Automated marketing technology has truly burst onto the marketing scene and is significantly changing the way that we behave as marketers. These new technologies can drive the way you create your marketing plans, who you hire to staff your marketing teams, and the methodologies, volume, targeting, and strategies that you’re able to implement. If you’re unfamiliar with this idea of automated marketing technology, check out Eloqua, Vtrenz (now Silverpop), Marketo, or Manticore to name a few, to give yourself a quick understanding of what is out there from an automation perspective.
The opportunities that automation lends to a marketer are real and have proven
to be effective for many of the companies who have embraced them. However,
one mistake that many early-adopters admit to is the compulsion to rely so heavily on the technology tool that the human, strategic, and creative element is ignored. A trusted agency partner can help you significantly during the pre- and post-implementation phases of an automated marketing platform.
Here are ways that they can help you to fully leverage your marketing automation investment:
- CREATIVE: You’re going to need a library of creative concepts and offers. Once you hand over the reins to whoever is in charge of launching your campaigns, you’ve got to be 100% confident that they have top-quality campaigns to choose from. And know that each one is on-brand and following direct marketing best practices. With some careful strategic planning, an agency can help you to create a library of campaigns, both content and creative, which can be customized or tweaked by audience, timing, etc. These could be template style campaigns that can be customized by audience or they could be specific creative for a specific initiative. You’ll also need a breadth of offers to strategically assign to each campaign that is useable across your target audience base. And, naturally, they should be customized for both vertical and horizontal targeting requirements.
- STRATEGY: Often the evaluation of multiple vendors, negotiation, and implementation is incredibly time-consuming. You have all hands on deck working to integrate data, implement, and make this automation tool go. But what about your plan—did someone say strategy!!? Look to your agency partner to help map out how you’ll actually implement campaigns and who has the highest propensity to respond to them. An agency can help you to plan and forecast your touch strategy, define your audience, develop testing strategies, and analyze your results. Lean on your agency partner for strategic guidance while your resources are buried in implementation.
- ANALYSIS: In marketing what you don’t know can hurt you so there’s nothing more valuable than knowing how to analyze and act on data. An experienced agency can help you review your data, report it to your peers, utilize metrics to justify your budget, and most importantly, analyze data to drive future marketing plans. For long-time direct marketers, data is in their blood.
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Now more than ever, you need to make sure that you’re maximizing the implementation of an automated marketing technology system so you can fully leverage the potential of your purchase. Feel free to lean on Yates Advertising as your strategic, creative, and data-savvy partner to help you do just that.
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