Marketing Automation

for Success
A practical guide to engaging customers,
creating sales-ready leads and boosting revenue
Marketing Automation for Success | What is Marketing Automation?

What is Marketing Automation?

O
ne of the biggest changes for B2B and B2C organizations is that the customer is Where Marketing
driving the buying process more and more. Particularly for B2B companies, the Automation Makes a
buying process frequently is a long and complex journey that requires the right Difference
management and nurturing. Marketing and sales strategies and activities must now • Change how emails and content are
connect with steps in the buyer journey to be able to engage customers and grow revenue. used to engage customers
Smart marketers have been turning to Marketing automation as a new way to successfully • Manage targeted, multi-touch
shepherd customer engagement opportunities that will lead to improved sales outcomes. engagement campaigns
Marketing has the growing responsibilities of attracting new customers and helping convert • Quickly set up landing pages and
more leads into sales. Manual processes cannot handle what it takes to produce relevant, web forms
personalized responses to customers throughout the buying process, matching the right • Send different messages to different
content to the right point in time. Marketing Automation platforms enable Marketers to create customer segments
and manage customer interactions with greater speed and customization. Marketing • Achieve more high quality, sales-
automation expands what can be accomplished for multiple campaigns, and raises the level ready leads
of sophistication for customer conversations. Marketers can go from setting up single email • Analyze which marketing
campaigns to designing entire sets of emails and multi-channel content that enrich and expand campaigns are most effective
customer interactions. • Decide where marketing campaign
dollars should be spent

Marketing Automation Impacts

More than Marketing
The immediate benefits of marketing automation are clear improvements to process efficiency,
flexibility and creativity. Both marketing and sales teams see significant time savings related to Marketing automation has
lead gen activities, especially when sales and marketing objectives are aligned. seen the fastest growth of any
Marketing automation also holds significant value in these areas: CRM-related segment in the
last 5 years
• Strategic approach to customer relationships and engagement that will yield a greater
(Source: Focus Research)
lifetime value
• Customer-focused vision shared with the entire organization for better outcomes
• Better integration and collaboration across the enterprise
• Effective contribution to continuous revenue growth

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 The “New” Email Marketing |  Marketing Automation for Success

A strategic view of marketing automation pays off when for Web and email activities that better target prospects. Marketers
organizations are planning programs and tactics to help achieve can create automated campaigns that work across multiple
long-term business growth. A strategy that shows positive impact channels (websites, email, and social media) to better connect with
across the organization, especially in terms of success metrics and ROI, customers at any point in the buying journey. Integrated marketing,
will gain faster support not only from the CMO, but the CEO and CFO. in partnership with marketing automation, improves the outcomes of
Marketing automation opens the door to integrated marketing marketing campaigns - marketing tactics executed in silos generally
strategies where campaigns take advantage of integrated processes produce a much lower ROI.

Marketing Automation and Emails

Website visitor downloads a whitepaper – Content for each Email is unique and relevant to
Marketing Automation kicks off a series of website visitor actions, interests and profile
Emails spread out over time

3
Email

1 2
Email Email
MSG 1 MSG 2 MSG 3

The “New” Email Marketing

Email marketing continues to be a top marketing channel. With the sophisticated
personalization made possible by marketing automation, email marketing takes on a Companies that invest in
fresh approach to produce optimal results and provide the right content for customers. marketing automation
Email drip campaigns leverage relevant messages and content usually triggered by solutions see 70% faster
customer interactions with the brand and where the customer is on the buyer journey. sales cycle times, and 54%
Marketing automation makes email more effective as a part of integrated multi-channel improvement in quota
marketing, where email can interplay with other content types to provide an exceptional achievement.
customer experience. (Source: Bulldog Solutions)

Marketing Automation in Action

Many organizations are new to marketing automation and do not fully understand the range
of uses for these new capabilities. While most will successfully leverage marketing automation
for certain use cases, there are many ways marketing automation makes a difference for
marketing, sales and the customer experience.
The most valuable use cases revolve around the customer: not only for nurturing leads but
for growing the ongoing customer relationship and for enhancing the customer experience
with the brand.

