Ten factors for successful marketing automation
Typical goals of marketing automation
- Micro-selection of recipients- High level of content personalization- Improvement of user experience- Shorten response times- Qualify and develop unknown users
10 success factors
Successfully implementing marketing automation is challenging, exciting but also very instructive and effective. By continuously analyzing real-time data, you get to know customer segments better and can implement selective improvements. Although marketing automation is very exciting for both small and large companies, their challenges differ enormously.marketing automation offers a huge opportunity to gain a competitive advantageWhile large companies mainly struggle with already implemented systems, their data quality and the channeling of data streams, smaller companies usually only lack the necessary knowledge. And since good marketing automation does not necessarily have to be expensive, it offers a huge opportunity to gain a competitive advantage.The following ten success factors should help you to evaluate a suitable automation tool as well as to implement and improve initial use cases.
1. identify relevant channels
In addition to the omnipresent attempt to use an empathetic approach - always coupled with common sense - to connect all potential touchpoints of its customers with its own brand. conceiveit is also advisable to check the available channels for their use. check. Based on the question "for what purposes" the customers use the respective channel, it can be assigned to a corresponding life cycle phase.
2. use cases and micro-campaigns as a basis
Automated marketing measures are implemented in the context of a use case or a micro-campaign in an automation system in the form of a Journey mapped. While use cases describe processes carried out by customers, micro-campaigns focus on goals from the company's perspective; whether a journey depicts a use case or a micro-campaign is secondary. What is important for each journey is that it represents a strategic relevance for the company. Using the channel overview makes it easier to identify relevant touchpoints and the associated channels to be integrated, and the following questions help to identify useful measures when designing a journey:- What would I want in this situation?- What would serve me best at this moment?- What can we offer a customer like this in particular?Tip: Think outside the box. As long as you offer the customer real added value, this need not be one of your core competencies.
3. connect scalable systems
Every touchpoint initiated by a customer can provide valuable information about a customer's current needs and their position in the customer life cycle. A list of these touchpoints with assignment to the processing system involved, the possible needs paths and the phase in the customer life cycle to be assigned helps to exploit the potential of a touchpoint and embed it in the relevant journey. if you know which touchpoints are relevant when building a journey, you can derive the required systems that need to talk to each other. Such connections can be implemented using so-called APIs and, thanks to REST technology, usually require little, if any, development effort, and the tools used should allow for gradual growth. After all, you start with the first journey and continuously expand and rebuild on the basis of experience.
4. process touchpoints promptly
As the number of journeys increases, so does the chance that a customer can "be" in several at the same time. This means that a customer can come into contact with different measures at the same time. This is where functions that can be used to control these collisions become important. For example, the following functionalities support this:- PrioritizationMaking measures dependent on each other based on priority. Different rules apply to different priorities.- CappingLimiting the number of measures for a defined period of time. Measures that would lead to an overrun/overpenetration are not executed.- Collision managementThe application allows detailed conditions to be stored in order to actively manage possible collisions.Regardless of the functionalities offered by the automation system used and how intensively efforts are made to ensure seamless control, it is hardly possible to map all unwanted situations. In the end, the customer's needs chains and interactions are too individual and varied, and if you also consider how quickly phases in a customer journey can be passed through, it becomes clear how short-lived customer data obtained, e.g. about product interest, is. Involved processing systems must therefore process and forward the information obtained very promptly or even in real time. For example, informing a customer of a personalized promotion after they have already purchased the product will ultimately do more harm than good.
5. manage customer data centrally
Customer data must be carefully protected, managed and maintained. In order to be able to realistically get into this situation, it is particularly advisable to establish a single system as the "master". This is easier for smaller companies in particular, as there are usually far fewer applications and channels involved. If all customer data is available in a central location as "master information", it can be queried, updated or deleted as required. Typically, a CRM system is used for this purpose. This master system should be able to store all customer data available in a company in a structured manner and enable peripheral systems to access it via interfaces.
6. plan measures
As mentioned in success factor 4, it is important to plan individual measures within a journey as well as in the overall context. Possible conflicts and irritations - e.g. by delivering a personal measure on a weekend or at 02:30 in the morning - should be avoided wherever possible. In addition to the helpful system functionalities and a centralized data architecture described in point 5, I recommend listing journeys and their measures in a measure plan, which should be accessible to all campaign planners in the company and therefore also stored centrally. Ideally, such a plan should include:- Description of the measure- Which journey the measure is part of- Channel used- Purpose/goal of the measure- Dispatch time/trigger logic- Contact personUnfortunately, I have mainly come across such measure plans in Excel format to date. I am still looking for a really good system to display them, for example, in calendar form per customer segment. Even if the optimal tooling has not yet been found, it is still advisable to implement such a plan with appropriate means.
7. customer in focus
A marketer should be able to formulate his internal goal in campaigns that also offer added value for the customer. according to point 1, the question of added value for the customer should be behind every measure. Of course, the goal of every campaign is always something that ultimately serves your own company. Examples: "increase sales", "reduce remaining stock", "increase reach", "improve reputation", "promote awareness" etc. There is nothing wrong with that. However, such internal goals should be incorporated into campaigns that serve these "overarching goals" and at the same time generate added value for the customer.
8 Legally secure legitimization
If a company processes personal data (and every company does), this company must be authorized to do so. In most cases, this is done by obtaining consent directly from the data subject, and since the European General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) came into force in May 2018 at the latest, it should have become clear that, regardless of the type of legitimization (consent, legal necessity, to protect human life, etc.), there are a number of requirements that make this topic alone a challenge.
9. monetize journeys
Assigning a financial value to each stage of a customer's journey allows you to measure its success and effectiveness. Even within journeys that do not directly generate revenue, certain conversion points should be defined and assigned a financial value.evaluations are possible at the journey level and its measures, as well as on the customer segment level and its customers. This allows measures to be optimized, financial values to be refined and profitability to be determined on both sides.
10. optimize success on an ongoing basis
Every customer segment and every target group within it is different. Statistics collected in a foreign market with different conditions only provide limited useful information about your own customers and market. It is therefore best to find out for yourself what works and what doesn't. In addition to the options already presented, A/B tests, for example, also help to evaluate the effectiveness of different measures quickly and cost-effectively. Different variants are tested for their conversion efficiency and, in some cases, only the most successful variant is played out to the corresponding target group from a certain point in time.I also recommend carrying out such tests and analyses for supposedly trivial measures. Time and again, it has been shown that even in unexpected places, remarkable insights can be achieved with simple multi-variants.using a system that allows adjustments to be made during operation - i.e. at times when customers are still in a journey - is extremely helpful and simplifies daily work enormously.
Conclusion
Successful marketing automation is not made possible by the use of expensive systems and tools. Instead, it is important to assign this topic a strategic priority and to openly advocate incremental optimization of not-yet-perfect journeys. If sufficient attention is paid to these ten success factors, possible reservations can be left to one side and the necessary steps can be taken systematically.*Andy Reutimann advises Unic customers on digital marketing, automation and data protection. He also works with the marketing department to support small and medium-sized companies on their path to digital transformation. He regularly presents and explains at specialist events in Switzerland and abroad.
