Are you wanting to add marketing automation to the mix but don’t have any available internal resources? If so, outsourcing to a marketing automation consultant may be useful. With the recent growth of marketing automation, which is expected to reach 50% market penetration in 2015, there are many companies that claim to have the knowledge and experience to conduct successful marketing automation implementations. Therefore, it is important to look for the following three qualities to ensure that a marketing automation consultant can actually deliver what they promise.

1. Experience With Marketing Automation Software and Marketing

It is essential that the marketing automation consultant you engage with has in-depth experience conducting successful implementations. A track record of successful engagements is one of the most powerful indicators of a company’s likelihood of implementing a successful engagement for your organization.

In addition to experience with marketing automation software specifically, you should ensure that the company has extensive experience with marketing fundamentals, as these are the building blocks to a successful marketing automation campaign. An in-depth understanding of the principles of marketing and experience running successful integrated marketing campaigns increases the likelihood that they can deliver a successful marketing automation campaign for your organization.

2. Focus on Your Needs

Every marketing automation implementation is different, so it is important to find a marketing automation consultant who offers customizable packages that can be adapted to fit your organization’s needs. Whether you are seeking to expand or engage your existing database, every implementation will be different. A one-size-fits-all approach to marketing automation does not consider these differences and will not be able to drive the exceptional results that a customized campaign would.

Additionally, the company you engage with should be committed to giving your organization one-on-one attention and operating as a partner in order to generate exceptional results. By working together collaboratively, you both stand to benefit, as the consultant will have a deeper understanding of your needs and your marketing automation implementation will see successful results.

3. Define a Plan of Action

Another quality to look for is a marketing automation consultant who sets out with a defined plan of action for your campaign. The development of a strategic marketing automation plan is essential for a successful engagement and should cover specific strategies that are important to your organization’s goals.

During the development of this plan, all important parties should be involved, including representatives from both your internal marketing and sales teams. The alignment of these two areas of your organization is important to a successful marketing automation implementation, as both are responsible for aspects of the campaign. Additionally, both of these teams should be included in the ongoing engagement and kept informed of its progress.

By ensuring that a marketing automation consultant has the qualities listed above, you increase the likelihood that your organization’s campaign will drive the needed results. With such a large investment of time and money required to run a marketing automation implementation, it is important to work with a company who will actually deliver on the promised results.

Read more about our marketing automation consulting packages and be sure to follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to stay up to date on the latest marketing tips and trends.

While marketing automation can be a useful tool, it can be easy to focus on the “automation” aspect and forget about the “marketing” part. To be successful, marketing automation requires more than setting up the system to automate actions. While marketing automation helps to automate the process, you will still have to make the decisions as to the best steps to take, based on the marketing knowledge you already have. Specifically, there are four marketing fundamentals that must be remembered during a marketing automation implementation.

1. Content

In order for people to respond to your sales messages, you need to offer them something of value. Compelling, relevant content, as opposed to traditional, “salesy” materials, helps to build a sense of trust with your brand, puts prospects at ease and increases the likelihood that they will pay attention to your messages.

For content to be successful, it is important to make sure that it is highly targeted to your prospects’ interests. By targeting your content to prospects’ industry, job function or other factors, you increase the likelihood that they will find value from it. According to research firm MarketingSherpa 82% of prospects say content targeted to their specific industry is more valuable and 67% say content targeted to their job function is more valuable.

2. Timing

It is essential to ensure that the timing of your touches are at the optimal frequency, reaching prospects enough to stay top-of-mind but not annoying or overwhelming them by reaching them too often. This balance varies, and it is up to you to determine if you need to make adjustments based on key metrics such as bounce and unsubscribe rates.

Determining the best day and time of day to reach your specific audience is also important. Some segments may be more apt to read your emails first thing in the morning, while other may do so around lunchtime. Uncovering the optimal day and time of day can improve the results of your marketing significantly.

3. Segmentation

Much like you (hopefully) segment your audience for other marketing tactics, segmenting your audience is vital for success using marketing automation. As discussed previously, most prospects agree that they want to receive content that is targeted to their interests. In order to do so, it is important that you are segmenting your audience into enough groups that you are able to reach them with relevant messages.

4. Testing

Just like all other marketing campaigns, in order to continue to improve the results of a marketing automation campaign, it is important to continually test aspects of the campaign. The three fundamentals discussed above are all aspects of a campaign that can (and should) be tested.

Every audience will have their own nuances and preferences. While it is important to go into an implementation while keeping in mind best practices, you never know if you may be able to achieve greater results unless you are testing.

As you can see, marketing automation is not as different from traditional marketing as you may think. You still have to continually analyze the results you see and remain involved in the overall strategy of an implementation. By integrating your existing marketing knowledge, it is possible to improve the results of a marketing automation implementation drastically.

Read more about our marketing automation consulting packages and be sure to follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to stay up to date with our insider B2B marketing tips.

Photo via stevendepolo

The adoption of marketing automation software is steadily increasing, and SiriusDecisions expects the adoption rate to be at 50% by 2015. However, many companies are still unsure of the value that marketing automation can bring to their company, while others are not even sure exactly what it does. We at Launch Marketing believe in the capabilities and benefits of marketing automation, and have developed and maintained successful marketing automation programs for several of our clients. In this blog post, we will present a simple explanation for what marketing automation is as well as the benefits that we have seen from the implementation of marketing automation software.

