Marketing Automation (MA), also referred to as Lead-to-Revenue Management Automation, is the technologies and strategies that allow companies to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows so they can increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster.

MA drives prospect interaction, measures and analyzes response information, and delivers leads to your sales team while providing an intelligent understanding of a potential or existing customer through their lifecycle. Customer communications, lead generation, lead scoring, and marketing campaigns are among the marketing tasks which can be automated in a Marketing Automation solution.

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Dynamic content, based on behavioral & demographic segmentation, that contains text, graphics, or HTML, can be personalized in an email or a landing page. Companies benefiting from Marketing Automation range in size from large enterprises to SMBs across all industries, in both B2B and B2C. These solutions closely integrate with CRM systems at or near real-time, granting businesses access to the wealth of information on their current or potential customers.

Three things to remember about Marketing Automation

It’s more than email marketing. It’s creating and maintaining relationships.

It’s more than lead management. It affects all stages of the Quote to Cash continuum.
There is explosive growth in the space and it’s important to be aware of new features and new vendors entering the market.

Marketing Automation Components

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New Prospect Generation

New prospect generation, sometimes referred to as Lead Generation, positions itself at the beginning of Marketing Automation and at the top of the sales funnel. Companies that don't have a grasp on their leads and a methodology to generate them, probably aren’t quite ready for a Marketing Automation system, which helps handle the next steps.

Whether leads are generated via traffic to a website, attendees at a trade show, or a purchased lead list, this part of the funnel is the widest. Lead nurturing enables a company to automate drip marketing campaigns that send relevant messages over time, based on prospect behaviors and predefined campaign steps.

In a social media-driven world, an enterprise cannot simply abide by traditional marketing logic. Social Marketing seeks to develop and integrate marketing techniques to influence social behavior and benefit the target audience. Social analytics provides insight into who shares a company's content, social conversion rates, and how much social lift results from your campaigns. Social engagement and promotion creates social applications such as polls, sweepstakes, and referral programs. Social sharing and campaigns can be shared via automatic posts to social sites, or via intelligent share buttons. Social listening and tracking can then tell what is being said about a company's specific campaign.

All of this information can then be tied back together to a given campaign and provide a beneficial impact to the bottom line.

Marketing Automation allows companies better insight into scoring and grading leads based on demographics, specific prospect behaviors, & BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe) criteria.

  • How frequently are customers and/or potential customers interacting online with a company and its offerings?
  • When was the last time interaction occurred?
  • Is this a Marketing Qualified Lead or a Sales Qualified Lead?

Online behavior tracking can be linked with real-time triggered emails that listen for specific customer behaviors and events and respond with appropriate real-time messages. Triggers like these can be highly customized and based on any data that you are tracking.

Customer & Account Maintenance

Customer & account maintenance is a critical process for all types of companies, but especially enterprise clients.

Companies in this space typically keep careful track of Company Lifecycle Duration (typically the number of months or years that a customer retains their service) and Average Revenue Per User (ARPU – which tracks the dollars that are spent per month with the company). Companies that are able to keep their customers longer and raise the average revenue per month over time, typically become leaders in their space.

Customer & Account Maintenance includes a broad set of process service modifications including up-sell/cross-sell, suspension, and disconnect/cancel. Customer Maintenance is closely related to the sub-domain Customer Service, which handles important though not service-impacting customer requests.

Overage Notifications

Overage notifications inform customers once they have reached a certain percentage threshold of the allotted usage of their service. One example that most people would be familiar with would be an alert from a mobile phone provider stating the user has reached X% of their data usage for the month. Depending on the needs, multiple thresholds for these alerts can be set.

Customer Success

Customer Success is focused on proactively meeting and exceeding clients' expectations. In a call center environment, a customer success agent is monitoring customer usage, product and service performance, churn, trialing results - all things related to creating and retaining customers.

Customer Success agents are the gatekeepers for CSAT/NPS surveys, following up on results one-on-one with all deemed worthy. It is also within their purview to reengage to determine if their wants and needs have shifted, and provide an up-sell/cross-sell path to meet the customer's evolving needs.

Data - both customer and transactional - drive the customer success agent's focus, and extending each client's lifecycle with their organization the brass ring.

