THE BUSINESS CASE FOR

MARKETINGAUTOMATIONHOW TO CRAFT A COMPELLING CASE

the executive team will approve

Bottom line, you can’t realize the benefits of nurture marketing the way Top Performers do unless you incorporate a technology platform that can preconfigure business rules to manage timely engagement and escalate prioritized leads to sales via integration with CRM.

No amount of hired resources could manually reach out and touch prospects at just the right time with just the right message.

Marketing automation forms the backbone for configuring nurture marketing campaigns across channels and managing communications based on prospect engagement. It’s also one of the only ways marketers can actually start to attribute marketing spend to closed sales.

– Gleanster, Mar 2013

““

2

01020304

THE BASICS OF MARKETING AUTOMATIONpage 4

CONTENTS

HOW TO MAKE A BUSINESS CASE FOR MARKETING AUTOMATIONpage 12

WHAT THE EXECUTIVE SUITE NEEDS TO KNOWpage 28

CLOSING THOUGHTS AND RESOURCESpage 41

3

YOU’RE CONVINCED

MARKETINGAUTOMATIONWILL HELP YOUR COMPANYleap forward......if you can convince executive management to adopt the technology. Because the buyer has evolved. Which means the seller (you) must, too.

The scales have shifted. Technology, digital channels, and non-stop connectivity continue to empower today’s buyers with at-the-ready information and increased choice, fueling unprecedented global competition.

As a result, marketers must shoulder more responsibility for contributing – measurably – to sales and revenue goals, an expanded role that’s less “persuasion” and more “buyer education.”

Success hinges on finding the right mix of inbound and outbound strategies, and the right integrated data that connects the dots.

Marketing automation strikes this balance. It’s a proven method for managing and optimizing the entire customer experience, measuring what matters, increasing revenue, and tying that revenue to your marketing team’s efforts.

This eBook will help you create a compelling business case that can convince executive management to adopt marketing automation.

In it, you’ll find the basics of what marketing automation is and what it can do, data and stats to bolster your case, and recommendations that will help you sell marketing automation to key members of your executive team.

4

+ What is marketing automation?

+ What’s the value of marketing automation?

+ What’s included in marketing automation?

+ What do businesses use marketing automation for?

+ Marketing automation vs. CRM

THE

BASICS OF MARKETING AUTOMATION

01

A SCENARIO:PERFORMANCE

Companies that have adopted marketing automation are out-performing those that haven’t.

in action

87% 63% 79%

of top-performing companies (defined

as those where marketing contributes more than half of the sales pipeline) have adopted marketing

automation.

(Aberdeen Group, Sep 2014)

of companies that are outgrowing their

competitors use marketing automation.

(The Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups, Nov 2013)

of top-performing companies have been

using marketing automation for more

than two years.

(Gleanster, Aug 2013)

6

Marketing automation focuses on the definition, scheduling, segmentation, and tracking of marketing campaigns. The use of marketing automation makes processes that would otherwise be performed manually much more efficient, and makes new processes possible. (Marketing Automation Times)

A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and ultimately drive profitable customer action. (Content Marketing Institute)

Marketing automation is the use of technology to generate, nurture, score and qualify leads, and drive sales using customized, multi-touch marketing communications that are tailored for each contact’s profile, level of interest, behavior, or place in the buying process. (Sales Lead Insights)

01 THE BASICS OF MARKETING AUTOMATION

WHAT IS MARKETING AUTOMATION?It depends on who you ask. Here’s how others define it:

“

LEAD-TO-REVENUE MANAGEMENT (L2RM)Forrester Research prefers the term “lead-to-revenue management automation solutions” and notes that such systems were developed to “bridge a gap between lead generation activities (e.g., trade shows, direct mail, telemarketing, and email campaigns) and selling activities (e.g., closing the deal) that were managed by a customer relationship management (CRM) system.” The opportunity to calibrate marketing spend to revenue generation was a significant driver of L2RM adoption.

“

CRM

7

Marketing automation creates a digital infrastructure that allows marketing and sales to learn about, understand, and interact with buyers throughout the entire lifecycle – from attraction to conversion to retention – in a well-timed, personalized way.

Consider these facts:

• 78% of marketers cite marketing automation systems as most responsible for improving revenue contribution. (The Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups, Nov 2013)

• B2B marketers cite the #1 benefit of marketing automation as the ability to generate more and better leads. (Pepper Global, Sep 2013)

• B2B marketers who have successfully deployed lead nurturing programs average a 20% increase in sales opportunities from nurtured leads versus non-nurtured leads. (DemandGen, Aug 2013)

• B2C marketers who take advantage of marketing automation have seen conversion rates as high as 50%. (eMarketer, Feb 2013)

• 69% of top-performing companies cite “cooperation between marketing and sales” as the most critical value-driver for maximizing marketing automation ROI. (Gleanster, Nov 2012)

• B2B marketers who have implemented marketing automation contribute 10% more of the sales pipeline via marketing programs than do marketers who have not implemented markteing automation (44% versus 34%). (Forrester Research, Jan 2014)

It’s a compelling value proposition.

MARKETING AUTOMATION BENEFITS

Done well, marketing automation can:

Increase overall sales, both for new and repeat customers

Shorten the sales cycle by 50% or more

Increase deal sizes

Increase sales quota achievement rates

Lower the cost per lead

Lower overall sales and marketing costs across the company

Increase alignment of sales and marketing teams

01 THE BASICS OF MARKETING AUTOMATION

WHAT’S THE VALUE OF MARKETING AUTOMATION?

8

01 THE BASICS OF MARKETING AUTOMATION

WHAT’S INCLUDED IN MARKETING AUTOMATION?Marketing automation systems offer most or all of the following:

• Email message and campaign creation

• Automated email campaign deployment and measurement (e.g., drip and nurture campaigns)

• Triggered emails

• Lead management and routing

• Automated lead nurturing

• Automated lead scoring

• Creation and hosting of landing pages and forms

• Website visitor tracking

• Social media marketing and sharing, including blog integration

• Inbound marketing, including some SEO capability

• Database with segmentation capabilities

• CRM integration and automatic data synchronization

• Web events/webinar integration, registration, and management

• Tracking, reports, and analytics

• Third-party app integration

• Data capture of demographic, firmographic, and behavioral information for leads and customers

• Alerts that notify sales and/or marketing when a specific person or company visits a specific page on the website

THE HALLMARKS OF A MARKETING AUTOMATION PLATFORM• Data integration, data analytics, list creation,

dynamic list-building

• Automated workflows for the development and execution of outbound and inbound marketing

• Ability to create email messages, landing pages, and online forms

• Lead management features for lead scoring, lead distribution, and lead nurturing

• Visibility and access for sales into marketing campaign efforts and individual prospects

• CRM integration (either native or non-native)

• Unique activity reports for each contact (e.g., prospect, lead, customer) showing website behaviors, email clickthroughs, content views, form completions, etc.

• Reporting, analytics, and customizable dashboards

(Adapted from SiriusView: Marketing Automation report)

9

For many customers, size matters. As a small marketing team, I’ve experienced first-hand how potential clients will quickly reject your company if it appears too small based on company profile or perceived project capabilities.

