, transactional emails, and so on. And lead generation was the primary outcome.
But with the continuous advancements in targeting and segmentation, and the vast range of personalization possibilities based on several user variables, marketing automation in our multi-platform, multi-touchpoint, omnichannel world is quite different from just an email marketing solution.
As we move towards and into 2020, marketers need to upgrade their marketing automation solutions to maintain pace with anticipated and current needs. And depending on which stage of marketing maturity your company is at currently, marketing automation is going from simple list management to highly advanced AI-based targeting and segmentation; from basic personalization to hyper-personalization with dynamic content; from simple lead scoring to complex predictive analytics.
Now, even the basic marketing automation solution tends to include elements of content marketing, search marketing, account-based marketing, social media marketing, and even CRM. The impact metrics have changed too; now, it isn’t enough to just submit a form or attend a webinar. Inbound marketing impact is being measured in terms of HQL pipeline, not just the leads, and sustained engagement, not just for the interest of the prospect
The Information that you need to make the Right Investment or Upgrade
If your company falls under fast-growing mid-to-large size business category and need to re-look at your marketing automation capabilities to grow and scale your marketing efforts; then this comprehensive vendor-agnostic buyer’s guide will not only give you the best comprehensive set of features to choose from but also equip you to ask the right questions to the vendors as you head into 2020.
Vision 2020: Marketing Automation for High-growth Companies
We delved into the upgrades and improvements that we will witness in marketing automation as we move into 2020;
Marketing Resource Management (MRM)
It is a “reverse integration” that is applied to internal marketing processes. And the mid-market companies are increasingly looking to integrate their central hub of marketing automation with internal processes like workflow, budget, and asset management.
Customizable
The marketing strategy requires a great deal of agility and flexibility in execution- your marketing automation solution needs to allow that. Another important aspect is workflow customization as every company will have several ways for their customers to interact with it and the automated responses that have to be followed to drive engagement and nurturing. The solution should allow for the increasingly complex business workflows and rules when it comes down to campaign execution.
ROI
Improved ability to optimize the tools and drive ROI on your marketing investments.
Integration
The marketing automation solutions are increasingly integrating with many valuable martech tools, including e-commerce and company websites, programmatic advertising tools, social media, ABM, the CRM; and where available, programmatic adtech solutions, CDP or other data management platforms, and sales enablement tools.
Lifecycle marketing
This is a very fundamental change from marketing automation solution of the past; moving from a siloed method where each online marketing strategy was independently executed by different teams, marketers are now guided by buyer lifecycle, buyer behavior, and the customer experience journey to map out what strategy should be used. The campaign execution strategy is secondary to the buyer journey, and marketing automation still will be the central hub to launch and deliver that seamless customer experience, irrespective of the format, channel or platform. And this will also mean building in highly unified marketing and sales participation in the complete process.
AI comes for MA too!
The features generated by AI include hyper-personalization, automated targeting, dynamic content, recommendations/predictive optimization, and smart tagging. The marketing automation vendors are also preparing to bring some features around building predictive buyer journeys as we move towards 2020.
Common Barriers to Optimal Marketing Automation Performance
- Not defining the use cases and success KPIs at the start with all stakeholders.
- Being led by anything other than the customer journey and customer expectations in workflow design.
- Inadequate workflow mapping to define improvements in efficiency and effectiveness.
- Missing a viable demand generation strategy.
- Not integrating marketing automation with crucial systems.
- Putting the technology before the strategy.
- Lack of clarity on data sources and database management principles such as identifying the master database and other crucial (data) integrations.
- Not defining the buyer personas and their journeys at the start.
- Not aligning the right stakeholders internally to bust silos, drive adoption or define KPIs (including not involving sales).
- Siloing marketing automation tactics and executing them independently of other teams.
- Not leveraging the testing and measuring functionalities or making data-backed campaign decisions.
- Incorrect choice of vendor or tool configuration.
- Misjudging the skills needed in-house to deploy, use and manage the martech platform optimally.
- Focusing on the initial cost of deployment or subscription, while misreading the costs involved in planning and executing campaigns.