IN OUR OWN WORDS
Customers today demand an integrated, personalized and real-time experience from enterprise companies in order to build and maintain their trust and brand loyalty. Data-driven personalization and customer journey automation strategies are pivotal for marketers to increase customer acquisition and engagement, drive revenue growth, increase operational efficiencies, and remain compliant in often one to many global markets. Long gone are the days of working in silos. World-class, winning customer experiences are powered by the integrated data and activities generated from Sales Cloud, Revenue Cloud, Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and beyond."
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STUART ALEXANDER
Marketing Automation Practice
at ATG Lev

Up-Sell, Cross-Sell & Expansion

These sales processes are the central methods for increasing average revenue per user, an essential growth metric for most businesses using a recurring revenue business model. These businesses also focus heavily on annual contract value.

Up-selling is the process of selling more of a particular service. For example, moving from 6 MB internet speed for $25 per month to 18 MB for $45 per month is a typical up-sell.

Cross-selling is when a customer purchases a separate product or service in addition to what they had originally anticipated buying. For example, if the customer originally intended to buy internet service, but the sales representative convinced them to purchase phone and cable services too, the sales representative successfully performed cross-selling.

Expansion is the process of broadening the selling engagement with the customer to additional locations, business units, or channels. This process is not independent of up-selling and cross-selling, but it refers to specifically growing the size and buying power of the customer. For example, if a sales representative is selling software to the accounting group at John Deere in Missoula, MT, and they expand the sale to include the sales team plus two other locations, they have achieved expansion. A good CPQ application assists this process by allowing many child accounts, groups, and locations to be quoted at once.

The combination of up-selling and cross-selling is the primary method of driving more revenue within an existing customer base. Another common phrase is wallet share. Many enterprise clients have a goal of increasing the wallet share from their customer base, which is often done through up-selling, cross-selling, or both. The concept of bundling or packaging is a method for accelerating an up-sell, cross-sell, or both.

Renewal

Marketing efforts shouldn’t stop once the deal closes.

Marketing automation allows companies, whether B2B or B2C, to reach out to their current customer base via an automatically triggered message based on their renewal date. This ensures that each customer is aware of upcoming renewal dates to be sure clients won’t slip through the cracks. These messages can be tailored to a specific company or person’s interests and activity, along with any special actions you would like to suggest.

Renewal time also presents a great opportunity for further up-sell/cross-selling. There are varying statistics out there, but let us not forget – it’s cheaper to retain customers than to go out and get new ones.

People, Process, and Technology of Marketing Automation

People

Many of an enterprise's various organization get involved with the Marketing Automation domain. Marketing, Sales, Product and Customer Service seem obvious - but the Operations and IT groups are knee-deep as well.

Sales

Product

Customer Service

Customer Success

MARKETING

FINANCE - BIlling

I.T.

Process

ATG maintains a set of over 100 key business processes to support the management of Customers and Revenue for enterprise clients. Thirty-five of these processes originate or are impacted by the Marketing Automation domain. Below are the key processes that are touched in this domain, categorized by the Organizational Unit that owns the process:

SALES

External/Partner Transaction Management

Management and integration of any of third-party resellers/partner, or large enterprise customer, transactions that including selling, billing & collections, and account management.

SALES

Opportunity Management

Prioritizing, tracking, and managing of sales opportunities.

SALES

Partner Ecosystem Management

Overall category for Management and integration of any of third-party resellers, partner, or add-on marketplace business models and oversight.

SALES / CUSTOMER SERVICE

Order Entry - Call Center (Inbound or Outbound)

Creating a new service for a customer originated by internal users such as an inside sales organization. Or a customer support group wants to create new orders for an existing customer. Includes capturing the necessary information to provision and bill for the service effectively.

SALES / CUSTOMER SERVICE

Order Entry - E-Commerce

Creating a new service for a customer, including capturing the necessary information to provision and bill for the service effectively.

SALES / CUSTOMER SERVICE

Order Entry - Partners

Creating a new service for a customer that is originated via a Partner Channel, including capturing the necessary information to provision and bill for the service effectively.

SALES / CUSTOMER SERVICE

Order Entry - SFA

Creating a new service for a customer originated by internal users such Customer Support or Partners, as a culmination of the opportunity, quote, contract, and order lifecycle.