Our company suddenly appeared bigger because we were (and are) doing the work of a much larger marketing team. That’s the power of marketing automation.

1 Create and manage email marketing campaigns with less time and effort.

2 Eliminate cold calling through lead intelligence that lets sales prioritize who to call and what to discuss.

3 Segment the database to support targeted, personalized campaigns.

4 Nurture leads with relevant content that’s timed to help them progress through the sales funnel.

5 See and understand lead behavior as prospective buyers move along or drop out of the sales funnel.

6 Score leads to indicate sales-readiness.

7 Synchronize leads to the CRM system as they qualify.

8 Help sales engage more effectively with buyers by using intelligence gathered at multiple touch points.

9 Lower costs by reducing and/or integrating disparate point tools.

10 Optimize resources to improve operational and time efficiencies.

11 Handle increased workloads without additional staff or specialized technical skills.

12 Improve sales response times through information sharing between marketing and sales.

13 Respond 24/7 with no downtime, no overtime, and no need for training or retraining.

14 Create set-it-and-forget-it drip and nurturing campaigns.

15 Publish to multiple social accounts with one action.

16 Eliminate manual data entry for webinar and event registrations.

17 Manage all communications around webinars and events, from initial promotions to final follow-up.

18 Get a comprehensive understanding of each lead and customer by integrating marketing automation and CRM systems.

19 Build complex campaigns that coordinate multiple channels and messages automatically.

20 Demonstrate marketing’s contribution to deal quantity, deal size, and overall revenue.

01 THE BASICS OF MARKETING AUTOMATION

WHAT DO BUSINESSES USE MARKETING AUTOMATION FOR?Virtually everyone who uses marketing automation begins by employing it for email marketing, then scales it in different directions, depending on need.

Here are 20 possibilities: ““

Ben Jackson, VP of Sales, voices.com

10

“Matt Heinz, president of Heinz Marketing Inc., an agency that focuses on sales acceleration, said:

The only thing CRM systems do is organize your information. They keep track of your sales and they capture your sales process, but they don’t keep track of your sales or execute your efforts.

A good marketing automation system proactively helps you. If set up and managed well, you can sit back and the system will drop interested prospects in your lap … I don’t actually recommend someone choose one or the other. World-class sales and marketing organizations need both to succeed and scale.

““

Christian Wettre, president of W-Systems, an agency that specializes in deploying marketing and sales technology, with an emphasis on CRM, said:

With modern CRM systems, you typically have some ability to broadcast emails to your client list, and the ability to capture leads from websites. But when the customer needs more sophisticated capabilities, that’s when we look to marketing automation.

“

01 THE BASICS OF MARKETING AUTOMATION

MARKETING AUTOMATION VS CRMA common question: “If I have a CRM solution in place, do I really need marketing automation?”

While marketing automation and CRM have different capabilites, the two systems are complementary. When integrated, they form a powerful sales and marketing toolset that’s rich in features and capabilities.

Strategic businesses should invest in both CRM and marketing automation.

THE TAKEAWAY

11

A global company sells high-end products that typically require a long sales cycle. The company has thousands of sales reps who use a CRM tool to improve sales productivity, including managing the contact database and tracking interactions with prospects, leads, and customers.

A local company has two brick-and-mortar locations and 20 sales reps; some use a CRM tool and some don’t. The company also has two marketers who wear multiple hats, including manually collecting, scoring, and transferring leads.

A small companyA large company

01 THE BASICS OF MARKETING AUTOMATION

THE TALE OF TWO USE CASES

SITU

ATIO

NCH

ALLE

NGE The CRM tool does not support the marketing

department’s productivity, including lead generation, nurturing, and scoring. This hinders marketing’s ability to deliver timely and relevant messages and campaigns, and to pass qualified leads to sales.

The company is adding more products and expanding into more sales regions. Lead quantity and diversity are increasing, and the marketing team is struggling to keep up with new demand. Team efficiency, campaign effectiveness, and the ability to pass qualified leads to sales are being adversely impacted.

SOLU

TION

The company implemented a marketing automation platform that was integrated with its CRM tool. The result: Both departments benefited. Marketing was able to create, execute, and measure the full range of marketing programs (including automated lead nurturing and scoring), deliver the right message at the right time, and pass more qualified leads to sales. Sales was able to prioritize hot opportunities, reduce cold calling, and close more sales. Both had visibility of the entire lead lifecycle and access to new, real-time customer intelligence.

By implementing a marketing automation platform, the two-person marketing department was able to create multiple campaigns for each buyer type – including engagement tracking and lead scoring – and set them up to run automatically. The result: consistent delivery of relevant messages based on each prospect’s demonstrated behaviors and interests, more and more-qualified leads for sales, and more time and budget to focus on marketing strategies and new business opportunities, rather than on manual campaign management.

12

+ Why invest in marketing automation?

+ Specific marketing challenges and how marketing automation helps solve them:

- Lead generation and management

- Campaign optimization

- Sales enablement

- Resource optimization

- Data and analytics

HOW TO MAKE A

BUSINESSCASE FOR MARKETING AUTOMATION

02

13

Marketing automation positively impacts both the top and bottom lines, with many results seen quickly after implementation:

Top line Improving the experience and engagement of prospects and customers drives more demand for products and services, generates more high quality leads, and helps close more first-time and repeat sales.

Bottom line Improving process and operational efficiencies decreases costs (e.g., resources, capital equipment, outsourcing) while increasing profitability.

1Revenue

Marketing automation helps businesses realize core strategic goals, including:

Brand relevance Marketers can more easily, quickly, and effectively deliver the right message to the right person at the right time via the right channel. This dramatically increases your brand’s relevance in customers’ eyes.

Increased efficiency Launch campaigns in hours or days, with little or no IT support needed and no special coding skills. Automating common tasks allows you to build relationships – at scale – with fewer resources while increasing personalization. Sales can use lead intelligence to shorten the sales cycle.

Data intelligence Visibility into the performance of campaigns, personas, and buying stages allows organizations to optimize marketing efforts, improve results, increase sales quotas, and measure ROI.

2Achieve Organizational Goals

COMPANIES THAT USE MARKETING AUTOMATION SEE:• 107% better lead conversion

• 40% greater average deal size

• 20% higher team attainment of quota

• 17% better forecast accuracy

(Aberdeen Group, Jun 2012)

02 HOW TO MAKE A BUSINESS CASE FOR MARKETING AUTOMATION

WHY INVEST IN MARKETING AUTOMATION?Every organization experiencing success with marketing automation has a different answer to this question. Here are the three that surface most often:

14

Marketing automation systems provide the infrastructure for sales and marketing to work together.

Sales and marketing cooperation Many aspects of marketing programs must be calibrated to the sales team’s needs. When the teams align, their mutual decisions are implemented via the marketing automation system. This alignment results in nurturing, scoring, and handoff processes tuned to sales requirements, leading to intradepartmental trust and more effective follow-up.