Marketing Automation |  3
Marketing Automation for Success   |  The “New” Email Marketing

MANY USES FOR MARKETING AUTOMATION…

• Customer Engagement Management: customer • Complex Campaign Management: enable and manage
segmentation, personalized content, marketing automation complex marketing campaigns across multiple channels,
processes, and analytics to engender positive interactions with understand how customers want to engage on each channel,
the brand during entire customer lifecycle deliver the content customers want on a particular channel
• Lead Management and Nurturing: sophisticated processes • Quarterly Sales Push: targeted campaigns to improve
to shepherd more leads to sales-readiness Response-Opportunity-Close ratios
• New Market Acquisition: campaigns to leverage new • Capture Purchase Behaviors: tap into digital footprints
customer segments, new product markets – get to market of customer online activities, send personalized messages,
faster, gather valuable intelligence on new customer attributes, build customer intelligence to detect changes in behavior and
refine marketing and sales processes in light of new intelligence predict future behavior; better knowledge for future offerings
• Optimize Email Quality and Relevance: decrease the effort and campaigns
required to send emails, personalize targeted messages, and • Post-sale Customer On-boarding: send informative emails
improve overall effectiveness to new customers to enable better product / service adoption,
• Maximize Selling Time for New Business: deeply qualify better customer satisfaction
the best prospects, spend selling time on high quality leads,
and greatly improve sales outcomes

Marketing Automation
Nurture Sales Automation

Not Sales Sales

Ready Ready
Prospect Prospect

TIMED TASKS
Lead Scoring

Email(s) Webinar(s) SALE

Web Personalization Custom Action(s)

Use Case: Lead Nurturing Without marketing automation it would be very difficult to maintain
Lead nurturing has become very important to today’s buying meaningful nurturing for every potential lead and customer contact.
process  – frequently, prospects are most of the way through the Marketing automation enables customer-segmented communication
buying journey before they’re ready to interact with the sales team. tracks to provide content and messaging based on prospect
So marketing must step up to ensure continuous engagement behavior, interest levels, and demographics. Manual processes could
with the prospect that will help move the prospect towards a never scale to meet the demands of such sophisticated and targeted
buying decision. lead nurturing.

4 |  Publication name

 Marketing Automation Done Right | Marketing Automation for Success

Marketing Automation Done Right

One of the most important outcomes of marketing automation should be improved customer
experiences. Why does the customer experience matter? It frequently increases the lifetime Lead generation marketing
value for individual customers, which obviously impacts business success and ongoing revenue. effectiveness increases with
Using tools like marketing automation to help provide positive customer interactions can lead to marketing automation.
customers becoming brand advocates. The value of customers as advocates: Priceless. Marketers report an increase
Through marketing automation processes, customer segmentation, personalization, in six key outcomes as a result
and lead scoring criteria, marketing and sales can get to know their customers better, and of implementing marketing
how they prefer to interact with the brand – for future as well as current needs. Marketing automation, with 6 in 10
automation done right can prevent a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to customer interactions and reporting increased quantity
can do a much better job of giving customers what they need when they want it. and quality of leads and close
Marketing automation has a very clear role for revenue growth, particularly through improved to half reporting increases in
collaboration with the sales team. By engendering more quality sales-ready leads in less time, the percent of leads accepted by
marketing enables the sales team to concentrate on what they do best – closing deals with the sales and the total marketing
right customers. With the right approach and strategy for marketing automation, organizations revenue contribution.
frequently see revenue results in the short term, as well as building sustainable processes for (Source: Lenskold Group)
on-going revenue growth.
Integrating marketing automation with CRM and SFA systems enables marketers to track
and analyze leads during the entire buying journey. Marketing campaigns can be more clearly
related to sales outcomes, revenue and ROI, to show the value of marketing efforts and help with
allocation of budget and resources to the specific campaigns that are delivering the best results.