SALES / CUSTOMER SERVICE

Renewal Processing

Methods used to renew a customer's services, may be manual or automated. This could apply to the renewal of maintenance and support for Perpetual products, or renewal of a subscription term for Cloud products.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Proactive Customer Notification - Success Focus (Recommendations, Advice of Charge, Overage Notifications)

Exceeding customer expectations by using data and triggers to notify them of an opportunity or looming risk.

PRODUCT

Bundled Product Introduction Process

Configuring and introduction of a bundled product or service to the product catalog and supporting systems. Includes definition of product/bundle attributes, pricing rules (usage, recurring, non-recurring), discounts rules, product/service lifecycle, revenue recognition, and reporting attributes.

PRODUCT

New Pricing Introduction - Existing Construct

This process is for creation of a new pricing rate for an existing construct. For example, creation of a $24.95/mo. plan for a geography that previously had been at $27.95/mo.

PRODUCT

New Pricing Introduction - New Construct

This process is for creation of a new pricing construct for an existing product or service. For example, creation of a monthly subscription where previously there had only been annual.

PRODUCT

New Product Introduction Process

Introduction of a new product or service to the Product Catalog and supporting quoting, ordering, contracting, provisioning, ticketing, invoicing, payment, usage, and revenue recognition systems. Includes definition of product attributes, pricing rules(usage, recurring, non-recurring), discounts rules, product/service lifecycle, revenue recognition, reporting attributes, and bundling concepts.

PRODUCT

New Product Introduction Process - Mobile

Configure attributes and introduce new products and services, with specific focus on making the product available on mobile devices.

PRODUCT

Promotion & Discount Introduction

The configuration of standard, pre-defined promotions and discounts of products or services.

PRODUCT

Trial Processing

Configuration and management of trial products that do not bill at all during an agreed-upon time frame, or under a certain set of use restrictions. Includes processes for provisioning and reporting.

OPERATIONS

Inventory Management - Logical

The process a company uses to manage the consumption of non-physical asset inventory levels including inventory creation and deletion.

OPERATIONS

Inventory Management - Physical

The process a company uses to manage the consumption and replenishment of tangible inventory levels.

MARKETING

Lead Management

The process of managing lead that have been generated and nurturing into new customers, or up/cross-sold existing customers.

MARKETING

Proactive Customer Notification - Marketing Focus (New Lead, Up-Sell/Cross-Sell Existing)

Similar to pro-active notification from a Customer Success perspective, this process is specifically targeted to generating additional revenue from information captured about a customer, account, or user that can be turned into a Lead.

I.T.

Cross-Training of Monetization Ecosystem Components

Process for training organizational resources

I.T.

Data Stewardship Across Monetization Ecosystem

Process of assigning ownership and sources of truth for data within the organization.

I.T.

Maintenance & Oversight of Monetization Ecosystem

Process around assuring that all touchpoints and connections in the ecosystem are optimized and working to their full potential.

I.T.

Monitoring & Testing of Vendor Functional Releases

As ecosystem components release updates and patches, each is checked and tested to confirm all systems are working together as required by the business' requirements.

I.T.

Security Oversight of Monetization Ecosystem

Process for maintaining and controlling access and permission to ecosystem components.

I.T.

Vendor Management of the Monetization Ecosystem

Management of ecosystem component vendors including proactive communication of changes and general relationship nurturing.

FINANCE - BILLING

SOX/Regulatory Compliance

The ability to provide proof of internal controls to prevent fraud and material misstatements.

FINANCE - BILLING

Subscription Management

The processes a company uses to manage complex customer subscription attributes, including recurring billing, IN Proration (service sign up), OUT Proration (service disconnect/cancel), and associated usage, recurring, and non-recurring processing.

FINANCE - BILLING

System Auditability

Provides assurance that source system data is accurate, and a paper trail exists from a transaction to financial statements.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Customer Usage Monitoring

Tracking and recording customer product usage throughout a billing period and life cycle. Closely related to daily usage processing, this process can be used by Customer Success agents to find customers who are experiencing problems with their product usage, are not using key functions of the product, or are nearing billing thresholds.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Loyalty Program Management

The way in which a business manages incentivized programs to retain its best customers. Different from NPS/CSAT initiatives, this is a specific program to capture customer history and provide offers/discounts based on loyalty and usage.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

New Customer Onboarding

The process of creating a customer account, properly provisioning products and/or services, and communicating welcoming messages.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

NPS / CSAT Monitoring

Process of tracking, reporting, and following up on customer satisfaction metrics, by customer segment or product.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Retention / Churn Monitoring

The process of monitoring customer turnover.