Sales intelligence The real-time intelligence about a lead’s fitness, concerns, and behaviors lets the sales rep begin a warm, targeted conversation and build a relationship more quickly. It also reduces the need for cold calls.

3 Improve Internal Cooperation

B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing achieved 24% faster revenue growth and 27% faster profit growth over a three year period. (SiriusDecisions)

MINIMIZE INVESTMENT RISKS

To minimize investment risk, consider a vendor that offers pricing tied to the number of active contacts you plan to email each month. That way, you’re not charged for the size of your database – only the contacts you actively email to.

By starting small and testing the waters, you can learn what works and expand as needs and benefits become more apparent.

Marketing automation’s reporting capabilities will help you validate the system’s worth and document your return on investment.

15

Marketing automation platforms provide sophisticated, highly choreographed, interoperable technologies that power and support an extensive range of digital marketing opportunities. By design, the benefits are far-reaching and interrelated, woven through multiple teams for multiple uses at multiple times.We’ve organized marketing’s most common hurdles into five categories. We hope this will help you create a strategic plan to show how marketing automation can answer your own organization’s biggest challenges.

1 LEAD GENERATION AND MANAGEMENT

2 CAMPAIGN OPTIMIZATION

3 SALES ENABLEMENT

4 RESOURCE OPTIMIZATION

5 DATA AND ANALYTICS

TRY THIS:USE CASE STUDIESShow your executives that other companies in your industry or other companies of your size are achieving success with marketing automation. Look for case studies that make one of those points, or look for a study that spotlights how someone used marketing automation to solve a problem your own company recognizes as a pain point worth solving. Your goal is to show parity of some kind and reinforce the idea that companies like yours are seeing a return on investment with marketing automation.

Be sure to research whether one or more of your competitors is using marketing automation.

02 HOW TO MAKE A BUSINESS CASE FOR MARKETING AUTOMATION

SPECIFIC CHALLENGES AND HOW MARKETING AUTOMATION HELPS SOLVE THEM

16

1. INBOUND AND OUTBOUND FROM ONE PLATFORM Automation platforms enable marketers to pull prospects “in” (e.g., search engine optimization, social marketing, landing pages, and integration with pay-per-click systems such as Google AdWords) and communicate “out” (e.g., email, online webinars, and virtual events).

2. LEAD CAPTURING Marketing automation offers several mechanisms for capturing the contact information of prospects who have responded to offers or messages, thereby facilitating moving them into the funnel. Key tactics include:

Landing pages and forms, which can be quickly created in automation platforms and tied directly to the contact/customer database of record.

Webinars and online events, which can effectively expand brand visibility, and create awareness of – and demand for – products and services. Automation platforms offer integrated capabilities that allow marketers to plan and launch web-based events, engage attendees before and during the event, and follow up afterwards.

10The average number of marketing touches leads receive from the time they enter the top of the funnel until they’re a closed-won customer.(Aberdeen Group, Jul 2012)

DID YOU KNOW?

According to Aberdeen Group, 60% of marketing leads are generated via outbound marketing channels and 40% via inbound marketing channels.

but ...Top Rank Marketing found leads gained through organic searches (which is inbound marketing) have a 14.6% rate of close, while outbound marketing leads have a close rate of only 1.7%!

02 HOW TO MAKE A BUSINESS CASE FOR MARKETING AUTOMATION

LEAD GENERATION AND MANAGEMENT

17

3. LEAD SCORINGLead-scoring allows marketers to qualify leads by assigning pre-determined values to their behaviors and profile characteristics. When a buyer-ready lead score threshold is passed, a notification is triggered, allowing marketers to quickly pass the lead to sales. Automated lead scoring benefits marketers by:

• Providing timely information on a lead’s progress through the funnel/buyer’s journey.

• Taking the guesswork out of a lead’s status with automated lead classification based on scores (e.g., Marketing- Qualified, Sales-Accepted, Sales-Qualified).

• Uncovering the content and interactions that drive the highest response.

• Delivering more and better-qualified leads to sales with less time and effort.

Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost.(Forrester Research, 2011)

Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.(The Annuitas Group, Nov 2012)

4. LEAD NURTURING With automation, you can implement and manage nurture programs (e.g., multi-touch drip campaigns) that:

• Keep new leads in the funnel – especially important for complex, lengthy, and/or high-value sales cycles.

• Help leads move through the funnel via a mix of educational and other materials sent in a timed cadence.

• Are personalized and customized to the lead’s specific areas of interest, which strengthens relationships with potential and existing customers.

5. LEAD SEGMENTATION Dynamically segment leads that come from any type of campaign or channel, such as social media, email campaigns, form-fills, or paid campaigns. By segmenting leads based on sources, marketers can use the appropriate medium and channel to send out relevant messages and craft effective campaigns. Leads can also be segmented by industry, company size, products already purchased, or any other factor that helps you create more targeted campaigns.

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6. TARGETING: SENDING THE RIGHT MESSAGE TO THE RIGHT PERSON

From nurturing leads to re-capturing lost sales to managing loyalty programs, automation lets marketers set up targeted messages based on any number of attributes (e.g., age, gender, title, geography, engagement behaviors, etc.). This allows marketers to:

• Send the right message at the right time.

• Have visibility into who their most profitable customers are, where they came from, and how to find more like them.

• Cross-sell and upsell to segments.

TRY THIS:

USE DATAGather your baseline data. Know how many leads are generated and conversion rates at each step, including what percentage of marketing-generated leads become closed deals in contrast to leads generated in other ways. Understand whether your sales team is losing deals to competitors or to no-decision. Review your email statistics, including sends, opens, and clickthroughs; know which campaigns are delivering qualified leads and which are not. Know at what point leads fall out of the funnel. You will use this data to understand how an improvement at any step could affect revenue.

If your current systems don’t allow you to measure these factors, then gaining the capability to understand how your marketing is performing becomes a solid business reason for implementing automation.

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1. REDUCE LEAD TIME Marketing automation efficiently facilitates the quick coordination, scheduling, launching, and measuring of marketing campaigns from simple to complex, across single or multiple channels. What used to take weeks can be implemented in hours or days.

2. TEST & OPTIMIZE CAMPAIGN EFFECTIVENESS Begin by using A/B testing for campaign elements – e.g., email subject lines, calls to action, landing page and form design, colors, messages, etc. – to increase the odds of success before official launch. The winning version can then be rolled out in the larger campaign. Then, through tracking and monitoring (often in real time), marketers can identify what works and what doesn’t, and often change it on the fly. The new knowledge is assessed to find fresh ways of appealing to customers.

3. PERSONALIZE YOUR INTERACTIONS Personalization is a proven technique to increase conversion. Automation allows marketers to tie behaviors to individuals, thereby opening new doors for dynamically personalizing emails, custom landing pages, and offers.

4. REACH A WIDER AUDIENCE Combining the full complement of data collection and profiling with outbound and inbound tactics, marketers can significantly expand their visibility and reach, grow their database, and increase lead flow.

