Marketing Automation - In-house or Outsource

Marketing Automation:Keep In-House orOutsource?A senior marketer’s guide: To outsource your MarketingAutomation capabilities or bring them in-house?

Marketing AutomationThe war for talentIn 2016, Marketing Automation adoption in Europe is set to explodefrom 23% of organisations to a staggering 52% in the next 2 years*.This 126% growth means that Marketing Automation is now amainstream discipline and will result in a massive war for talent dueto skills shortage.What is concerning is that only 15% of Marketing Automation usersfeel they are using their platform to its full potential** and 32% statethat lack of employee skills is a significant barrier to success***.So do you develop the skills in-house or recruit them?ORDo you consider alternatives? *Source: The Pulse: European Demand Creation Tools and Processes, SiriusDecisions **Source: Increasing Adoption of Marketing Automation Platforms, SiriusDecisions *** Source: Marketing Automation Trends Survey, Ascend2

The Best ApproachIn-house or outsource?If you’re looking to optimise your Marketing Automation investment youmay be in two, or possibly even three, minds:1. Do I keep it all in-house and do it myself or with my existing team?OR2. Do I recruit specialist skills into my existing organisation?OR3. Do I outsource all or some of our requirements to a specialist partner?This guide is designed to give a balanced assessment to help you weighup the options and key considerations to ensure you pick the right pathfor you, your team and your organisation.

Structure Follows Strategy Why not read about VMware and their use of Marketing Automation? VMware are one of the most advancedA strategic technology investment or an advanced email capability? users globally, it is a great source of inspiration. We think Marketing Automation is very clever. It is in essence a collection VMware Case Study. of coherent marketing technologies all under one roof. It provides ‘the marketing spine’ - the link between your web presence and CRM – and whereas CRM is company defined-intelligence, Marketing Automation provides the crucial user-defined intelligence. So we think it is pretty strategic and fundamental to your future marketing outperformance. However to others with less ambition or other priorities, it might just be a tactical tool to ‘just get the message out there.’ However, lack of effective strategy is the top reason (52%) for Marketing Automation’s barrier to success* If you know your own Marketing Automation ambitions then it is easier to define your people, resources and skill requirements. This is after all about digital transformation and not a point solution.*Source:“Marketing Automation Trends Survey, Ascend2

Digital Transformation Through Marketing AutomationThe 5 stage process that looks beyond the featuresA successful Marketing Automation strategy is not just about whizzy features, it is about better marketing;and Marketing Automation can improve your marketing in a number of ways.1. Brand; Marketing Automation is designed to help your customers self-educate. A slick digital experience is a great indicator and metaphor for the overall brand experience.2. Efficiency; because of this automated self-selection and self education, it makes the sales process more intelligent and more streamlined too. It means the ability to scale without individual heroics.3. Selling Reinvented; in fact the whole sales process is being reinvented by your customers. They want the digital and the physical sales process to be based on education, and that the two are consistent and marry up. Customers want a single coherent view too.4. Market Intelligence; Marketing Automation is like the reception desk in your offices, it tracks who visits, who leaves and their intentions too. With your website typically the first point of call for most new customers, employees, and stakeholders, surely this is too important not to manage properly?5. Compliance; in a way this is the second level to your brand reputation. The way you manage your customer and prospect data is now of paramount importance. New EU legislation (GDPR) demands the protection of the individual to the right to be forgotten, to the right to know what data is kept on them, where and how. Increasingly this responsibility is falling to a joint IT/Marketing approach and requires a platform to support this legislation. Reputation management is the new brand management.Having the bigger picture in mind stops your Marketing Automation investment being a replacement emailmarketing tool, where click thrus and open rates are the prime currency. Adapt this 5 stage process to helpyou develop your own vision of where your future marketing function is going.

The Skills You Need Where do most Marketing Automation projects fail?Once your ambition is set, your team can be built • Typically the CMO tries to allocate Marketing Automation to one person, or sometimes a few people, to do it all. Typically this is the Technologist. TheyTo get the best out of Marketing Automation you need the following skills...and in can’t do it all properly, even if they tell you they can, as often they get lost in thethis order too: detail.1. A strategic thinker; someone who sets the vision and can translate what the • Marketing Automation is a multi-faceted approach, requiring multiple skills technology can do for the business. This person doesn’t touch the platform, seldom found in just one person. ever. This should be you. • Starting with a ‘bottom up’ approach is a recipe for failure.2. A data scientist; someone who can build reports with meaning and can organise data for compliance and better targeting. This is the way marketing will garner more respect within the organisation and give your team chance to report marketing’s impact properly.3. A content and campaign specialist; someone who can design meaningful journeys and experiences that support the brand, the business and your customers’ needs.4. Project Management; in large organisations, especially at the implementation and learning phase this is fundamental to keep you on track to your vision and your budget too.5. A technologist; someone who can build smart campaigns, knows HTML, knows how to build mobile optimised campaigns and has knowledge of existing systems.

So what are your options?

