Powering Up Your Marketing Automation Performance
So, you’ve invested in an expensive marketing automation (MA) platform and begun to use it for lead generation and prospect nurturing. But the results haven’t been as stellar as expected. What to do? A survey conducted by Ascend2 provides insight on how to boost your MA system’s ROI.
First, make sure you have developed an MA strategy. “Creating a successful strategy” was named the top optimization priority by almost two-thirds of the study’s participants. That means crafting a plan that includes targeted buyer personas, effective prospect segmentation, personalized and relevant content topics, appropriate lead scoring, and lead nurturing calendars and drip marketing schemes.
The second optimization priority was improving the user experience. This work involves analyzing your MA system’s many prospect touchpoints, ensuring they are aligned, easy to use, and providing relevant content. It also includes coordination with your other marketing channels to maximize effectiveness.
When asked about the barriers to optimization, participants cited “delivering personalized content” as the most challenging issue. MA platforms require larges doses of content that can be personalized, particularly for account-based marketing (ABM) applications. “Integrating marketing channels” was also frequently cited. The MA system must support and complement your other marketing tactics.
What tactics work the best? “Customer experience mapping” and “personalized/dynamic content” emerged as the two most effective optimization efforts.
The survey makes it clear that developing a strategy, improving the quality and quantity of your content, and enhancing prospect engagement and experience should be the first steps in powering up MA performance.
Note: more than half of those surveyed said they rely on a blend of in-house and external resources to optimize their MA programs.
If you would like a copy of this study, email me at rwhitmyre@tizinc.com.
Source: Optimizing Marketing Automation Survey, Ascend2, June 2018