What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is, in short, a comprehensive lead management and nurturing software solution that determines the level of interest of leads along with their stage in the buying process , allowing you to effectively move them through the sales funnel. The software tracks these individuals throughout the purchasing process, allowing marketers to interact with them on a more personal basis by matching their needs and interests with relevant content. This automated system also allows you to more accurately score these leads and alert your sales team when a lead is determined to be sales ready, based on their score.

Why We Believe In It

There are several distinct advantages that companies gain by utilizing marketing automation. Here are a few:

“Listening” to the Buyer

Marketing automation enables two-way information flow, as opposed to the one-way information flow that occurs in traditional sales conversations. This allows marketers the chance to “listen” to the buyer and respond appropriately based on their preferences. By listening to and understanding the preferences of individual prospects, marketers are better able to keep them engaged throughout the buying cycle without overwhelming or annoying them.

Staying Top-of-Mind

Since leads will rarely be sales-ready the first time they are engaged by a company, it is important for a company to stay top-of-mind and build relationships with these prospects so that when they are ready to purchase, the company will be included in their consideration set. Ongoing, multi-touch campaigns are key to achieving this, and marketing automation software allows marketers to better deliver this type of campaign to prospects.

Painting a Complete Picture

Marketing automation also helps marketers and sales teams build a complete picture of a lead, one that is composed of both implicit scores (those that are inferred about a prospect such as downloading a whitepaper or viewing a webinar) and explicit scores (things that a prospect explicitly tells a company, such as their job title or budget). Understanding both of these components of a lead is essential in determining a prospect’s level of interest and stage in the buying cycle.

Aligning Sales and Marketing

A critical step in the marketing automation implementation process is ensuring that both the sales and marketing departments are in agreement as to the goals of the implementation. It is also important that both departments agree on the scoring methods that will be used to determine when a lead is sales-ready. Once this is achieved, both departments are able to collaboratively work together to best meet the needs of prospects.

Marketing automation ensures a smooth transition of leads throughout the sales funnel, and also ensures that leads are only given to sales when they are truly sales-ready (defined by the scoring methods agreed upon before beginning the implementation). This reduces the common frustration among sales teams of being given leads from the marketing department and discovering that they are not truly sales-ready.

Working More Efficiently

Marketing automation frees marketing teams from having to manually conduct the lead nurturing process, allowing them to devote their time to more strategic tasks. In other words, they are able to do the work of a much larger team.

Ready to Automate?

Are you ready to experience the benefits of marketing automation? Contact Launch Marketing today to learn how marketing automation can improve the lead management process and drive revenue in your organization. And be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date with our insider marketing tips.

I recently attended the Marketo Summit 2012 in San Francisco.  While I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about Marketo’s marketing automation software, I also was thrilled at the number of sessions focused on general marketing tips, tricks and best practices.

Some of the takeaways served as reminders, but many were inventive new ideas with case studies and testing to back them up! One of my favorite sessions was “Writing Better Emails and Landing Pages.” While crafting better emails for lead generation and lead nurturing is an age-old marketing topic, the presenter did an excellent job of really providing outside the box ideas for moving marketing emails from delivery, to open, to click thru!

Without further ado, here are some key takeaways from that session:

Email Marketing Timing:

• Send emails early in the morning if possible.  Studies have shown that emails sent first thing in the morning are more likely to be read.
• Schedule automated emails to be sent in a more human-like fashion. For example, rather than scheduling an immediate follow up email from sales prompted by a case study download (e.g., “Thank you for your interest in our services – would you like a demo? ”), schedule it to send out the next morning.  This makes the email appear less automated and more personable.

Email Marketing Subject Lines:

• Keep your subject line to eight words or less – this keeps subjects short and sweet and more likely to be opened!
• Use brackets in your subject line when possible to call out your offer.  This goal is to make it stand out in an inbox e.g., “[Webcast Tomorrow] Register Now!”.  Differentiating your email is key.
• Address your recipient directly in the email and subject line – e.g., “What You Need to Know about Marketing Automation” versus “What CMOs Need to Know about Marketing Automation.”
• Want to avoid being marked as spam? Don’t use “free” in the subject line.

Email Marketing Content:

• Use bullets or numbered lists at the top of your email – people skim emails and you want your message as clear and concise as possible.
• Always use clickable links versus URLs.  What does this mean? It’s the difference between “Visit our website” (hyperlinking to the site) versus “www.launch-marketing.com.” The first is a clear call to action and much more compelling.
• Don’t use URL shorteners in your clickable links in emails. Sites like Bitly are awesome for Twitter or other places where you are limited to a word count, but using a shortened URL in your email links could mark it as spam and affect deliverability.
• Always use a greeting/salutation such as “Hello [First Name].”  This makes your email appear more personal, and less like spam.
• Here’s a new one – include typos in emails intentionally!  This typo tactic is used often by sales teams when sending out automated emails. Their goal is to appear as if they were typing the email at 7am at their desk and they happened to make a few typos as they were following up with each prospect individually.
• Last but not least – have ONE call to action.  The best way to ensure your most important link is clicked is by providing only one option to click!

I hope you found these tips as insightful as I did.  If you have any to add, let me know – I’d love to add them to the list!

Interested in more B2B marketing tips and tricks? Read these tips to increase demand generation email response rates.  Also, follow Launch on Twitter & Facebook!