“Even if my profit and customer value had not

increased the way they did, I’d still be better off,”
Griggs says. “I’d have customers that like me and
trust me that much more, and who will stick around
longer.”
(Source: MarketingSherpa marketing automation case study)

Avoid the Pitfalls

While marketing automation can improve multi-touch customer interactions, marketers
must be smart about every step to avoid making costly mistakes that result in lost customers,
lost opportunities, and lost revenue. Marketers must always remember that an overarching
marketing strategy should direct the implementation of marketing automation platforms. The
technology itself doesn’t engage and convert prospects – it’s the marketing plan in place that
makes it all happen.
Relevance has a short shelf life: keep an eye on automated content and triggers, and
conduct periodic reviews to ensure that messaging and content are appropriate, fresh and
aligned with the proper customer segmentation.

Marketing Automation | 5
Marketing Automation for Success   |  How the Pieces Fit Together

 Automated, Not Robotic  Keep the Content Focus on Customer Interests

Marketing automation can take personalization to the next level Most prospects convert into leads based on interest in a particular
based on lead scoring data and other customer intelligence. product or area of concern. Marketing automation content should
Content and messaging adaptability is essential and highly relate closely to those interests, until the prospect indicates a desire
possible with a marketing automation platform – opt for ‘natural to move on to other products or topics.
conversations’ with customers instead of stiff, impersonal ‘corporate
 Think Big, Start Small
speak’.
It’s important to construct an overarching marketing strategy, but
 Marketing Automation Also Means it also makes sense to start off with phased marketing automation
Content  Strategy implementations to understand how marketing automation works
Just as marketers need an overall marketing strategy to get the most best for the organization. Lessons learned from starting small will
out of marketing automation, the organization’s content strategy is inform and fine tune the overall approach. Faster wins from small
equally essential. Content must be high quality, useful and valuable steps help to gain buy-in and collaboration from the sales team, and
from the customer perspective – otherwise marketing automation ultimately, upper management.
messaging and content quickly become spam.

How the Pieces Fit Together

Marketing automation platforms orchestrate capabilities All of the components of marketing automation produce valuable
for improving lead management and engendering quality customer intelligence, particularly when marketing automation is
customer experiences with brands. Typical capabilities include integrated with CRM systems and customer service solutions. Such
lead scoring and nurturing; email / drip marketing; contact customer knowledge enables organizations to be more proactive
management and customer segmentation; personalization; and in providing positive customer interactions. Marketing automation
rapid creation of A/B landing pages. Robust process design and components like lead scoring contribute to the measurement
orchestration capabilities are also essential to successful marketing of the value of each customer engagement, throughout the
automation  implementations. customer  life cycle.
At the core of marketing automation is content: strategy, design, Equally important is aligning marketing automation processes
creation, and management. Well-designed and objectives with the sales process.
marketing automation processes should Through marketing automation and lead
drive an endless appetite for content. Marketing automation nurturing, marketing is now responsible
Highly successful marketing automation not just for the “top of the funnel”, but
pivots on content segmented by customer Processes also for the entirely new process of
attributes, to deliver the right content to moving an increasing number of leads to
the right customer at the right time. sales-readiness.
Automate marketing processes. Use for Newsletters + E-mails,
Data.Com, Salesforce or Contact modification.

Contact Segmentation
management Automatic & manually Manually

Automatic Contact
Contacts
groups
Analytics
Activities

Scoring
Track visitors. Use for Content Differentiate contacts. Use
personalization or general for Newsletters or Content
information. Identify interesting clients. Use for sales representative. personalization.

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 10 Real Life Examples of Marketing Automation | Marketing Automation for Success

Real Life Examples

10 of Marketing Automation

THE FOLLOWING BUSINESS CASES show the most common uses for subscriptions, and others. The contact attributes can be used in the
marketing automation. They vary in starting point, or “trigger”, personalization of your website content enabling you to tailor
which can either be started manually or automatically. Any of these visitor experience according to their specific interests, which provides
triggers can be set to kick off your predefined automated steps; your an additional communication channel to email.
workflow, of which you can have many. Each marketing automation Marketing automation is also closely linked to your lead scoring
workflow consists of a starting point, multiple steps (which activities (a system that helps you classify website visitors according
sometimes include decision points), and a final step. to how likely they are to become customers using a points/ scoring
While sending an email would be the most typical action in these system; for more information go to: http://kentico.com/lead-
examples, marketing automation is more than an email workflow scoring), as not only can scores by used as triggers, but a user’s score
engine. Your workflow steps can include the updating of contact can be affected by their progress through a workflow.
attributes, the importing of data to your CRM, the management of