02 HOW TO MAKE A BUSINESS CASE FOR MARKETING AUTOMATION

CAMPAIGN OPTIMIZATION

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5. OPTIMIZE FOR SEARCH ENGINESAccording to a study by Conductor, organic search drives the most traffic of all channels; it’s responsible for nearly half of all website visits (47%). Marketing automation platforms can streamline SEO tasks with on-page evaluation tools to ensure web pages, blogs, and other content are optimized for search engines and aligned with best practices.

6. GO SOCIALAutomation helps marketers track and manage social publishing and listening across a wide range of popular social media channels. This includes sending notifications when it’s time to respond, which allows marketers to learn what’s being said and participate in conversations. Some platforms offer sentiment analysis, competitive analysis, and prospecting.

7. UNDERSTAND YOUR WEB VISITORS Website visitor tracking can show precisely which products and services each visitor is interested in, helping marketers further target campaigns and promotions to meet their interests. It can also help you identify anonymous visitors and uncover their contact information.

8. SCHEDULE SET-IT-AND-FORGET-IT EMAIL CAMPAIGNS

Marketing automation helps marketers take full advantage of email marketing, including nurture programs and trigger email programs. Pre-determined content, offers, and messages are automatically sent to the right recipients at the right time, working to keep them engaged and progressing through the funnel.

9. CREATE AND EVALUATE LANDING PAGES How well are your landing pages performing? Do they follow SEO best practices? Do you know the right metrics to watch? Which designs are more effective? Automation software provides the tools to answer those – and many more – questions. Some also have one-click landing page creation from an email message.

TRY THIS: BE READY TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT TIME AND RESOURCESEvaluate everything your team does now and how much time it takes. Estimate conservatively how much time you might save on frequent key tasks, such as email campaign setup and management. Talk to partners and advocates who have implemented marketing automation; ask them to share information with you.

Think about headcount. Consider whether you already have the right resources on your team or whether you’ll need to add staff. Some marketing systems require training before you can use them; others are easier to use.

Evaluate how you currently work with, and share information with, sales. Consider how marketing automation will affect what you already do, and whether any processes will need to change.

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10. CREATE AND EVALUATE BLOG POSTS Marketing automation platforms can be integrated with popular blog platforms such as WordPress or Drupal. Marketers benefit by creating and measuring blog performance from a single platform, as well as optimizing each post for SEO.

11. INTEGRATE WITH PAID SEARCH MARKETINGIf you use pay-per-click advertising, ensure that your chosen marketing automation platform can integrate with your PPC service. Many of them can’t. (Act-On offers easy integration with Google AdWords, allowing marketers to see how PPC campaigns are performing and the search terms that are bringing impressions, clicks, and conversions.)

12. INCREASE WEB EVENT EFFECTIVENESS Web events – webinars, webcasts, virtual conferences, demos – offer a multitude of tactics and benefits including lead generation, nurturing, thought leadership, training/education, and brand building. Marketing automation software integrates with popular web event platforms such as WebEx and GoToWebinar, and can dramatically reduce the time spent on organizing the events, while increasing engagement and lead quality.

Marketing automation can even handle registration, which means registrants can go straight into your database as segmented leads.

A SCENARIO:MARKETING AUTOMATION

Let’s say you build a promotional campaign comprised of PPC, targeted email and landing pages, social media sharing, and two pieces of content: an eBook and a video.

1day

DISPLAYADS

2day

SOCIALMEDIA

ADS3

day

LAUNCHEMAIL

ASSESS ACTIONS

LANDING PAGE

in action

With marketing automation, the launch of your campaign elements can be pre-scheduled and precisely calibrated. For example:

• Display ads are in place on Day 1.

• Social media ads on Day 2.

• Emails launch on Day 3, targeted to specific database segments.

• When prospects begin to respond by visiting the landing page, the automation system does the work by assessing their actions and then channeling prospects into the campaign track (including messages, cadence, and scoring) that best corresponds with their interests.

• If a prospect fills out a form and downloads the eBook or video, the system will send a triggered thank-you note targeted to whatever action was taken, and personalized to whatever degree possible (e.g., first name).

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02 HOW TO MAKE A BUSINESS CASE FOR MARKETING AUTOMATION

SALES ENABLEMENT

1. GET MORE – AND BETTER – SALES-QUALIFIED LEADS Marketing automation changes lead generation 180 degrees by supporting lead capture and lead scoring, which enables sales reps to:

• Optimize their time by using lead scoring to identify and prioritize sales-ready buyers.

• Focus on getting in front of leads that are ready to buy.

• Build trust-based customer relationships by delivering relevant information at the right time.

2. ACCESS IN-DEPTH, UNIFIED INSIGHTS FOR SMARTER SALES CALLS

Automation technology streamlines and aggregates data from multiple channels and sources so it’s easy to access and understand. The result is that a lead’s interests and status in the sales cycle are clear, which helps sales reps effectively frame their conversations and communications to a prospective buyer’s pain points and needs in minimal time.

3. INTEGRATE WITH EXISTING CRM Sales reps can remain in their CRM system while still accessing all the information and intelligence the automation platform provides; no switching back-and-forth between systems.

This allows reps to have more effective and productive engagements with potential and current buyers.

4. ELIMINATE COLD CALLING With customer intelligence from lead-tracking data, profile information, engagement history, and CRM integration, sales reps are armed with the essentials before picking up the phone or sending an email.

TRY THIS:GET SALES INVOLVED FROM THE BEGINNINGKnow what percentage of leads are ignored by sales and what percentage of leads return to marketing for further nurturing. Talk to sales and see what they think of having complete account histories at their fingertips; ask if prioritized hot-prospect lists would be helpful.

Because sales is so profoundly impacted by a marketing automation system, it’s a good idea to make them your ally from the beginning.

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5. MAKE THE MOST OF EMAILMarketing automation systems let sales reps automatically personalize messages for a particular customer or industry and send them at the optimal times. Trigger emails can be customized to inbound actions so buyers receive personalized communications in response. All email communications — automated or otherwise — are captured in your activity history for each lead.

6. IDENTIFY THE BEST LEADS WITH REAL-TIME ALERTS

Sales reps can set up alerts that notify them in real time of important activities and milestones. Examples include when particular leads visit pre-determined web pages or engage with content, when a lead-score threshold has been met, or when a qualified lead has been assigned.

7. SHORTEN THE SALES CYCLE From inbound and outbound marketing, lead scoring, data collection, and CRM integration, the customized capabilities of marketing automation allow sales reps to convert leads faster and at higher rates.

8. CLOSE BIGGER SALES According to a 2013 Pedowitz Group study, 28% of marketing teams using marketing automation reported an increase in the average deal size from a marketing-qualified lead that was passed to sales. Given that such leads have been educated and nurtured, and that sales can have a richer, deeper conversation with them, greater deal size is a predictable outcome of relationship building.

Companies with mature lead generation and management practices have a 9.3% higher sales quota achievement rate.