Must-have Feature Listing
Email Marketing
Email Marketing Tool (Basic);
- Send outbound emails to selected lists at scale.
- Drip email campaigns for nurturing and growing leads through the funnel/ journey (from leads to MQLs and HQLs and conversions) based on basic workflows to move customers in a linear way across the funnel; also progressively collect more information about a customer with each increasingly advanced interaction.
- Message deliverability and spam filters.
- Email builder with basic personalization: Easily create emails using templates and creatives with basic field personalization based on selected parameters.
- Email response automation of all standard transactional emails (inbound and outbound) based on defined workflows.
- Basic A/B testing of email templates, subject lines, and offers.
Email Marketing Tool (Advanced);
- Integrated workflows: Email workflows have been around for some time, but integrated workflows that combine multiple channels like mobiles, laptops, platforms like social media or programmatic, and campaigns in addition to email are a newer phenomenon for Marketing Automation to manage. Example, triggering a retargeting campaign if a particular email is opened but not clicked.
- Content, Campaign and Offer personalization: Track individual customers across the lifecycle (awareness, leads, conversion, retention, and reactivation) and automate personalized contact, content, and responses.
- Email previewing: See how the email will appear on various devices and screen sizes for cross-platform campaigns.
Content Management
Content Management Tool (Basic);
- Templates to create basic content quickly and easily, based on predefined attributes and keywords.
- Manage the basic content repository of emails, offers, and content to execute multiple demand gen campaigns via the Marketing Automation platform.
Content Management Tool (Advanced);
- AI to create altogether new content including emails and subject lines.
- Automate content atomization (repurposing content into different formats) to build content versions and volumes.
Campaign Management
Campaign Management Tools (Basic);
- Calendering and budget tracking of campaigns.
- Campaign Management Dashboard: single view into all ongoing campaigns and statuses.
- Automated campaign-related task alerts.
- Workflow Management: mapping rule-based and relational workflows across the stages of the customer lifecycle.
- Automated campaign-related task alerts.
Campaign Management Tools (Advanced);
- Account-based marketing (ABM): Account identification, mapping contacts to target accounts, and developing, executing and measuring account level campaigns.
- Real-time messaging customization: During the browsing engagement, the website throws up customized content based on where the visitor is clicking.
- Advanced segmentation: Companies can identify high, medium and low Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) users, map their lifecycle and optimize campaign spends based on expected revenues in real-time, and even predictively.
- Dynamic content integration from multiple sources to drive engagement and relevance.
- Cross channel and cross-device campaign management: Can build, track and manage campaigns across channels and/or devices.
- Hyper-personalization with the creation of advanced user personas.
- Machine learning and AI driven use cases.
- Dynamic and real-time content and product recommendations based on user behavior and responses.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing Tool (Basic);
- Automation of posts and responses from brand handles.
Social media marketing (Advanced);
- Plugging into social commerce platforms.
- Social media ad targeting.
- Posting interactive content such as video and stories.
Data and Lead Management
Data and Lead Management Tools (Basic);
- Basic lead scoring and classification.
- Centralized marketing databases with data hygiene.
- Manage subscribes and unsubscribes centrally.
- Lead capture from basic sources.
- Contact management.
- Basic segmenting and targeting.
Data and Lead Management (Advanced);
- Advanced or predictive lead scoring with machine learning: Determine what leads are more or most likely to convert from which channels and which campaign. This not only shortens the lead cycle significantly, but it also helps optimize spends.
- Lead capture from multiple sources: external and owned sources online and offline.
- Progressive or intelligent profiling to auto-populate fields and otherwise enrich leads.
CRO including Landing Pages (advanced)
- Ability to add chatbots and conversational tools to engage the visitor, suggest the right content or product/ CTA, or even close/convert the sale.
- Multivariate testing and optimization: A/B testing is evolving into something far more complex, where campaigns are generated based on a combination of multiple variables. In advanced marketing automation platforms, each contact can be tested for multiple conversion factors.
- Open APIs to add on widgets or plugins such as pop-up prompts to optimize on-page conversion.
- Website behavior tracking.
- Custom creation of landing pages and web forms: The ability to create multiple personalized landing pages for a single campaign, with landing page optimization options to maximize conversion and easy-to-use and secure web forms.
