How-To-Choose-The-Right-Marketing-Automation-Platform

TECHASPECT CHOOSING DIGITAL EXPERIENCE • DIGITAL COMMERCE • DIGITAL MARKETING THE RIGHT DIGITAL MARKETING PLATFORM What type of How to know software do when to invest in you need? marketing automation? The keys to successful marketing automation

contents02 WHAT IS MA? MARKETING AUTOMATION.03 WHY YOU NEED TO BE CONSIDERING MARKETING AUTOMATION04 HOW TO KNOW WHEN IT’S TIME TO INVEST IN MARKETING AUTOMATION?04 WHAT TYPE OF SOFTWARE DO YOU NEED?06 HOW DO YOU CHOOSE THE RIGHT MARKETING AUTOMATION PLATFORM?08 CRM (CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT) INTEGRATION11 THE KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL MARKETING AUTOMATION

What is MA?Marketing Automation.Marketing automation MA is about the use of MA “marketing automation” has become asoftware platforms and technologies to help buzz-word, where marketers seek outorganizations, streamline marketing in marketing automation software under theorganizations by replacing repetitive manual impression that all the digital marketing toolsprocesses with automated solutions. This necessary for growth, including those neededautomation usually happens across multiple to generate new leads, roll up under the hoodchannels online (such as email, social media, of marketing automation.websites, etc. Marketing Automation typically generatesMarketing automation has is routes in email significant new revenue for companies, andmarketing automation, Marketing Automation provides an excellent return on the investmentplatforms are usually a hosted or web-based required.solution, and no software installation isrequired by a customer. Marketing Automation is like trying to grow a plant. First you need fertile soil ripe for theThe result of Marketing Automation is an growth of your plant. Next you need seedsorganization plan, coordinate, manage and themselves to care for, and last you needmeasure all their marketing campaigns, both water and light to nurture those seeds into aonline and offline. The technology of lush, blooming plant.marketing automation makes these taskseasier. Marketing automation does not do marketing for you, but can help scale your successfulThe automation process allows you to nurture efforts by automating the process ofprospects with highly personalized, useful marketing.content that helps convert prospects tocustomers and turn customers into clients.

PAGE 03 WHY YOU NEED TO BE CONSIDERINGMARKETING AUTOMATIONMarketing automation allows you to Working hand in hand, both salesaccelerate your marketing efforts. and marketing teams can defineLeads that are generated from your lead scores, as the best predictingcontent marketing efforts can be qualities for a lead.quickly nurtured, qualified and The key value of marketingpassed to your sales team. And automation is to optimize the timeimprove the effectiveness of your of both the sales and marketingoverall marketing effort and ROI on teams to focus on the mostmarketing. promising opportunities. LeavingMarketing Automation provides low-value leads to automated e-fingertip intelligence for both your mail follow up, freeing the time ofsales and marketing teams. It the sales team on leads that areallows your marketing team to most likely to generate revenue.provide leads to the sales team. Finally, your sales team can beginDecrease the time it takes to close its day focusing on a list of hotleads as well as optimize every leads that are most likely to convertopportunity. It does this by to sales instead of guessing whichproviding the sales team with more ones to invest time in!insight about leads, by embeddinginformation that can be accessedby the CRM.Sales teams can see what e-mailshave been opened, the last timethey visited the site. What pagesthey viewed, what resources theymay have downloaded. Allowingthem to tailor follow up phone callswith the right message.