(CSO Insights)

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1. SAVE TIME BY AUTOMATING MANUAL TASKS Marketing automation saves time, whether you’re deploying email campaigns on a staggered schedule, setting up drip campaigns that run by themselves, tallying website visits by visitor, or publishing across multiple social channels with a single click. Many marketers use that time to add new programs or do more analysis; many also enjoy the benefit of increased efficiency without an increase in headcount.

2. REDUCE MARKETING COSTS THROUGH BETTER-TARGETED CAMPAIGNS

Marketing automation plays an important role in reducing the costs of marketing campaigns. The ease of audience segmentation, personalization, and data-driven optimization leads to more targeted and tailored campaigns that can be launched faster and generally perform better.

3. INTEGRATE WITH EXISTING SYSTEMS AND TOOLS Most marketing automation systems can be integrated with a wide range of systems and tools, often accomplished with minimal clicks. This saves time by allowing teams to keep the tools they’re used to, and reduces costs by more efficiently supporting marketing campaigns and communications. Examples include:

• CRM platforms

• Web event management systems

4. IMPLEMENT WITH MINIMAL (OR NO) IT SUPPORT Many mrketing automation systems are designed for ease of use, including intuitive user interfaces that facilitate all phases of implementation and campaign development. This dramatically reduces reliance on IT resources and allows marketers to more fully manage their own activities.

• Blogging platforms

• AdWords

Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. (Nucleus Research, Apr 2012)

02 HOW TO MAKE A BUSINESS CASE FOR MARKETING AUTOMATION

RESOURCE OPTIMIZATION

26

5. DEPLOY CAMPAIGNS WITHOUT SPECIALIZED SKILLS Most of today’s automation software gives marketers full freedom to develop and deploy campaigns without needing specialized coding skills or technical savvy. WYSIWYG editors and intuitive “drag-and-drop” functionality significantly reduce the time and effort needed to create professional-looking campaigns and execute complex marketing tasks. This also reduces costs associated with hiring specialists.

6. IMPROVE SALES AND MARKETING ALIGNMENT Better cooperation and collaboration between sales and marketing is a big win for businesses that implement marketing automation; by design, the integrated platform tends to reduce (or eliminate) much of the struggle between the two teams. The reason: Automation improves lead quality, increases revenue, automates tedious tasks, and delivers actionable intelligence. Sales has input into determining lead quality, scoring, and timing, so they have increased trust in the leads that marketing delivers, and are more likely to follow up. Marketing learns what sales encounters on the front lines, and can use the knowledge to create more relevant content and campaigns.

of CMOs at top -performing companies who say “Easy To Use” is the most important driver for marketing automation ROI.(Gleanster, Aug 2013)

92%

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TRY THIS:UNDERSTAND YOUR CURRENT ANALYTICS

1. GAIN FULL-SPECTRUM INSIGHTS Marketing automation delivers real-time results across channels and campaigns, enabling marketers to quickly gauge campaign performance, optimize efforts, and allocate resources to the most effective strategies.

2. CUSTOMIZE ESSENTIAL DATA VIEWS Integrated dashboards aggregate data from all digital channels and can be customized to provide the information deemed most important to each user. On-demand, drillable views provide deeper insights and inform strategic decisions.

3. TRACK CAMPAIGN ROI Sales and marketing teams share responsibility for driving revenues, including concretely demonstrating a return on investment. Marketing automation make reporting an integral part of every campaign and activity, allowing sales reps and marketers to stay in tune with short- and long-term ROI numbers.

4. UNDERSTAND CUSTOMERS BETTER Gut decisions can err on the side of optimism rather than reality. Applying metrics to various parts of the marketing process can uncover where you lose potential customers and what attracts them most. The more you know … the more you know.

5. VISIBILITY MEANS ACCOUNTABILITY In many organizations, marketers are seen as a collection of “creatives” who aren’t anchored to sales goals or other business metrics. Marketing automation provides the reporting that clearly shows how marketing is performing and concretely ties its contributions to sales goals and revenue. This accountability helps marketing teams make decisions that are in line with company goals and receive credit for its accomplishments.

As you build your case for marketing automation, review what your company is already measuring, then make recommendations that will complement those measurements and/or bridge critical gaps.

Keep the total number small. In most cases, it’s far better to track a few key metrics than to keep watch over many.

02 HOW TO MAKE A BUSINESS CASE FOR MARKETING AUTOMATION

DATA AND ANALYTICS

28

+ Selling marketing automation to your decision makers

+ The CEO

+ The CMO

+ The CFO

+ The CIO

+ The VP of Sales

+ Checklist: What your business case should include

WHAT THE

EXECUTIVESUITE NEEDS TO KNOW

03

29

Marketing automation allows you to give prospective buyers what they want, when they want it, and how they want it so you can gain, retain, and increase your competitive advantage.

BUT …

Convincing decision makers to adopt marketing automation relies in large part on how well your plan meets management’s – and your company’s – best interests.

To be successful, you need to understand what’s important to each – whether it’s a small executive team or an enterprise-level C-suite. That means anticipating their questions and objections, and directly addressing them.

This section highlights key issues executives care about, and offers suggestions and tips for creating a focused reply that resonates. Data points are included to support your case.

03 WHAT THE EXECUTIVE SUITE NEEDS TO KNOW

SELLING MARKETING AUTOMATION TO YOUR DECISION MAKERSGetting approval from your executive team is where the rubber meets the road.

“Matt Heinz, President, Heinz Marketing

If I’m anyone in the C-suite evaluating an investment, unless you tell me otherwise, it feels like money out of my pocket. So help me understand how you’re helping me spend money to make money.

“NEED HELP CRAFTING YOUR STRATEGIC PLAN? We can help you build a proposal that meets the specific needs of your business and executive team.

Contact us today

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03 WHAT THE EXECUTIVE SUITE NEEDS TO KNOW

THE CEO

RESPONSIBLE FOR: • Fully understanding all disciplines including sales, marketing, finance,

operations, and product/technical aspects

• Developing a complete vision for the company, both near- and long-term

• Setting the company’s values and ethics, and leading by example

CONCERNED ABOUT: • The entire revenue cycle – top-line growth and profitability

• Customer satisfaction and loyalty

• The competition

WHAT YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON:

1: HAVING SALES ON BOARDYour CEO will likely ask stakeholders for their opinion, in particular the sales team. The chance of your proposal getting accepted will increase significantly when the sales team is behind it.

• TIP: Get buy-in from sales first, before you sell to the CEO.

• DATA POINT: Companies that use marketing automation are nearly 2X more likely to capture intelligence for the sales team than companies without automation. (The Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups, Nov 2013)

Marketing automation

replaces separate systems

for email, web visitor

tracking, lead scoring,

nurture campaigns,

campaign management, and

reporting with one solution

that streamlines marketing

processes and shares data

with sales.

“

David Raab Marketing Technology Consultant, Raab Associates

“2. SELLING DEMAND GENERATION, NOT FEATURESCEOs don’t care about a system’s features; they care about measurable business results – customers and revenue. Be sure to clearly articulate how marketing automation will help generate more demand for your company’s products and services which, by extension, will drive more sales.

