Overcoming the challenges that hold back marketing automation

When chosen and implemented well, marketing solutions can transform effectiveness and deliver truly personalized experiences for customers.

However, often these benefits aren’t realized as the tool selection process fails to focus on 3 fundamentals. As I explained in my previous post, the first of these is about matching technology to the needs of your users. I’m now going to move onto the second fundamental – understanding what you want the technology to help you achieve.

?2?????????What are your current and future aims around customer journeys?

Every organization is subtly different in how it interacts with customers. That means the journeys you need to map and enable will vary from other businesses. The danger of not recognizing this is that you select tools based on what other companies have achieved with the technology, rather than understanding whether it truly supports your processes and journeys. ?

Therefore, the only way to prove the value of potential new technology is by taking the time to map your current and potential customer journeys and have the new technology prove to you that it can deliver on all of your needs.

Start by selecting sample customer journeys from amongst these common types:

• Simple communications: such as welcoming a new customer, dealing with cart abandonment or sending a newsletter to your customer base
• Intermediate journeys: more automated campaigns based on behavior and demographics that trigger particular actions and emails
• Advanced journeys: sophisticated journeys that cover multiple channels and interactions and are specific to situations and customer needs

Map out each step within these journeys and align them to the capabilities within the marketing automation technology you are considering. Get the technology vendor to demonstrate that their tool can automate all the steps in your example journeys. They need to prove to you whether they can fully automate your process, or whether they can only do 50%. That enables you to take a fact-based decision on whether they will deliver on your, and your customers’, needs.

?Do share your experiences and tips for selecting the right marketing technology in the comments section – and come back soon for the final instalment in this three-part series.