ALL

Daily, Periodic, or Ad Hoc Reporting (ETL, Report, Dashboard)

Movement of data between domains to create a single source of truth for reporting and dashboarding. Includes key metrics such as revenue analytics and other KPIs

Technology

Marketing automation solution choices have exploded in recent years. MA as stand-alone software is most common, but marketing workflows in a myriad of other domains of the ATG Monetization Ecosystem is available as well.

Key Marketing Automation Vendors

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ESSENTIALS

Founded: 2001
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Company Type: Public
Website: www.salesforce.com
Delivery Method: Cloud

OVERVIEW

Salesforce Marketing Cloud, formerly ExactTarget, is driven by a single mission: to inspire and enable organizations to drive phenomenal business results with digital marketing technology. They power customer journeys across every touchpoint — email, mobile, social, web, and beyond — helping marketers put customers at the center of everything they do.

PRODUCTS & SERVICES

  • Sales – The world’s #1 CRM solution gives sales teams the power to close deals like never before with an array of cloud-based tools
  • Service – From call-center software to self-service portals, service solutions enhance customer service to better anticipate customer needs
  • Marketing – Personalized, cross-channel customer journeys deliver exceptional brand experiences and make the most of every customer interaction
  • Community – Harness the power of social and mobile to create engaging online communities, build deeper customer relationships and drive productivity and innovation

TARGET MARKET

Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s target market is industries and companies of all sizes looking to connect to their customers using cloud technology.

CUSTOMERS

  • American Express
  • Health Leads
  • Rosetta Stone
  • Spotify
  • Sprint
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ESSENTIALS

Founded: 2007
HQ: San Francisco, CA
Company Type: Public
Website: www.salesforce.com
Delivery Method: Cloud

OVERVIEW

Salesforce Pardot is a B2B Marketing Automation solution that continuously syncs with Professional Edition and higher levels of SFDC.  With Pardot, sales reps can get a full view of prospect activity from within their own CRM systems.  Individual users can also:

  • View all prospect activities within the lead or contact record
  • Sort contacts on SFDC by Pardot score and grade
  • De-duplicate lead and contact records
  • Sync opportunities and accounts with Pardot

TARGET MARKET

Pardot targets all small to enterprise-level businesses that currently use Salesforce and are seeking to add Marketing Automation capabilities to their current Salesforce subscription.

CUSTOMERS

  • Stanley Black & Decker
  • RxBar
  • SignUp4
  • IRT Surveys
  • Xcentric
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ESSENTIALS

Founded: 1977
HQ: Austin, TX
Company Type: Public
Website: www.oracle.com
Delivery Method: Cloud

OVERVIEW

Oracle Marketing Cloud, designed for B2B and B2C marketing, has the capability to create targeted cross-channel marketing campaigns, accelerate lead generation, automate marketing activities, and personalize customer communications. With the help of Oracle Marketing cloud, marketing campaigns are created with ease with measured outcomes.

PRODUCTS & SERVICES

  • Marketing Automation (MA)
  • Lead Generation
  • Cross Channel Marketing
  • Customer Interaction Management

TARGET MARKET

Oracle Marketing Cloud targets businesses of all sizes and industries from smaller enterprises to larger enterprises. 

CUSTOMERS

  • SoundCloud
  • SurveyMonkey
  • eBay
  • Comcast
  • BlackBoard Inc.
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ESSENTIALS

Founded: 2006
HQ: San Mateo, CA
Company Type: Public
Website: www.marketo.com
Delivery Method: Cloud

OVERVIEW

Marketo is the global leader in Revenue Performance Management. Marketo’s powerful yet easy-to-use marketing automation solutions transform how marketing and sales teams of all sizes work — and work together — to drive dramatically increased revenue performance and fuel business growth. The company’s proven technology, comprehensive services, and expert guidance – in areas ranging from demand generation to lead nurturing – are helping corporations around the world to turn marketing from a cost center to a business-building revenue driver.