PAGE 04 HOW TO KNOW WHEN IT’S TIME TO INVEST IN MARKETING AUTOMATION? How do you know if it is time for you to start to invest in a Marketing Automation Platform? The signs of change are when you are already producing effective inbound marketing content, and you are generating a steady flow of new, organic leads, and you’re ready to scale your successful efforts, chances are it’s time to focus your efforts on a marketing automation strategy that will nurture those quality leads into paying customers. Some pointers that will tell you if you are ready: You are already generating a steady flow of new and qualified leads The sales team is starting overwhelmed with the number of quality leads they are receiving. You are looking for an efficient content strategy mapped to your buyer’s journey You want to expand every touch point and marketing channel (not just email)? You have a proven lead nurturing strategy that you want to scale. These are all good signs that marketing automation (when done right) could work for your business. The key again is understanding that marketing automation does not do marketing for you, but can help scale your successful efforts. WHAT TYPE OF SOFTWARE DO YOU NEED? The key to marketing automation is the software or platform you choose. Your Marketing software must be powerful and versatile enough to accomplish specific tasks and automate processes, yet also user-friendly and scalable. While there are dozens of Marketing Automation platforms the four marquee B2B marketing automation tools are: MARKETO - HUBSPOT - PARDOT - ELOQUA - IBM CLOUD (SILVERPOP)

PAGE 05MARKETO PARDOTMarketo is clearly one of the leaders in the Marketing Pardot is known for its price positioning, which offersAutomation space. But it does not have a footprint into marketing automation functionality that is easy to use for aother CRM platforms because it made the decision to comparable less price versus other solutions. Pardot hasfocus only on Salesforce.com. Marketo is a good match been known for its limited technical functionality. It doesfor you, if in the mid-market, are using Salesforce.com, not extend as far into sales as some other Marketingare already doing email marketing, and have a need for Automation Platforms do. It may not be a good plug intopredictive marketing data in the future. The Marketo platforms such as Salesforce.com. Pardot’s customercustomers is usually an early technology adopter. service will help you get going on the platform and helps customers resolve issues, but the lack of a communityHUBSPOT means that best practices are not available. HubSpot allows marketers to build, administer, and deliver ELOQUA content emails that are linked to the rest of their marketing applications and tools. Users have the power to create Eloqua does a great job for companies blurring the line static (for one-off email distributions) and smart (dynamic) between the mid-market and the enterprise – those lists that are updated automatically based on list businesses that aren’t a traditional enterprise in size, but membership or modifications of the contact field data. that want to operate like one. Eloqua offers marketers the opportunity to bring different messaging points into their Marketers can create and deliver effective, tailored emails, Marketing Automation programs, provides deep integration even without code expertise. Or choose from the gallery of into CRM platforms, including Salesforce.com, and can tie templates already installed in the software. Evaluating the in more advanced programs like SMS marketing. success of the email campaigns is also a breeze with integrated analytics. CI BLMO UMDA(RSKI LEVTEI NRGP O P ) SUMMARY Eloqua does a great job for companies blurring the line between the mid-market and the enterprise – those The ultimate goal of automation is to businesses that aren’t a traditional enterprise in size, but help you save time, increase revenue, that want to operate like one. Eloqua offers marketers the improve communication and better opportunity to bring different messaging points into their measure the return on your Marketing Automation programs, provides deep integration investment in all marketing activities. into CRM platforms, including SalesforIBM Cloud does At the same time your solution must advanced batch and blast email. The platform has grown to integrate with your existing solutions include more sophisticated functionality such as landing and be manageable by the people page creation tracking, lead landing functionality for the expected to input data or make sense sales team and even lead nurturing. Silverpop integrates of the output. well into different platforms, making its reach even broader. IBM Marketing Cloud (Silverpop) may not be a true, comprehensive Marketing Automation technology, but for customers that want superior, high-level email marketing functionality it performs very well. ce.com, and can tie in more advanced programs like SMS marketing.

PAGE 06 HOW DO YOU CHOOSE THE RIGHT MARKETING AUTOMATION PLATFORM? There are numerous factors that you need to consider when choosing the right MA – Marketing Automation Platform. Not only must your platform work within your organizations budget, but must also meet your marketing goals and scale accordingly. With so many great products on the market, it can be tough to choose which program is best your business. There are several points you should consider before investing a lot of money in an expensive software package for your company. Here are some key factors: WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS? The starting point should always be what your organizations expectations are in terms of capabilities and features for your platform. Are you looking to streamline your current processes, create effective email campaigns, landing pages or better qualify your leads? Any marketing automation software worthy of consideration will include the following core features: Lead nurturing, scoring, and tracking Email and landing page creation Analytics & Reporting The way most differentiate themselves is based on the additional features i.e. HubSpot, blogging software, SEO analyzer. Note that these extra features come with an extra price tag, so make sure you plan to use them.

