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Mina Saleeb, Global Director of Marketing Automation The majority of businesses now use marketing automation – 76%, according to recent research – but it can still offer a major point of difference against your competitors. According to our own report, only 11% believe they’re using marketing automation in an ‘extremely effective’ manner. If that resonates and your Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) is being used as a glorified email outbound system, you’re missing out on a huge amount of value. And revenue. And growth. Let’s get your marketing automation out of first gear by exploring four major MAP capabilities that you could be employing – but probably aren’t. Supporting outbound reputation and deliverability First impressions matter in the digital ecosystem. Your MAP should not only help send emails, but ensure that they land where and when they’re supposed to. With Custom IP and IP Warming strategies, your MAP can gradually build your reputation as a trusted email sender so that you can incrementally increase deliverability. Building this sender reputation is crucial as it makes sure Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and email platforms recognize your emails are legitimate, and more importantly, wanted by their recipients. It’ll reduce the risk of your outbound comms being flagged as spam, thereby increasing metrics across the board to improve your return on marketing investment. Alternatively, if getting content ready in the first place is your main challenge, we’ve got a Content Supply Chain solution for you. Eliminating siloes between sales and marketing The rift between sales and marketing might be cliché, but it’s a revenue risk if it’s inhibiting campaign production or lead management. When integrated correctly, your MAP can help to smooth things over. Integrations between your MAP, such as Marketo, and your CRM, such as Salesforce (SFDC) ensure that real-time insights and customer data transfer seamlessly between your two major digital platforms. That’s a unified ‘customer 360’ view common to both sales and marketing. Moreover, automated lead management will establish a clear criteria for lead scoring and improve hand-off so that only qualified leads reach sales. By respecting their time and optimizing their respective efforts, you can achieve revenue-driving harmony between marketing and sales. Building bespoke lead scoring systems and integrating core business platforms is an area of proven expertise for Bluprintx, so you can see this in action through key case studies including our tenfold MQL increase for Tiqets. Defining audience personas and automation frameworks You should have a solid understanding of your audience and its personas – but when was that assumed wisdom last challenged? Your MAP can provide an automated, objective segmentation of your audience based on behavior, demographics and buying signals. Many of these platforms now draw on AI models to support segmentation and can also provide a set of personas based on your customer data. So while you may already have an idea of audience profiles, leveraging this functionality you already have access to could open up new marketing and sales opportunities. You can also set up automated triggers to support personalized marketing – built around your newly segmented lists, should you find value in them. With a relatively low time investment, you can enable personalized customer journeys that respond to leads in real time, delivering ‘always on’ marketing that outstrips your competitors. Filling in-house skill gaps to accelerate campaign rollout Marketing Automation Platforms add value for businesses of all sizes. Not all teams have a dedicated email specialist, coding skillset, or graphic designer. But by setting up smart and accessible templates up front, you can make it easier for internal teams to roll out campaigns quickly. That can include new templates with bespoke plug-and-play modules, and a series of standardized processes to support them. Once automation processes are agreed, new content can be incorporated into tried-and-tested automation models. With templates set up and dedicated training from your chosen partner, you can build self-serve capabilities in your team and reduce reliance on third parties for new campaigns. So, is your Marketing Automation Platform filling all these roles? Because if you’re licensing popular platforms like Marketo, HubSpot and Salesforce, chances are you’re already paying for the functionality. Unlocking the potential of your marketing automation platform is one of the single most transformative projects you can undertake – and if you’re not sure where to start, we can help. Visit our dedicated hub for Marketing Automation or Marketo specifically, and when you’re ready, simply tell us about your goals to get started.
4 min read

Automating customer journeys: 4 steps to marketing automation personalization

Mina Saleeb, Global Director of Marketing Automation

Personalized marketing is a polarizing topic. For many it’s the gold-standard of content marketing, evidenced by McKinsey’s report that personalization can boost revenues by as much as 40%. Most customers see it that way too, with 80% willing to share their data in return for personalized deals and offers – a startling percentage given the difficulty marketers have traditionally faced building first party data amid the 21st century ‘data arms race’.  