• TIP: Include an explanation of lead management. Your CEO will know what lead generation is, but may be unfamiliar with how leads are actually managed. Demand-generation processes such as targeted content marketing, lead scoring, and lead nurturing are key strengths of marketing automation. They’re essential for increasing qualified leads, new and repeat sales, and revenue.

• DATA POINT: 80% of CEOs at top-performing companies indicate that their most compelling reason for implementing marketing automation is to increase revenue, and 76% say to get higher quality leads. (Gleanster, Aug 2013)

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3. METRICS THAT DEMONSTRATE RESULTSIllustrate marketing automation’s value by tying it directly to the metrics your CEO cares about. Emphasize that the CEO can check up-to-the-minute reports and have on-demand access to dashboards that show campaign effectiveness in real time and across time.

• TIP: Keep the metrics high-level but tied to revenue and profitability. Some ideas include lead-to-opportunity conversion ratios, sales quota attainment rates, percentages of marketing-sourced sales opportunities, and database growth.

• DATA POINT: Companies that adopt marketing automation see 53% higher conversion rates than do non-adopters. (Aberdeen Group, Jul 2012)

• DATA POINT: Businesses that have automated significant portions of their marketing processes see revenue from marketing-generated leads increase by an average of 34%. (MathMarketing, Nov 2013)

• DATA POINT: B2B marketers who have implemented marketing automation contribute 10% more of the sales pipeline via marketing programs than do marketers who have not implemented marketing automation (44% versus 34%). (Forrester Research, Jan 2014)

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03 WHAT THE EXECUTIVE SUITE NEEDS TO KNOW

THE CMO

RESPONSIBLE FOR: • Influencing and implementing a diversity of business-critical objectives

including corporate strategy, content strategy, product innovations, pricing, and brand creative

• Leading the way to deliver customer value and company revenue against the backdrop of drastically changing consumer behavior and needs

• Collaborating with every department to optimize customer experiences, leverage new technology, and push the boundaries of creativity

CONCERNED ABOUT: • Driving customer engagement, retention, loyalty, and advocacy

• Broadening their expertise beyond traditional marketing to encompass new technologies, online and offline engagement channels, and big data analytics

• Demonstrating marketing’s contribution and effectiveness, particularly to revenue

The CMO role has evolved

significantly. No longer is

it just about marketing;

now more than ever the role

requires being myopic about

the consumer, fanatical about

innovation, and a leader in

the C-suite.

“

Dean Crutchfield Brand Advisor, Forbes

“WHAT YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON:

1: REACHING THE RIGHT PROSPECTS IN RELEVANT AND EFFECTIVE WAYSA great benefit of marketing automation is its function as a central repository for profile information; the system can track, aggregate and manage the demographics, behaviors and interests of every prospect, lead, and customer. This opens up endless opportunities for synchronizing the full spectrum of online and offline marketing channels – email, websites, social media, advertising, trade shows, sales calls, call centers, etc. – to increase demand, engagement, and sales.

• TIP: Articulate the core capabilities that allow marketers to identify the right prospects for their campaigns and send messages that optimize engagement throughout the buyer’s journey. Examples include automated list segmentation, targeting and personalization, lead nurturing and scoring, and trigger campaigns, all of which leverage the power of profiling to deliver value and shorten the sales cycle.

• DATA POINT: When comparing the winning vendor to the rest of the considered vendors, 61% of buyers agreed that the winning vendor delivered a better mix of content appropriate for each stage of the purchasing process. (DemandGen, Jan 2014)

• DATA POINT: 67% of B2B marketers say lead nurturing increases sales opportunities throughout the funnel by at least 10%, with 15% seeing opportunities increase by 30% or more. (DemandGen, Oct 2014)

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2. BUILDING BUYER RELATIONSHIPS AT SCALECMOs are tasked with increasing market share and customers while staying within the confines of limited resources and budgets. So it’s important to emphasize that automation manages a majority of the iterative and labor-intensive processes involved in campaign and lead management. This significantly reduces the number of manual touches needed to engage a prospect, letting marketing build, nurture, and manage relationships at huge scale without increasing resources.

• TIP: Use a real-world example from your business to show how marketers can employ automated programs such as segmentation, lead nurturing, and scoring to engage prospects through all stages of the funnel. Diagrams work well to illustrate how leads are automatically channeled into the correct nurture streams – no matter if there’s one lead or thousands.

• DATA POINT: Businesses that have implemented marketing automation reduce customer churn by an average of 43% over businesses that do not automate. (MathMarketing, Nov 2013)

3. DEMONSTRATING MARKETING’S IMPACT TO REVENUE GOALSToday’s CMOs must be rainmakers – they are expected to grow the sales pipeline and increase conversion rates of deals in the pipeline. Emphasize how marketing automation gives CMOs the ability to concretely tie marketing efforts to revenue contribution.

• TIP: Don’t get too detailed here. Focus on the success metrics your CMO cares about, and then show how they can see comprehensive, comparative, integrated views of performance and attribute it directly to revenue.

• DATA POINT: Marketers have to juggle a growing portfolio of channels and touchpoints with relevant, targeted marketing content. However, only 38% of marketers have a single view of customer interactions across digital touchpoints and interaction history. (Forrester, Dec 2013)

• DATA POINT: Only 21% of B2B marketers say they are successful at tracking ROI. (CMI and MarketingProfs, Sep 2014)

DID YOU KNOW…

The average tenure of today’s CMOs is 45 months, nearly double what it was in 2006.

According to executive recruiting firm Spencer Stuart, the improvement is due in part to a new breed of marketing executives that are more sophisticated about technology.

Still, CMO tenure pales in comparison to CEO tenure, which averages 7 years.

34

03 WHAT THE EXECUTIVE SUITE NEEDS TO KNOW

THE CFO

RESPONSIBLE FOR: • Implementing and supervising internal controls, including management of cash

flow and overhead expenses, vendor payment terms, and company liabilities

• Developing the annual budget; analyzing capital investment requirements

• Cultivating good working relationships with outside financing sources

CONCERNED ABOUT: • Controlling costs

• Identifying strategies that will increase profits

• Return on investment (ROI)

• Reducing risks

WHAT YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON:

1: TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIPYour CFO will expect to see all costs associated with the implementation and management of a marketing automation system, so do the math on the platform,

If the CFO can support you

in decisions and understands

how the marketing spend

delivers value for the

organization, then it is

much easier for the rest

of the executive [team]

to understand.

“

Catherine Howard Head of UK Marketing, Atos

“the people, and the content. It’s essential to be upfront about real-world costs, as well as show the benefits of making such an investment. Both underscore your credibility and evoke more confidence from those who control the purse strings.

• TIP: Create a table that shows the specific line items and costs broken down by month, quarter, and annually. Be sure to include contract terms, setup fees, and usage/subscription costs per user or list size.

• TIP: Think about the expertise that will be needed (e.g., a demand-generation manager, content creators, etc.) and run a thorough analysis to ensure the benefits outweigh the costs. For example, although it will cost money to implement a marketing automation platform and potentially add some number of resources, the benefits – e.g., increased opportunity, increased conversion yield, optimized use of sales reps’ time, elimination of repetitive tasks, and increased productivity per headcount – should trump the costs. Additionally, they’re easy to do the math on.

