A definition of Marketing Automation in 2014

Have you noticed that there’s a lot more discussion of how marketing automation can be used by businesses in 2014? Many email marketing service providers (ESPs) are repositioning their services as marketing automation platforms and at the same time, customer relationship management (CRM) systems are including marketing automation and Big Data features as part of their cloud platform services. As I speak with marketers at different businesses I find that there is varying understanding of what marketing automation means and I'm often asked to define it’s scope. So, in this post I have outlined some of the main features as I see it.

Automated, personalised email sequences are a key feature of Marketing Automation

In reality, the automation concept is not new, for example, automated email sequences are a key feature of marketing automation that have been available for at least 10 years in many capable…

Is Marketing Automation right for your business - find out the reasons why other businesses are using it

Are you at the stage of choosing your marketing automation system or building the business case? If so, then this infographic may give you some advice on how to either sell the idea to your boss or ensure it meets your business needs. Marketo and Software Advice, a company that researches and reviews marketing automation tools, spoke with hundreds of companies to find out the key drivers to purchasing a marketing automation system. For 91% it was a new initiative, and companies with less than 500 employees were the main buyers to purchase a Marketing Automation System. The main drivers were for lead acquisition and to automate their processes, as shown in the infographic.

 More resources on Marketing Automation on Smart Insights

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How to effectively manage your data for marketing automation success

As a data-driven initiative, marketing automation is heavily dependent upon the accuracy, completeness and validity of the data that the technology will run on. Inaccurate and out-of-date data, gaps in information and poorly integrated data will all serve to compromise the core objectives of marketing automation, hindering the ability to create relevant, timely and engaging communications, and ultimately undermining efforts to increase loyalty and sales. Worse still, marketing processes driven by bad data can actually damage customer relationships, as demonstrated by numerous studies. 'According to one survey, 55% of respondents had been sent information about an irrelevant product by a business in the previous 12 months,' says Nigel Turner, VP of information management strategy at Trillium Software. 'A large minority (47%) said they are ‘annoyed’ when a business gets their personal information wrong, and 35% said such errors reduce their faith in…

How to choose the best marketing automation system for your business

Whether you’re an existing user of marketing automation or you’re preparing to invest for the first time, the rush of acquisitions in the sector can be disruptive to your technology decision-making. For those yet to invest, it can cloud the solutions in uncertainty. While existing users of one vendor have the disruption of suddenly finding themselves customers of a different company entirely. And if you’re an Eloqua user that isn’t happy about becoming an Oracle customer, then it means you’re back into the market for a new solution. But the recent spate of activity is entirely reshaping the marketing automation landscape. 'In some ways, the discrete category of marketing automation is fading away a bit,'says Gerry Brown, Senior Digital Marketing Analyst at Ovum. 'IBM, Oracle, Salesforce.com, Adobe and Teradata have all been involved in mopping up best-of-breed marketing automation companies of…

Assessing how the latest technology trends can support the sales process

Mobile, social, Cloud and Big Data are converging, with the sales department seemingly sat directly on the nexus point. Not only are these mega-trends impacting sales behaviours, but also sales technologies. Mobile, social, Big Data and Cloud are influencing the entire sales force automation (SFA) ecosystem, from sales opportunity management (contact management, sales forecasting, lead distribution, etc), sales effectiveness (prospect qualification, proposals/contracts, order management, etc) and sales performance management (objectives/quota management, territory management, etc). With such widespread influence, sales teams that harness these forces have the potential to significantly improve their business results. 'The trends help the sales leaders address the perennial issue of how to make salespeople more productive, while the next generation of sales tools also mean you can have deeper insight about your customers – know which ones to call, be able to qualify leads better, be able to enter…

Marketing Automation Tool recommendations

Value/Importance: [rating=4]

Recommended link: B2B Marketing Automation Tools 2013: Marketers Guide

We thought it would be helpful to share this new free report since we have had several recent questions on our Answers forum about selecting CRM and Marketing Automation systems - CRM seems preferred as a term in the UK.

Can anyone recommend a marketing automation solution?Selecting a CRM DatabaseCRM tool recommendations

This guide provides many practical tips, checklists and advice for companies seeking to source the right marketing automation tool, ideas to overcome barriers and challenges, information to help justify the requirement for it and to find out the major players, and trends.

The 61 page document collates findings from primary and secondary research including interviews with marketing adopters, vendors of marketing automation and leading industry leaders.

You can access the full report to…

My tips from practical experience

What is marketing automation (originally called email marketing automation)?

It's software platforms essentially, they enable marketing (and sales) departments to increase lead conversion by letting marketing teams leverage captured data to automate the execution of advanced segmentation and communication sequences. You've probably heard of many of the main marketing automation suppliers. Or more simply put, you can do more targeted lead based marketing for a lot less effort. You get to avoid the batch-and-blast approach to email marketing. Two forms of behavioural data are typically used to score and segment leads: Implied - consumer site behaviour, i.e frequency of visit, looking at key pages, time on site, viewing product pages Explicit - filling in forms, requesting information, online purchase, attempting online purchase This data is used to then score (based on propensity to purchase - how "hot" a lead it) and segment (you segment on what you think). The…