In most B2B marketing environments, one of the primary responsibilities of marketing is to create conversations and support the sales process. Using marketing technology to automate the process to build customer relationships requires six key elements to be in place and working together.  Because these strategies are synergistic, one missing piece impacts the effectiveness of the other parts.

Six Keys for Marketing Automation Success

1. Foster a single unified sales and marketing team charged with mutual short- and long-term goals and metrics to support achieving those objectives.
2. Build a solid communications plan based upon the entire Customer Life Cycle and the prospects’ buying process, not your selling process.
3. Allocate budget carefully across the customer life cycle.  What good does it do to generate leads if your budget is exhausted and communication stops after the lead is generated?
4. Implement an automated marketing solution that triggers and manages direct marketing communications.
5. Use personalized multi-channel communicationsto deliver marketing messages via the right channel: direct mail, email, text message or website landing pages.
6. Do not add administrative work for sales and marketing.  Make sure you utilize the marketing automation software to eliminate unnecessary work.

Make Connections, Earn More Business

People buy from people, not from CRM systems, automated marketing platforms or dare I say, a marketing piece.   At the heart of any business transaction are real, live people. Marketing automation utilizes technology to communicate personally with prospects and customers to put them back where they belong: at the heart of business. CRM systems on their own are just fancy data collection devices. But enhanced with the right marketing automation solution, CRM platforms can help foster the connections required to earn the business of prospects and customers, while making sales and marketing more efficient.