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2. METRICS THAT INFORM STRATEGIC ALLOCATION OF FUNDSThe depth and breadth of real-time data collection and customized reporting available from a marketing automation system enables you to not only measure campaign results, but also quantify the cost-effectiveness of marketing channels, both standalone and in relation to the buyer’s journey.

• TIP: Emphasize how automated reports and on-demand, customizable dashboards make it easy to gain complete visibility of what’s working and what’s not. This helps your CFO make informed decisions about where to spend budget in order to reap the biggest financial gains.

3. TYING MARKETING AUTOMATION TO ROIYour CFO is all about the numbers, relying on them to determine whether – and to what degree – any investment will impact profit. A fundamental strength of marketing automation is its ability to effectively manage leads and, as a result, measurably increase sales. When presenting your case to your finance executive, it’s essential to show how the investment will produce quantifiable returns.

• TIP: Demand-generation processes are among the easiest to tie to ROI. Start by thinking through the sales and marketing processes: demand generation, lead generation, nurturing, conversion, repeat sales. Assess the headcount and time necessary for each activity and translate those into costs. Spotlight how marketing automation will enable the company to do more with the same headcount/hours it is already paying for.

• DATA POINT: 70% of top-performing companies indicate their investment in marketing automation generated a positive ROI after the first year of use. (Gleanster, Nov 2012)

Assumptions are a common method for demonstrating projected results and getting agreement.

Make “worst case,” “expected case,” and “best case” assumptions to show the range of possible ROI outcomes.

ROI OUTCOMES

36

03 WHAT THE EXECUTIVE SUITE NEEDS TO KNOW

THE CIO

RESPONSIBLE FOR: • Driving the strategic analysis and

(re)engineering of business processes, including initiatives, responsibilities, and timing

• Implementing technologies essential to strategic and operational goals

• Defining and overseeing the processes and practices that support information accessibility and flow

CONCERNED ABOUT: • Balancing the competing demands

of technology, business needs, and risk

• Analytics and business intelligence

• Service availability

• Data and system security

WHAT YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON:

1: HOW THE SOLUTION WORKSYour CIO understands the technology-based systems and solutions. Your role is to help define the hard questions for assessing if – and how – they fit into the business infrastructure. Generalities don’t work here. It’s important to deliver a comprehensive description of the automation platform in a way that enables your CIO to evaluate both the business need and the effort needed to execute.

• TIP: Be prepared to provide very specific design and architectural components needed to integrate the solution. Examples include how it’s hosted, what business capabilities it replaces or adds, how data is stored and secured, what type of ongoing support the vendor offers, and what effort and support will be needed from the IT team in the short- and long-term.

2. INTEGRATING DISPARATE TOOLSTying together disconnected tools offers big benefits to the IT department: It streamlines the overall infrastructure and processes, saves resource time and effort, and reduces errors, all of which (added bonus) lower costs. Built-in analytics tools can consolidate multiple reporting mechanisms into a single view, helping IT quickly assess system health.

• TIP: If sales uses a CRM tool, spotlight how most automation platforms integrate with CRM, which is a game-changer for optimizing resources, improving sales-funnel velocity, and increasing sales. Other integration points include web services, blog and webinar platforms, and pay-per-click campaigns. Uncover where your company could best integrate with the platform, so you can articulate those areas – including benefits – to the CIO.

BE SURE TO...Introduce the CIO to the marketing automation vendor as early as possible to facilitate a smooth implementation.

37

3. IMPROVING DATA INTEGRITY The ability to easily integrate with a wide variety of business-critical tools and systems delivers an additional and essential benefit: data accuracy. Marketing automation platforms effectively map, exchange, and synchronize data between all touchpoints, which reduces errors and duplication.

• TIP: Technology leaders focus on providing services in advance of business needs and initiatives. When engaging your CIO, show how marketing automation can help support business growth (even high-speed and high scale) without a loss of data control, accuracy, or integrity.

• DATA POINT: 60% of IT decision makers cite “managing data quality” as their biggest challenge. (Forrester Research, Jan 2014)

Many marketing automation systems require little-to-no IT resources to implement, set up and manage, and cloud-based systems require no hardware. In addition, most automation systems don’t require technical savvy to use. These all contribute to significant cost savings.

COST-SAVINGS

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03 WHAT THE EXECUTIVE SUITE NEEDS TO KNOW

THE VP OF SALES

RESPONSIBLE FOR: • Increasing company revenue

• Managing sales teams to deliver profitable growth

• Collaborating with marketing functions to establish successful lead generation and conversion

CONCERNED ABOUT: • Quotas

• Lead quality and quantity

• Increasing sales conversion

WHAT YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON:

1: INCREASING LEAD QUALITY AND QUANTITYYour VP of Sales must be convinced that a new system will generate more leads and result in more sales. Making the case is relatively easy to do because marketing automation is a lead-management machine. To get the sales executive on your side, you must connect the dots: from lead-management processes to more qualified leads to increased sales conversions.

• TIP: Begin by working with sales reps to understand their current processes, including the tools used, the time it takes, and the average results. Then itemize how marketing automation can optimize each. For example, lead scoring prioritizes leads based on interest and engagement, giving sales definitive knowledge on who to call, when, and what to discuss. Segmentation allows reps to refine and target their communications more effectively. Lead nurturing campaigns and related tactics such as drip and trigger marketing keep leads engaged and moving along the buyer’s journey.

• DATA POINT: Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. In turn, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (Annuitas Group, Nov 2012)

DOING THE MATHFind out what your sales team’s current rates are, and then run the numbers based on the averages your marketing automation vendor sees from its customers.

HERE’S A SAMPLE OF WHAT ACT-ON CUSTOMERS SEE:

• 49% increase in monthly lead flow (RME360)

• 192% increase in qualified leads (NuGrowth Solutions)

• 29% increase in lead-to-opportunity conversion (LEGO® Education)

• 68% increase in revenue (To the Point Marketing)

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2. MEETING AND EXCEEDING QUOTASSimilarly to the CFO, your VP of Sales is all about the numbers – phone calls, emails, campaign touches, qualified leads, closed deals. Meeting quota is critical to company revenue, which means getting highly qualified leads to the sales team is crucial. It’s essential to clearly show how marketing automation increases the sales team’s ability to strike when the iron is hot; that is, to quickly connect with leads, continue conversations, and close sales.

• TIP: Focus on the built-in capabilities that directly impact sales’ ability to meet its quotas. For example, automated lead scoring allows reps to identify and prioritize sales-ready leads based on points scored. Integration with CRM keeps all contact information and histories in one place, allowing reps to increase efficiency while using the sales tool they’re most familiar with. If Act-On is your platform of choice, it includes website prospecting and real-time alerts, giving sales teams immediate intelligence about who is visiting the website and what they’re viewing.

