Marketing Automation (MA) is the effort to better manage [online] marketing channels. Mark Polly calls out a 2014 Frost & Sullivan Report to say MA will be a $1.9B industry by 2020. And Marisa Lather explains some ways to get your MA going the right way.
Marketing Automation vs CRM
Purchase funnel with brand advocacy loop.
The classic “purchase funnel” is a customer focused model for the path to purchase a product or service. MA is concerned with the early phases. Conversely, CRM is concerned with the later phases, but they live together.
For example, at Perficient, I helped create an e-commerce app that generates leads. The leads were then fed into Marketo and Salesforce which further managed their conversion into customers.
A Multi-Structured Customer Journey
Kampyle repeats a picture, from McKinsey Quarterly, calling the customer journey a “swirl.” We must include another phase in the purchase funnel. The new step turns customers into brand advocates (see my picture above). The purchase funnel is really a cycle!
Mark Mclain, through Forbes magazine, explains ways to turn customers into brand advocates. Further, all phases of the journey include customer engagement. So, MA is not simply part of a funnel or even a feedback step. A complete cycle should include a multi-structured MA approach.
I recreated this thoughtful picture, from Forrester Research, that I found on a blog of Julie Hunt.
Cross-Touchpoint CX (Forrester Research, Inc).
Measuring Marketing Automation
Measure your MA to help apply scarce resources for the most business value.
For example, you may have heard about lead scoring. Lead scoring is used to rank prospects against a scale of perceived value. Scott Roose suggests ways that lead scoring helps sales and marketing teams. And Meredith Becker talks about lead generation and MA.
Lead scoring is one method to check the fruit of the thinning funnel. Further, track actual quantity through the whole funnel loop. Although your funnel may have different phases, I propose a histogram to see your MA efforts. Also, the shape tells a story about the use of your finite MA resources.
For example, how and why to measure MA through advocacy.
Interested in a digital transformation? Check out the Perficient CX Platform Framework.
And, Perficient has an award-winning partnership with Salesforce.