Topic-oriented lead nurturing,

1. trigger: content download
Create a set of emails that focus on an industry-specific topic The first email in your workflow might point to your “How
being covered by your inbound marketing efforts. Let’s say you’re to Successfully Mate Giraffes” webinar recording and the
in the giraffe business and your topics are “giraffe breeding second email might promote your “10 Things You Should
equipment”, “giraffe stabling” and “giraffe reproduction” you Know about Giraffe Birth” article.
might have a couple of articles, white papers or webinar If the visitor reads both emails, they can be sent a discount coupon
recordings ready for each topic. for further enticement and you might ‘tag’ them as being interested
As an example, when a site visitor downloads the report: in giraffe reproduction, which changes their status to “reproduction”.
“Introduction to Giraffe Reproduction”, from your website, This new status might then also be used to personalize their
it can trigger the marketing automation workflow entitled experience of your website, with content being tailored to the
“Giraffe Reproduction”, within which you have multiple theme of reproduction. Finally you can trigger an invitation to
materials prepared that cover the specific topic of interest. subscribe to your Giraffe Newsletter on Reproduction.

Marketing Automation | 7
Marketing Automation for Success | 10 Real Life Examples of Marketing Automation

The starting point (trigger) for this marketing automation

workflow is the download of a particular document – in this
case, the “Introduction to Giraffe Reproduction” report.

Increase sales readiness, trigger:

2. achieving high lead score
Examine your sales funnel to find out which action/activity most seen them on a tour of your stables. You can now set up your
closely precedes actual sales and is therefore key to converting workflow so that, once contacts have been identified as being
the customer. Set up a lead scoring system on your website and highly engaged with your offer and a good fit for your business,
once a leads reaches a certain score, automatically offer them they are offered a discount on a tour. After they attend the
the activity you identified as being key. This will help you to turn tour, they receive a follow-up email and, with their contact status
a bigger percentage of your leads into real opportunities in a having been set up and imported into your CRM, your sales team
shorter time. is equipped to immediately start working with them.
Coming back to your giraffe business; let’s say you have realized
that most people are convinced to buy a giraffe once they have

Achieving a certain score is the trigger here; however, we still want

to make sure we don’t bother those contacts who have already
been on the giraffe tour, so we exclude this group by using the
Condition field as shown in the screenshot.

Abandoned Shopping Cart, trigger:

3. shopping cart abandonment
Leverage the most common scenario for e-shops. Automatically 3. offer a special discount to your loyal, long-term buyers
contact those site visitors who added any item to their shopping (“You were about to buy a third giraffe – get it with free
cart, but for some reason didn’t complete the buying process. delivery now!”)
You can contact them to:
1. remind them of their forgotten purchase (“There is a giraffe
left in your shopping cart!”)
2. get valuable feedback on why they didn’t finish the purchase
(“Not enough space for a giraffe?”)

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 10 Real Life Examples of Marketing Automation | Marketing Automation for Success

Upsell, Cross sell and Cycle-based sell, trigger:

4. past purchases and sales cycles
Another great example of using Marketing automation for any 3. Cycle-based sell: Offer products that are being purchased in
e-commerce website is based on data from past customer a cycle (as a Oxpecker’s life expectancy is lower than that of a
purchases. Leverage this data using one, or a combination of giraffe, offer your customers their just-in-time replacement)
these 3 methods:
1. Upsell: Offer new/better versions of what they purchased The following marketing automation workflow covers cross sell
(suggest a better, faster, stronger giraffe) and cycle-based sale from the starting point of purchasing a giraffe.
2. Cross sell: Offer complimentary products to their purchase The first part of the workflow represents an offer of a complimentary
(e.g. the parasite-eating Oxpeckers (tick birds) that hitch a ride product – the above-mentioned Oxpecker bird. If the bird is bought,
on giraffes’ backs, helping them stay parasite-free) the marketing automation continues with the cycle-based sell.

The initial trigger here is the purchase

of a particular product – a giraffe, in
this example.