PRODUCT & SERVICES:

  • Marketing Automation – B2B marketing and lead management
  • Marketing Management – email and campaign management
  • Real-Time Personalization – personalize messages across channels
  • Marketing Management – coordinate teams and calendars

TARGET MARKET

Marketo’s target market ranges from small businesses to large enterprises across many markets. Marketo customers are businesses looking for Revenue Performance Management solutions and Marketing Automation software, products and support.

CUSTOMERS

  • GE Healthcare
  • Northeastern University
  • Charles Schwab
  • Sony
  • HootSuite
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ESSENTIALS

Founded: 2006
HQ: Cambridge, MA
Company Type: Public
Website: www.hubspot.com
Delivery Method: Cloud

OVERVIEW

HubSpot was founded in 2006 as a result of a simple observation: people have transformed how they live, work, shop, and buy, but businesses have not adapted. This mismatch led Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah to create the vision for the inbound experience and to develop HubSpot’s platform to support it.

With their powerful, easy to use, integrated set of applications, businesses can attract, engage, and delight customers by delivering inbound experiences that are relevant, helpful, and personalized.

TARGET MARKET

HubSpot targets all types and sizes of businesses, from smaller SMB to large enterprises.

CUSTOMERS

  • University of Southern California (USC)
  • EvaluAgent
  • Birch
  • Beretta
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ESSENTIALS

Founded: 1995
HQ: Waltham, Massachusetts
Company Type: Privately Held
Website: www.constantcontact.com
Delivery Method: Cloud

OVERVIEW

Constant Contact is an email marketing software with flexible pricing plans for the perfect fit. With Constant Contact, you can create branded emails, sell products, build an eCommerce website, and make your presence known. With one platform, backed by A.I., you can sell smarter and market products with better insights. Constant Contact email marketing will boost your loyalty and track performance with an analytics tool that defines trends and identifies areas of opportunity.

By partnering with Constant Contact, expect to welcome new leads, have custom drip campaigns, get connected with your customers, and expand your customer base. Constant Contact will turn first-time online shoppers into loyal repeat customers with the help of AI-driven marketing personalization.

PRODUCT & SERVICES:

  • Marketing Automation (MA)
  • Social Marketing
  • Lead Management
  • Email Automation

TARGET MARKET

Constant Contact targets enterprises of all sizes focusing on companies needing marketing automation solutions.

CUSTOMERS

  • MindBody
  • FaceBook
  • Shopify
  • ATG
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ESSENTIALS

Founded: 2008
HQ: Beaverton, OR
Company Type: Privately Held
Website: www.act-on.com
Delivery Method: Cloud

OVERVIEW

Act-On’s platform empowers organizations to engage with buyers across the entire lead-to-revenue process. They've done it in a way that offers simplicity and ease-of-use for the marketer. Act-On has built a platform that gives small and medium-sized organizations all the value of marketing automation – without the unnecessary complexity of big enterprise systems.

Their platform offers robust core functionality at the heart of an open marketing technology ecosystem. Their next-generation technology gives users the flexibility to customize their marketing stack to suit their own evolving needs by integrating best-of-breed applications -- and the tools their team already uses – so they can win, and keep more customers.

TARGET MARKET

Act-On targets SMBs and larger enterprise customers with its marketing automation subscription solutions.

CUSTOMERS

  • Swarovski
  • Progressive
  • Hoopla
  • ASPCA
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ESSENTIALS

Founded: 2019
HQ: Atlanta, GA
Company Type: Privately Held
Website: www.acoustic.co
Delivery Method: Cloud

OVERVIEW

Acoustic delivers solutions that have been harnessed from AI and machine learning to improve the customer experience. Through acoustic marketing solutions, you will be able to make more informed decisions, reduce effort output, and drive more conversions. Acoustic will take over the small tasks so you can focus on the bigger picture.

PRODUCT & SERVICES:

  • Marketing Automation (MA)
  • Marketing Analytics
  • AI and Machine Learing

TARGET MARKET

Acoustic targets businesses of all sizes and industries.

CUSTOMERS

  • PayPal
  • Ticketmaster
  • Scientific American
  • International Rescue Committee

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