PAGE 07EASE OF USE MEASUREMarketing Automation vary a great deal in terms of complexity. Ingeneral, greater functionality comes at the expense of increasedcomplexity, so it’s important to evaluate what you need in terms offunctionality. What resources are you willing and able to invest tomake it all work?You may wish to start out with a less robust, but more user-friendly,platform like HubSpot. They then upgrade to a more complexmarketing automation software solution like Marketo or Eloqua afew years down the road.METRICS & MEASUREMENTBeing able to track and measure is essential to getting the most outof any marketing automation software, how data is displayed andhow easy it is to understand,Having the right Dashboard helps you better understand the overalleffectiveness (leads, conversion rates, ROI) broken down by tacticsof your marketing mix (PPC, email, social, organic).Other key metrics are: Performance of campaigns. Performance of landing pages. Keyword performance for PPC.You must have some kind of system for measuring how muchimpact your marketing efforts are having.Simple metrics can even include measuring the clicks on your links,or the number of e-mails that are opened. The point is, the more youcan use the software to gather and analyze data, the better.It’s important to be able to tailor this software as much as possibleto your particular business. Some marketing software is very flexibleand can be customized to suit your specific needs, while othersoftware has more rigidly defined functions that are incrediblyreliable but can’t be changed. Of course, most software packagescan be upgraded— at a cost.

PAGE 08 CRM (CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT) INTEGRATION Marketing Automation develops leads, and getting the most out of leads that you have. To do that, it’s vital to achieve a close integration with your CRM. Most marketing automation software integrate with the major CRMs, including SalesForce, Microsoft Dynamics and Oracle. But we need to be careful, as some integrate “closer” than others with particular CRMs and there are also differences in the amount of time and effort required for integration. Other platforms are non-biased in terms of CRM integrations, such as SalesFusion. Others still work with a range of CRMs but favor a few, such as Marketo, whose software integrates out of the box with SalesForce. This is an important consideration, as more investment in a particular CRM usually means a tighter (and potentially less expensive) integration, more functionality, and a stronger commitment to updates and support. Be sure to choose a marketing automation platform that provides a fully supported integration with your CRM and that it has near real-time syncing. Hubspot has its own mini-CRM, but also provides a wide variety of integrations with various marketing, sales and ecommerce tools. Like Hubspot, Marketo is an independent entity, so they also integrate with a wide variety of CRMs, as well as services like WordPress, Magento and Hootsuite. Pardot is now owned by Salesforce, meaning that naturally they have a very strong integration with that CRM. Of the major platforms, Eloqua also has integration although not as many as its counterparts. You will need to understand which CRM your Marketing Automation platform supports or can integrate with. This will be an important consideration when making your decision.

PAGE 09TOTAL COSTAlthough a good solution will pay for itself when correctly implemented and used correctly, you still needto evaluate the total cost. Not just to purchase the marketing automation platform but also otherancillary costs including set up, implementation, training, on-going expenses etc.One of the key things additional fees with respect to integration with a CRM system as we outlined above,these can add a considerable amount to the standard monthly fee. It’s a good idea to inquire aboutthese with your CRM provider.Although Marketing automation software can take your marketing to the next level and help your salesdepartment close more leads, it’s important to pick one that works for your company’s unique needs,resources and budget.

