Marketing automation technology, such as Eloqua or Marketo, can be key to marketing success. They deliver both unprecedented insight into your customers and the ability to automate the daily tasks that are so much a part of a marketer’s daily life.

At Bluewolf, we’ve found that there are three kinds of marketing organisations when it comes to deploying marketing automation technology: Those that have, those that have not, and those that have nearly.

Those that have: With a marketing automation system in place, these companies are actively using marketing automation to more effectively align marketing with sales, to increase the number of qualified leads and demonstrate impact on revenue.

What a great place to be – pat yourselves on the back! And don’t stop there. Think “how can I build further on this? Am I listening to everything my customers’ behavior is telling me? Can my leads be even better qualified? Am I testing effectively, tracking and listening to the right metrics?” There is always room for improvement.

Those that have not: The ‘have-nots’ do not use any form of marketing automation and hand crank everything they do from lead capture, to outbound campaigns, to reporting and analytics. This is far from ideal and usually we find that not only do they know this, there is a desire to improve. But, in a world of soaring lead goals and tight budgets that need to deliver right now – they often cannot see where to find the money to invest for future gains. It can be a perpetual cycle.

Sometimes, you just need help to demonstrate to the business the return that an investment in marketing automation will make. And other times you need to stand firm in the knowledge that the time investment of today will free up those evenings and weekends of the future.

As an example, let’s talk about that final year-end campaign that marketing told sales they would execute: the one we know is going to take several weeks to roll - and will likely deliver minimal results. Instead, that time and budget could be used to review the effectiveness of your current marketing practices, identify the gap between today’s state and tomorrow’s revenue goals, and then deliver a road-map of the processes, technology and resources that will get you there.

Those that have nearly: These organizations are the most frustrated. They made the investment in marketing automation, but their use is barely beyond ‘batch and blast’ email techniques. It’s not for the lack of wanting to exploit what they have. It just hasn’t happened for them. The biggest culprit is usually time; stepping out of the ‘day job’ to identify, segment, prioritize and understand their prospective customers and then build out an automation program that will nurture them along the buying cycle at their own pace based on behaviour.

Our advice here is to start small. Crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run. Pick a segment for which you already have tailored content and build out a simple program that can be enhanced later. Don’t go straight for the all-singing, all-dancing award-winning nurture program and let early success be your inspiration to move up the complexity chain.

The smart marketers intuitively understand how marketing automation tools will drive them to greater revenue. We help them get there, whatever their current stage of the journey may be.

Bluewolf’s marketing effectiveness practice combines experience-based marketing strategy with industry-leading marketing automation technology to help organizations engage with prospects more effectively. Services include:

• Marketing automation Blueprint: connecting marketing organizations’ vision with the methodology and technology that best gets them there.
• Marketing automation implementation services: optimizing from the get-go.
• On-going optimization: campaign management, lead & contact management and marketing measurement.

Already considering how to improve marketing effectiveness? Contact us with any questions.