Marketing Automation In-House The Ultimate Question:Reasons to keep in-house Will your existing team capacity and capability support your strategy and the degree of digitalResource on site transformation you desire?You are in control of the resource and the team that works on your Marketing Automation projects. [ ] YesThe day to day management of a Marketing Automation team may be something that you don’t want [ ] Noto give up ownership of. [ ] Not SureGrowing your internal talent If yes – no need to read on.Although it will take time, you may wish to grow and expand your team and their capabilities. The If no or not sure – read on to find out more.ideal Marketing Automation team will comprise data analysts, platform specialists, technicaldevelopers, project managers and digital savvy marketers.You will need a team, so if you are confident in your recruitment or retraining capabilities thenkeeping it in-house might be the way to go.Control of your brandNobody will understand your brand and offering better than you and your marketing team. You own it,live it and breath it every single day.Cost and convenienceKeeping Marketing Automation in-house is perceived to be a cheaper option than outsourcing to apartner. When incorporating recruitment costs, productivity, organisations distractions, training andpossible re-hiring, the in-house option may or may not be so economically viable.

Marketing Automation OutsourcedReasons to outsourceFixed resource and expertise Quality, consistency and multiple-languages at scalePartners have dedicated, skilled and fully-trained Over the years and multiple client projects, partners willresource available at all times. Keeping Marketing have processes in place for delivering quality no matterAutomation in-house requires hiring, training and of the scale and deliver these at agreed Service Levelscourse re-hiring and re-training if key personnel leave. (SLAs). As your marketing plans and programs become more ambitious, quality won’t be compromised.A team with multiple skills Demonstrate Marketing’s valueThe fixed but dedicated resource provided by a partnercomprises the multiple disciplines required to make By outsourcing, organisations achieve time to valueMarketing Automation successful, including: platform much faster. Marketing has to be a strategic profit-and technical, digital marketing, data and analytics, centre, not a cost-centre, in order to gain internalCRM capability, quality assurance, project respect and greater influence.management, marketing strategy, content strategy andcommercial strategy. Not all of these skills exist in one Outsourcing moves the dial faster to Marketing beingperson – unfortunately we’re not all Marketing perceived as a department that is driving value and newAutomation superheroes. thinking across the business.

The Economic Model for Marketing AutomationCan you prove the ROI?The short answer is no. CleverTouch has helped many organisations from SMBs to global enterprise accounts build a business case that isHowever can you describe and value a ‘do nothing scenario’ versus a ‘do something scenario’ and specific to them. For more information please get in touch.attribute likely cost benefit to it? The answer is yes.At a high-level the 3 metrics to consider are: 1. Making more money; through Marketing Automation it is possible to provide campaigns at scale, in a way that currently relies on spreadsheet jockeying and individual heroics. 2. Saving money by efficiencies; Forrester Research believe that over 5m traditional sales job will be lost in North America alone through digital transformation and customer self-sufficiency. The old business model of too many sales and customer service representatives working blind is obsolete. 3. Provide great intelligence and insight; this is often so overlooked, yet it provides the foundation for business improvement. An antennae to the market based on multiple metrics is essential. The ability for marketing to forecast and predict is so much more powerful that the ability to show ROI. Get this right and Marketing has a seat at the boardroom.The degree of importance attributed to each will vary based on the organisation and markets youoperate in.

Anything to Make Outsource More Compelling?Additional IP and technology to get you there fasterAt CleverTouch we were created with Marketing Automation Price promise: Because of our investment in smartin mind and so we have built a number of digital tools and technologies CleverTouch is able to outcompete the nativeprocesses to optimize the deployment and delivery phase. build of any offshore organization and deliver the final product at a much higher level.We don’t think you can outsource everything. You can’toutsource your knowledge of your business or the industry If you have multi-touch, multi-language requirements thenexperience, but you can outsource some Marketing we simply cannot be beaten on price, that is a promise.Automation requirements to support your domain expertise toa partner who can provide guidance and delivery advantages.With this in mind we have created IP around automatedbuilds, multi-language capabilities, automated digitalscanning and quality assurance. All designed to save us time,which means savings we can pass onto you. We have evenbuilt technology to simplify Marketing Automation and driveup adoption.

Interesting… But I Want to Keep it 100% In-HouseWe can still help youSome of our clients want to manage as much as possible in-house. They see MarketingAutomation as a strategic asset to keep in-house, but they still rely on us in a number of ways:1. Mentoring & Training; we develop bespoke training, delivered by certified platform consultants to meet specific needs and talent development of your team, person by person.2. Marketing Consulting; many clients come to us for the design of advanced prospect journeys or nurture frameworks. We design them so they will work inside their chosen platform, but they then complete the build themselves.3. Advanced Development; sometimes clients want advanced preference centres, event apps or something even more bespoke. We have a team of technical consultants, certified to the highest levels that can write code to solve your platform limitations. They even advise the vendors on new feature requests in their own platform architecture.4. User Adoption & Workload Management; sometimes getting marketers in the field to adopt Marketing Automation technology - or for the central marketing operations team to manage all the company build requests - can be a real problem. So we have created CT Powershot designed to increase your usage and Marketing Automation adoption.

SummaryOur final thoughts…The best campaigns and the marketing teams generating the most valuefor the business are those that operate with a tripartite workingrelationship; with your organisation, a creative agency and a marketingautomation specialist working together to deliver success.You will never be able to outsource your domain expertise or yourcompany and brand knowledge, but sometimes it makes sense tooutsource some of your marketing automation capabilities without losingcontrol.Whatever path you choose, do it well and do it with big ambition.Have a bigger vision for the business and a bigger role formarketing inside the business.

About CleverTouchHere’s a little about us• Created by Marketers with Marketing Automation in mind• Working with the most ambitious Marketing Automation users globally• Most verified and respected independent consulting partner in EMEA• Recognised by IDM, eConsultancy, B2B Marketing & Forrester Research

CleverTouch at a GlanceOur Marketing Automation services and deliverables

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