After Sale Support, trigger: sales cycle stage Customer Happiness, trigger: high or low
5. Establish an ongoing positive relationship with your 6. Net Promoter Score
customers by providing them exceptional after-sales Having a regular survey on customer satisfaction is a
support. This might include links to helpful training material precondition to this use case. Determine a score that
and examples of the best ways to use the product, as well as represents respondent happiness and allocate your
assistance and future upgrades. respondents to “happy” and “unhappy” groups. Send a
“thank you” email to the happy ones and even reward
Wake Inactive Leads, trigger: them with exclusive content. Then, further segment your
7. inactivity of leads “unhappy” respondents according to their reasons for being
Build up a list of contacts that previously showed a high unhappy and try to make them happy by addressing the
level of interest in your product, but haven’t interacted issues they mentioned in the survey.
with your site or company for a certain period of time. Send
an exclusive offer or discount to these leads to re-engage
them. This approach not only restores inactive leads, but
also helps clean up your subscription lists for a higher email
deliverability and click-through rate.

Marketing Automation | 9
Marketing Automation for Success | 10 Real Life Examples of Marketing Automation

Event communication automation, trigger:

8. manually or event registration
Whether organizing a live, one-to-one or online event, your approaches, send registrants additional information on the
communication with your customer prior to and following each program, nearby accommodation and transportation. Provide
event will be the same. Leverage marketing automation to fully those who have yet to register with further arguments for why
automate these processes and avoid delays or inaccuracy in they should attend, or even a last minute discount and the
communication. chance to register again. After the event, send a “thank you”
Perhaps you’re holding a conference on “Giraffe Population email to attendees, in which you also ask for their feedback and
Management”. Use the initial email to ask your current customers offer them links to recorded sessions.
to register for the conference. As the time of the conference

The trigger for this one can be started manually, as

shown in the marketing automation workflow picture,
or started automatically after a site visitor registers for
the event.

Highly Engaged Persons, trigger: Employees Training, trigger: manual

8.
9. certain lead score and activities 8.
10. Automate training for employees and add tests for them
Set up a group of contacts whose members achieved a to take after particular parts of the training have been
certain lead score and met certain additional conditions, completed. This can be invaluable not only when new
such as repeated site visits, to build a list of your unpaid employees join the company, but also to educate current
evangelists. Offer newsletter subscription or the opportunity employees about trends, new company policies, etc.
of joining you on social media to use these highly engaged Marketing automation also allows the manager who
people as additional advocates of your product and oversees the training processes to see at which step of the
company. training the trainees are at any given time.

10 | Marketing Automation
 Marketing Automation for Success

THE BUILT-IN MARKETING AUTOMATION OF KENTICO EMS ALLOWS YOU TO:

• easily set up, change and manage marketing automation • rely on a solid CMS with an 9-year history of powering over
workflows and their triggers 16,000 websites, including those of 60 companies from the
• use Marketing Automation together with Content Global Fortune 500
Personalization, Contact Management and Lead Scoring
• integrate marketing automation with Salesforce
• overview, manage and report on the current state of contacts
within the Marketing Automation workflow
• choose from dozens of pre-set activities, conditions, triggers and To learn more about marketing automation in Kentico EMS:
steps or easily add custom ones https://www.kentico.com/marketing-automation

Marketing automation is just one of many online marketing features

“Our focus is to generate demand for our clients’
that make Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solution (KEMS) the
products and brand, and Kentico EMS gives us a
integrated customer experience management solution of choice,
complete, cost-effective solution. Every aspect of the
helping you optimize your website and achieve higher campaign
modern marketing lifecycle is easily, efficiently, and
ROI.
centrally managed - from creating and distributing
Unlike other Customer Experience Management (CXM) products,
emails, to tracking the effectiveness of landing pages,
KEMS is an easy-to-use, out-of-the-box marketing solution that allows
to the personalization of site content and the display
you to deliver real-time customer-centric marketing across channels
of content to multiple devices. Kentico EMS provides
and analyze results almost instantly.
us the platform to focus on marketing and customer
engagement and less on technology.”

Robert Bean,
Vice President, Interactive Director at Burns Marketing, CO, USA
To learn more about Kentico EMS:
http://www.kentico.com/KenticoEMS

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