Marketing Automation: Keys to Success

Of the 235 respondents in a November IDC survey, nearly 40% had not implemented a marketing automation solution (yet). Not implementing a marketing automation solution may be the ultimate career limiting move for today's marketers. Digital marketing has exploded in scope and complexity making it practically impossible to efficiently and effectively reach your target audience without a fully realized marketing automation infrastructure. If you haven't gotten started you are already way behind the ball.

40% have not yet implemented marketing automation

Source: Marketing Automation: the Rise of Revenue, IDC #255860, Dec 2010. n = 234

Marketing automation is a must have for today's marketing and sales organizations. There is a wide array of online sources readily available to buyers that can significantly influence purchasing behavior. As a result, marketers must maintain a pervasive and continuously refreshing digital presence. Frequency is emerging as the most critical capability for sales and marketing organizations – frequency of outreach, analysis, and reporting. The cycle time for everything in marketing is under enormous pressure and companies that deliver more often, respond faster, and sustain their digital presence more successfully will be the winners.

Keys to success:

• Standardize your customer data
• Deploy marketing automation
• Review KPIs for marketing and sales to ensure alignment, visibility, and data integrity
• Integrate data, workflows, and governance across the whole "response to revenue" cycle

Top 3 places small companies (less than $1B) start:

• Lead management
• Campaign management
• Content management

Top 3 places large enterprise ($1B or more) start:

• Campaign management
• Lead management
• Financial reporting

Marketers must solve a stack of process, operational, and technical issues. It is a very complex and large scale problem spanning not only marketing and sales, but every other piece of the "response to revenue cycle, including: configuration, pricing, order processing, accounting, as well as service and support functions as well. The full scope of the customer relationship must be visible and measurable. Point solutions focused on particular marketing processes are great catalysts, but, IDC recommends companies take a holistic approach that ensures consistent data, workflows, and governance throughout the customer lifecycle.