• TIP: Quantify the benefits by creating a side-by-side comparison of current sales metrics versus projected sales metrics after implementing marketing automation. The math is easy to do and the data pack a powerful punch.

• DATA POINT: Companies that invest in marketing automation solutions see 70% faster sales cycle times, and 54% improvement in quota achievement. (Bulldog Solutions, Mar 2012)

3. ALIGNING SALES AND MARKETINGCooperation between sales and marketing is essential to achieving revenue targets because both departments are responsible for top-line growth: marketing generates leads and passes them to sales, and sales closes deals. It’s important to specifically highlight marketing automation as a proven mechanism for bridging the sales-marketing divide.

• TIP: Emphasize how marketing automation makes the customer lifecycle visible and measurable in multiple ways. This allows both teams to see and share real-time intelligence, craft aligned campaigns, and meet their respective quotas. For example, lead scoring helps marketing deliver more qualified leads to sales. Segmentation, search history, and visitor tracking allow sales to triangulate on the hottest opportunities.

• DATA POINT: Only 23% of sales professionals say marketers consistently deliver sales-ready leads. (Ad Age, Jul 2013)

• DATA POINT: Companies that use marketing automation are more likely than companies without automation to capture intelligence for the sales team, 35% vs. 19%. (The Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups, Nov 2013)

Hugh MacFarlane, founder and CEO of MathMarketing, conducted an alignment benchmarking study by surveying 1,400 professionals in 84 countries. The study found that the businesses with the greatest degree of alignment:

• Grow 5.4% faster than their less-aligned counterparts when compared with businesses in the same industry

• Close 38% more proposals than non-aligned businesses

• Lose 36% fewer customers to competitors

THE BENEFITSOF ALIGNMENT

40

ƛ Clear objectives for implementing marketing automation.

ƛ Specific benefits of marketing automation adoption and how they map to company objectives.

ƛ Technological components and benefits. For example, are you recommending email, website visitor tracking, social integration? If so, why? What about CRM integration? SEO auditing?

ƛ Data sources, including integrations with your CRM systems, other prospect and customer data, and campaign data.

ƛ Budget and milestones – i.e., the real-world schedule and costs for implementation. This includes phases, technologies, and reasonable times/milestones for learning, evolving, and refining to the point where ROI can be achieved.

ƛ Analytics and reporting.

ƛ ROI projections, including:

◊ Outline the volume of activity required to meet lead, quota, and revenue goals. Base this on historic data in your target market.

◊ Calculate what sales and marketing activities cost now (without marketing automation).

◊ Calculate potential improvement in costs and results after implementing marketing automation.

◊ Calculate current and projected profit improvements.

◊ Define the results of sales and marketing alignment in terms of lead generation, qualification, and enhanced cooperation.

ƛ Risk management, include risks associated with adopting and not adopting marketing automation.

ƛ Timelines and target dates.

CHECKLIST

WHAT YOUR BUSINESS CASE SHOULD INCLUDETo improve your chances for getting executive management’s buy-in, below is a list of key items to address as you craft your business case:

Be wary of offering generic

benefits like “increased

marketing ROI” or “shorter

selling cycles.” Those benefits

may be legitimate possibilities,

but they carry less weight

when they could apply to any

organization. Instead, identify

the most pressing sales and

marketing challenges at your

company, and speak to those

specific issues.

“

Howard Sewell President, Spear Marketing Group

“

41

CLOSING THOUGHTS AND RESOURCES

04

42

• For the small marketing team, it might be time savings.

• For the marketer with lead generation quotas, it might be the ability to customize and coordinate cross-channel marketing campaigns.

• For the marketer focused on sales enablement, it could be the ability to use automated programs such as lead nurturing and lead scoring.

• For the sales team, it might be more and better-qualified leads, nuanced intelligence about a lead’s needs, a shorter sales cycle, or a real-time list of hot prospects.

Much of buying and selling – and most of the buyer’s journey – is conducted online. Marketing automation gives organizations the infrastructure and tools to take full advantage of cross-channel digital marketing, and do it at scale to match changes in business growth, budgets, resources, and skillsets.

Taken as a whole marketing automation offers impressive upside that’s hard to match: The simplicity of a single platform, extensive cross-funnel capabilities, native and non-native integrations with many business-critical tools, low/no need for IT resources or technical skills, quick implementation, and cloud-based economics.

The benefits are numerous, including the ability to understand your prospects and customers, have well-timed and personal interactions with them, and empirically tie marketing efforts to revenue.

If your organization hasn’t yet embraced marketing automation, we hope this eBook provides a compelling argument to get the conversation started.

TRY THIS:KNOW YOUR GOALSBefore you seek executive support:

• Know which business goals are worth pursuing and also attainable with marketing automation.

• Know the company objectives marketing automation can support.

• Know what internal support you have. Is the marketing staff willing? Does sales see this as an avenue for more/better leads and a more collaborative working relationship?

• Know how you plan to measure success.

04 CLOSING THOUGHTS AND RESOURCES

MAKE YOUR CASEThe business value of marketing automation varies according to how an organization applies the technology.

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04 CLOSING THOUGHTS AND RESOURCES

MAKING YOUR MARKETING LIFE EASIER AND MORE EFFECTIVE

Case Studies• Marketing agency sees 49% increase

in monthly lead flow and 68% decrease in cost per lead after implementing marketing automation [Learn how]

• Talent agency see email open rates skyrocket to 84% and clickthrough rates jump to 40% by integrating its CRM with marketing automation and using lead scoring to manage the sales pipeline [Learn how]

• Vacation rental company sees 50% increase in bookings and 500% ROI by using lead management capabilities to identify sales-ready travellers and reach out with tightly targeted campaigns [Learn how]

• A leading provider of fleet vehicle and asset tracking services nets $30,000 from a single campaign created and managed with marketing automation [Learn how]

• Read more case studies

Reviews, Analysts Reports, Studies,

and Blogs• Customer Experience Matrix Analyst

David Raab’s blog

• Gleanster Research

• Forrester Research (no subscription needed to read blog posts)

• Software Advice reviews of marketing automation systems

• B2B Marketing Automation Platforms 2014: A Buyer’s Guide

• Marketing Action Blog

Tools• Download the Buyer’s Checklist

for Marketing Automation

• See how marketing automation can improve your business with Act-On’s ROI Calculator

• Use our free A/B Test tool to identify the webpage that converts best

• Get a free SEO Assessment of your website’s home page

• Learn more about the art and science of marketing in the Act-On Center of Excellence

Connect with us to learn more!

44www.act-on.com | @ActOnSoftware | #ActOnSW

Act-On Software delivers cloud-based integrated marketing automation software. Marketers can manage all their online marketing

efforts from a single dashboard that can be seamlessly integrated with CRM, giving sales access into various marketing functions.

Act-On’s fresh approach to marketing automation gives its users full functionality without the complexity other systems impose,

and makes campaign creation and program execution easier and faster.

ABOUT ACT-ON SOFTWARE

©2015 Act-On Software, Inc. Trademarks belong to their respective owners. All rights reserved.

ACCLAIM FOR ACT-ON

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NOTES

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