PAGE 10 INTEGRATION To ensure that your Marketing Automation Platform achieves your desired goals it needs to be integrated between different departments in your organization. It needs to act as a communication tool across both Sales & Marketing. Your platform will have many easy- to-use tracking functions that make it useful for your whole team, not just one individual department. To get the most out of your Marketing Automation Platform you must be able to share data back and forth seamlessly in real time and pass along the most current up-to-date information with sales representatives. And both the sales and marketing team need to work hand in hand. TECH SUPPORT Tech support is a must. Most platform providers are just that platform providers. And no piece of technology is perfect, you can count on your software running into some bugs here or there. If you’re trying to meet a deadline, the last thing you want to do is be waiting on the phone for tech support to come through. Take time to carefully review your Marketing Automation providers support policy and availability. Read reviews and talk to others that have had experience using the platform. TECHNICAL STRENGTHS | PARTNERSHIPSBefore you introduce new technology, look inwards! Make sure whoever you are working understandthe tools your company is already using and how they might interact with your marketingautomation platform. Look for a platform that you can in a way that best fits your needs andseamlessly integrates with your website and CRM system. Work with someone that can work withyour IT team.In addition to selecting the right marketing automation tool, you’re also choosing a partner whoseexpertise you rely on to help you succeed. It’s a good idea to make sure that you work with someonethat has certified marketing automation consultants on staff. Doing so will ensure you benefit from asolid mix of strategy, tactics and technical prowess to insure successful implementation.

PAGE 11 THE KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL MARKETING AUTOMATIONThere are many pieces that must be put in place to establish a successful marketingautomation strategy, but there are a few key principles to keep in mind.1( ) Recognizing that marketing automation is a technology and tool. It does not domarketing and lead generation for you. Content is critical.The first step is building a pipeline of good fit leads by generating relevant, optimizedcontent that speaks to your prospect’s needs and challenges. This is where inboundmarketing becomes the building blocks of your marketing funnel.2( ) Centering your marketing messages around a real person that is at the receiving endof your campaigns.That means we should treat them like a real person, not a fragmented self acrossdifferent tools like email, social media, etc. If we can leverage all the marketing tools,channels and behavioral data possible to paint a complete picture of a person, we cannurture them based on their unique challenges and interests, not based solely on theemails they open or click through.

PAGE 12HOW TECHASPECT CAN HELP YOUWITH MARKETO AUTOMATIONAs you have seen Marketo is a very powerful software, and is changing the way organizations aremarketing. TechAspect has a dedicated Marketo practice, with a team of certified Marketo consultants.We can help you insure that your Marketo platform is correctly deployed and you are getting the mostout of the system. Some of the ways that we might be able to help you are: DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVE The creation of email and landing page templates and forms and lead generation elements that support your marketing road map. We can also optimize your tracking techniques to ensure ROI and conversion metrics are available for you. CAMPAIGNS & PROGRAMS The creation and set up of campaigns and programs within Marketo to ensure that lead progression and lifecycle tracking is in-place and effective, that lead scoring is defined and implemented, and that triggers and filters for automated communication are functional and optimized. WORK FLOW The integration and optimization of Marketo and Salesforce.com to ensure that leads progress through the lifecycle in a meaningful way beyond their first sales cycle, through to retention and repeat sales | ensuring holistic customer lifetime value is at the forefront of your sales and marketing efforts. If you would like to talk to one of our team members about having us fine tune your Marketo Platform Contact us to schedule a call.

TECHASPECT® Digital Experience, Digital Commerce, Digital MarketingGet Help From Our ExpertsTechAspect has years of experience in Marketo implementations, integrations, Demand GenerationServices, Marketo Technical Support and more. Contact us today for help if your organization needsassistance setting up a new Marketo platform, creating a custom marketing environment ormigrating an older version of Marketo to a new one. Learn More ABOUT TECHASPECTTechAspect is an innovative digital transformation agency, specializing in delivering digital experience,commerce, and marketing solutions. For nearly two decades, we have been helping traditionalbusinesses transform and create dynamic digital cultures through disruptive strategies and agiledeployment of innovative solutions. Contact ® San Francisco | Metro Detroit | London | HyderabadDigital Experience, Digital Commerce, Digital Marketing