Part 1:

Background What is Marketing Automation Anyway?

If you are considering to implement a new Marketing Automation system or already using one, you are probably well aware of this crowded and steadily growing Market. The term ‘Marketing Automation’ may not be well defined, although the technology has been around for over a decade now. That is due to the vast set of features, processes and technologies housed under this term. Yet we can say confidently that any solution that situates itself as a Marketing Automation platform will have these key features and capabilities in it. Integration to a CRM System: First: Marketing Automation is not a CRM. While a CRM can stand alone without a MAS (Marketing Automation System), the other way around is not a natural situation.

Your MAS can access your CRM and alter records, add tasks, re assigned leads, write history logs and similar actions but it doesn’t replace any of the CRM core functionalities such as leads & business processes management, or opportunities & pipeline projections. Other than this your CRM is the base to many other add-on’s and integration to other systems such as your telephony systems, ERP, Financial Application etc. Most of the leading MAS integrate with some of the common CRM’s including Salesforce.com, Oracle On Demand, Sugar CRM and may offer other integrations upon demand. Website Integration: One of the key elements in MAS is the ability to integrate with your corporation’s online presence and enhance it as the web is considered on of the major channels for Demand Generation.

Some Marketing Automation Systems vs. CRM systems. Do not confuse between the two

Part 1:

Background What is Marketing Automation Anyway?

Such integration will include the ability to track your visitors’ behavior, and deliver insight from their implicit web behavior such as which pages they viewed, how long they spent on each, as well as explicit behavior including a form fill out to name the most common. Added to that are out of the box editors to design your own landing pages and forms with a WYSIWYG interface which save you the need to run to your webmaster for every new one you need to launch as well as capturing those details straight to your CRM system. Automated Campaigns and workflows: As you would expect from a technology including the word ‘Automation’ in it, your MAS has the ability to automate process: simple or complex pin-pointed and granular or batch - it’s up to you.

A ‘beginners’ automated process can include blasting them all with April’s newsletter, while a more complicated process can include sending a series of emails (‘Drip Campaign’). If you want to add granularity to the process, define several routes depending on the lead’s demographics, behavior including which emails they clicked and which not, what webpages they visited following that email click etc. the options are endless but hard to maintain over time as you grow complexity. Lead Scoring One of the key challenges your MAS can help you with is the answer to the question your sales ask them every morning : “Who should we call today?” To answer that, we use Lead Scoring. Lead Scoring is a very straightforward method of prioritizing your work so you could decide in a glance whether you are chasing John Smith today or not.

Part 1:

Background What is Marketing Automation Anyway?

The Score usually takes into consideration the Lead’s behavior score including Website visits, emails opens and click trough's, form fill outs etc. and also demographic score such as title, company, industry, territory and other factors. The difference between demographic score and behavior scores is often described as ‘how much are interested in them’ (demographic) vs. ‘how much they are interested in us’ (behavior) – these two should ideally be combined to a single score to help you prioritize these leads. Sales Enablement: All the richness of the insights and automated capabilities your MAS can provide you with cannot complete unless your Sales can act upon them. For that you need to observe very closely what is the integration level you are offered with your CRM, including Alerts to Sales Reps, Easy reporting of every lead’s behavior tracking and even the ability to deliver closed looped campaigns by your sales rep to the MAS and back.

Mass Email Engine: Marketers tend to underestimate the critical role Emails play in the Demand Generation efforts, but emails remain one of the key channels to create demand generation, hence it is considered one of the key benefits for adopting a MAS in the first place, as strange as it may sound. This is why you need to review very carefully the email engine (good chance that it is powered by one of the mass email deliverability vendors). Static IP, Spam checker, Inbox Preview can be offered on top of the basic email package that comes with your MAS.

Some Mass Email enablement and Deliverability Vendors. Email is still a big deal.