For others, it adds to the content burden and may contribute to marketer burnout. In fact, Gartner has previously bucked the trend by predicting that 80% of marketers will abandon personalization efforts by 2025 due to lack of ROI or the perils of customer data management. We’re a year out from that date, and personalization isn’t slowing down. 

So, what if you could achieve the ROI benefits of personalization without significantly adding to your workload, and gain an advantage over competitors? Let’s examine how marketing automation platforms (MAPs) – including those you already license – can unlock personalization opportunities.  

Automate customer personas and segmentation

It might seem counterintuitive to start personalizing marketing by putting people into buckets, but it’s an important step – and one made easier through smart use of marketing automation platforms.  

Most popular marketing automation platforms can analyze your customer data and independently build personas, segments and marketing lists to support personalized activity. It’s no longer an arduous task for the marketer to build lists, but a candidate for automation. Certain platforms can assess your customer data based on behavioral and demographic insights, and suggest new segments or lists. This lays the groundwork for personalized marketing at scale, giving you groups of customers for which you’ll develop decision-driving messaging.  

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Build a bespoke lead scoring system

Whether you’re using marketing automation for a B2B or B2C model, a lead scoring system will help to ensure that the leads you are nurturing through personalized tracks are assessed correctly with a view to successful marketing-sales lead handover. 

It’s important to seek sales and marketing input for this stage. Understand the actions that are high value for each department and score them accordingly to truly track buying intent. At this point, it’s essential that your marketing automation platform be seamlessly integrated with your wider platforms in order to collect and implement scoring data.  

Think about everywhere you can track customer behavior – is your MAP recording touchpoints across your website, email, social media and outbound calls? Where you can’t call on inbuilt integrations, linking up third-party platforms can be a technical task. This is where choosing a partner capable of building bespoke integrations can add a lot of value so that all of your customer data is accounted for no matter where it originates.  

With a customer 360 view scored in real-time, your MAP has what it needs to assess and deliver personalized content to customers and focus on leads most likely to convert.  

Identify automated delivery triggers

Your customer behaviors and touchpoints will inform opportunities for personalized communication – and you can build those rules right into your marketing automation platform. That’s for general communications to keep leads warm, as well as specific opportunities including birthday discounts and revenue recovery from ecommerce basket abandons.  

Your marketing automation platform can keep customers engaged with personalized content, introducing and extending content journeys to support conversion. Identifying and setting up these triggers can automate significant portions of the customer journey, making each interaction more relevant and timely.  

Equip your MAP with compliant content

Up to this point, whether you’ve worked independently or with a proven partner, you’ve been building the infrastructure for personalized customer journeys delivered through your preferred marketing automation platform. Now, it’s time to stock your MAP with a bank of approved content and templates to enable rapid deployment.  

Keep in mind: 

  • Personalization – your templates need scope for flexibility and personalization. For example, customer names, product highlight modules for products they have viewed online, rules for offering discounts, and varying text modules which offer messaging for different personas.   
  • Compliance – ensure all templates are compliant with email regulations and your own industry standards. It’s best to get all content approved up front as a package, so you can load your customer journeys into the MAP all at once.   
  • Trigger integration – remember to tie each email template to the identified triggers to make sure customers receive the right content at the right time. A bank of always-on ‘run rate’ content is a helpful backup to personalized delivery, just make sure you’re not overwhelming customers.  

Setting up your marketing automation platform to enable personalized customer journeys is an investment in customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty. Better than that, it’s your simplest route to powerful personalization without shouldering a significant ongoing workload.  

We believe that by breaking it down across these four steps, MAP personalization is an accessible in-house project suitable for businesses of all sizes. But, there’s also a lot to be gained by working with an expert partner.  

As an experienced MAP partner built around bespoke solutions, Bluprintx can streamline rollout while helping to retire legacy platforms, cut platform spend and support in-house adoption for your business – delivering immediate results while working toward long term growth. If you’re interested, visit our marketing automation hub – or for Adobe-invested organizations, see how our partnership supercharges your growth.