
A while back I began tweeting my top 10 list of features that I would look for in any marketing automation solution. This was based on my experiences accumulated over the last 8 years, being responsible for demand generation at various technology companies. During that time I've used a mix of tools from simple web content management and email marketing solutions, to full blown marketing automation suites from various vendors.
Spreading the 10 tweets out over my time-line wasn't very helpful, and the 140 character limits made things a bit cryptic, so I'm going to split them over 2 posts with a little explanation and rationale this time.
#1. Fast landing page creation you can measure and a/b split test.
Whether your
landing pages are for calls-to-action on your website, or part of your pay-per-click campaign, they represent a huge opportunity for optimization. A small improvement in conversion rate can yield staggering increases in lead capture. Any marketing automation solution must make it quick and simple for marketers (not web developers) to create landing pages because you're going need a bunch of them and they will change frequently.
Obviously you need to measure both clicks onto the landing pages as well as actual conversions. As you get more advanced you'll need to experiment with different designs, copy, images and form fields. Now you need the ability to run A/B split tests and multivariate experiments. This can either be part of the marketing automation solution, or provided as part of a tight integration with a third-party (free) solution like
Google Website Optimizer.
#2: Simple form creation that integrates with your website call-to-actions. All leads into 1 funnel.
You don't just need
forms on landing pages. Your website calls-to-action often require in-line forms that flow as an integral part of the web page design. Jarring redirects to landing pages hosted on sub-domains are likely to distract your visitors at the critical moment as they take the step from interest to engagement.
All inbound leads need to get routed into a single marketing database so you have visibility of all inbound lead channels.
#3: Bi-directional integration with your chosen CRM system with communication history for sales context.
Marketing Automation systems don't operate in isolation. For marketing and sales to work as parts of an integrated demand generation process, you need two-way communication between the people and the technologies.
Leads need to flow into your
CRM system with as much context as possible to enable sales to have a productive initial conversation. As leads or prospects continue to interact with your business online, additional information must enrich the lead data in your CRM, without the dreaded creation of duplicate leads (see number 6 on the next post).
Inevitably not every lead passed to sales will engage with the allocated rep, let alone become an opportunity. Your chosen marketing automation platform must be able to accept leads "returned to marketing" for further nurturing. This is a huge black hole for many organizations with leads burned and lost for ever.
Finally for closed-loop marketing to work, your CRM system must be able to return pipeline / opportunity revenue and converted sales revenue for each campaign (see number 9). Only then can you invest in demand generation programs which create sales and not just clicks and conversions.
#4: Separate marketing database with dynamic segmentation based on explicit data and behaviors.
The days of email blasts to unsuspecting victims hoping that something sticks are coming to an end. Email campaigns are successful when the message is anticipated, personal and relevant (to quote Seth Godin). That means
segmentation - identifying groups of customers with similar needs.
First of all you'll need to be able to segment based on explicit data such as title, company size, state etc. Next you'll want to segment on behaviors such as the lead did X, then did Y, but hasn't done Z within the next two weeks. This is a great example of a dynamic group that changes continuously as people continue to interact with your business online.
With these capabilities you can start building campaigns which comprise multiple communication touches which reflect a persons interest, level of engagement and even stage in the buying process.
#5:Lead scoring duh! But it needs to be simple to use and flexible enough to fit your business model.
This is really the feature which defined the category. It's really not marketing automation without some sort of
lead scoring--but a word of caution: don't be tempted to over-engineer your approach right out of the gate. Plan to learn. You won't get it right first time, so allowing for incremental evolution of your scoring methodology will save you grief while trying to launch your marketing automation solution.
Better to tighten your criteria for passing sales-ready leads only once you have too many leads for sales to productively engage. This is especially true in the current economy. The goal here is more sales not less leads. Consider calculating a lead score and asking sales to validate the model when they start engaging the lead and verbally qualifying. You can get plenty of value from marketing automation without doing any form of lead scoring.