Reporting and Analytics
Reporting and Analytics Tools (Basic);
- Campaign ROI analytics (basic).
- Basic metrics: web traffic, visitor behavior, and campaign results.
- Customized metrics: MQL and SQL volumes, lead cycle, churn, average order value, cross and upsell volumes and lead velocity (through the funnel).
Reporting and Analytics Tools (Advanced);
- Campaign ROI analytics (advanced) including revenue analysis.
- Predictive Scoring and Advanced Analytics.
- SEO and keyword tracking.
Must-have Functionalities Listing
Mobile Marketing
Companies are following their customers on the Smartphone trail. Customers expect brands to build tailored mobile engagement experiences, and MA needs to be able to leverage all the tactics – from messages and notifications to apps and made-for-mobile websites – to drive engagement on mobile. Mobile also offers the potential for real-time conversion with integrations to technology like geo-tagging and geo-location, and immersive communication.
Integrations
- Plug-and-play integrations with external tools such as predictive analytics tools, conversational commerce, and performance marketing tools, along with access to APIs or app marketplaces for diverse features and options.
- Basic integrations: Data import and export tools, native CRM integration, lead-alerting to sales enablement tool and social media integration.
- Advanced integrations: Advanced social/lead profile integration, CDP and customer data management platforms, programmatic adtech, other sales enablement tools such as KAM and ABM and conversational commerce.
Security and Compliance
- Remote access rights
- User role and access management
- Data security and backup, with recovery
Deployment Options
Aside from the usual on-cloud SaaS versus on-cloud on-premise options; there are a few more options of significance, which are worth mentioning;
- Investing in an all-in suite which has the basics of all features and the best of some features
- Outsourcing marketing automation to an Agency
- Building a best-in-class point-solution stack on top of a base or foundational tool
- (H2)About the Solution:
- How critical is a stand-alone CRM to you? Will integration be needed or will an MA with base CRM functionalities suffice?
- What part of the funnel is your priority? The level of complexity you need in an MA solution will depend on which part of the funnel is most crucial to you at the marketing stage.
- Are you in a highly specialized industry vertical that requires specific functionalities or customizations?
- Have you segmented must-have and nice-to-have features and functionalities?
- How easy would it be to scale up the solution based on your growth and expansion plans?
- How advanced are you with data management? How much data is available to drive opmal campaign outcomes?
- Have you tried it yourself? How user-friendly is it?
- How critical is a stand-alone CRM to you? Will integration be needed or will an MA with base CRM functionalities suffice?
About in-house Readiness and Resources
- What are the data security and compliance regulations that govern your industry?
- Have you documented your workflows and mapped out the integrations and interventions required?
- How much time is available to you for selection and deployment?
- What skills will be needed in-house to deploy, run and manage the solution?
- What is the total cost of ownership (TCO)? Rather than the initial investment, focus on the TCO.
- What additional resources will be needed to manage the solution and drive optimal performance?
- Are your budgets allocated?
- Have you identified the selection, deployment and management team?
- Do you need a white label UX?
- Have you defined the project roadmap and key milestones? Have all stakeholders agreed to the KPIs and key measurement metrics?
Factor in
- Cost of manpower and resources needed to manage and maintain the system
- Additional operational costs such as data onboarding, cleansing, and migration
- Cost of customization if any
- Cost of integration if any
- User Training Costs
- Cost of data security to the standard required in your industry
- Cost of downtime
- One-off installation costs
- Cost and risks of non-compliance
- Cost of customer service
- Cost of upgrades and add-ons/ bolt-on apps
- Cost of license or monthly subscription fee
- Cost of mobility and mobile-compliance
- Cost of external consultants that may be involved
About the vendor
- What add-on features are available and how easy are they to plug and play?
- If you are choosing to outsource to an agency, confirm data ownership in the service agreement.
- Will your vendor offer training and support and what are the cost implications of that?
GreenZone Vendors Listing
Conclusion
This article addresses the critical marketing technology category. Our goal is to not just help give Mid and Large size companies the perspective they need to approach a specific category but to help them make a more informed buying decision.
