THE EVOLUTION OF SHOPPER MARKETING B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 1

B2B MARKETING
AUTOMATION

BEST PRACTICES GUIDE

 B2B MARKETING Best Practices Guide
AUTOMATION
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3

What Is B2B Marketing Automation? 4

Core Functions 6
Specialty Functions 10
Key Considerations 13
Vendor Landscape 15

Analyst Bottom Line 18

Action Plan 19

About Demand Metric 28

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 3

Executive Summary
Business-to-business (B2B) marketing automation systems are among the
hottest sectors of the technology industry. This Best Practices Guide will help to ensure
that you are among the successful majority
Leading vendors including Eloqua, Marketo, and Pardot have been
of B2B marketing automation buyers, not
acquired or gone public at tremendous valuations. Major software
the unhappy remnant.
companies including IBM, Oracle, Salesforce.com, Adobe, and Teradata
have purchased B2B or business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing automa-
tion products.

Venture capitalists have invested several hundred million dollars in start-ups FIGURE 1: B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION VENDOR REVENUE
and existing firms. Yet, despite this growth, fewer than 20% of B2B
marketers have purchased an integrated marketing automation system 2013 $100 million
(although many more use email, Web analytics, and other component
technologies).1 Even more alarming, many past buyers do not use their 2012 $225 million
systems fully, and a significant portion report little benefit from their
investment.2 2011 $325 million

The lesson of these statistics is not that marketing automation doesn’t

2010 $500 million
work. The same studies show that the majority of users are satisfied and
productive. Rather, the point is that marketing automation works only
2009 $750 million
when marketers deploy their systems effectively.

1 http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/2013/02/why-is-marketing-automation-growing-so.html
2 http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/2013/10/marketing-automation-user-satisfaction.html
WHAT IS B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION?
What Is B2B Marketing Automation?
The label “marketing automation” might apply to any type of computer
system used by marketers: email, ad buying, search engine optimization,
Web site personalization, Web analytics, budgeting, planning, predictive
modeling, segmentation, Webinars, mobile messaging, lead manage-
ment, social media, and much more.
But over the past few years the term has increasingly taken on a narrower
meaning of products that offer B2B marketers an integrated combina-
tion of email, Web behavior tracking, landing pages, multi-step nurture
campaigns, lead scoring, integration with sales automation software, and
related analytics.
In fact, a major selling point for marketing automation has been its
ability to replace multiple single-purpose systems (often called “point
solutions”).
The price of marketing automation is not always less than the combined
fees of the point solutions it replaces. But the savings in training and time
spent moving data between the systems are substantial. These savings
are especially important to small businesses where the same person
would operate several of the point solutions herself.
Using the same system for different marketing tasks matters less at
larger organizations, where different people manage email, advertising,
Web pages, and analytics.
B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 4
But those organizations gain greater benefits from the shared customer data-
base, easier coordination across channels, better planning and budgeting,
and tighter control over user access to specific functions and data.
The scope of many marketing automation systems has recently expanded
to incorporate social media publishing and, somewhat less common,
social monitoring and social promotions.
Some systems have also added “inbound marketing” functions
designed to attract Web traffic, including blogging, Webinars, search
engine optimization, and paid Web advertising. However, most
marketers still use separate systems for the “inbound” functions.
Instead of trying to replace those systems, most marketing automation
vendors have made it easier for those systems to integrate with the
primary marketing automation database.
WHAT IS B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION? B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 5

As already noted, most systems now described as “marketing auto- Most B2C marketing automation products were originally designed
mation” are designed for business marketers. This wasn’t always the as “on premise” software, which was purchased outright by the client,
case. The phrase “marketing automation” was originally applied to B2C installed on the client’s servers, and managed by the client’s staff.
systems such as Unica and Aprimo. Like the B2B systems, those earlier
Many large B2C deployments are still handled this way. Today’s B2C
B2C marketing automation products offered an integrated solution
systems usually offer some type of SaaS option, which may or may not
that supported several channels with a shared customer database and
have a true multi-tenant architecture underneath.
shared analytics.
B2B marketing automation systems were specifically designed to
The specific channels and features differed because different marketing
provide marketers with features that were missing from sales automa-
methods were important when those systems were originally developed
tion systems. Yet there is always a question of whether marketing auto-
during the 1990’s.
mation should be part of sales automation or sales automation’s parent
The more important distinction, which still remains, is that the B2C category of customer relationship management (CRM) software.
systems attach to an external marketing database with nearly any design.
Some marketing automation features are now more common in CRM,
B2B systems maintain their own customer database, with core structures
including landing pages, lead scoring, some analytics, and some social
that mirror sales automation databases so the two can easily exchange
marketing. But others remain mostly missing, including advanced
data. Early B2B marketing automation systems were extremely limited in
segmentation, multi-step nurture campaigns, and Web behavior tracking.
the deviations they allowed from this core data structure.
This is largely due to technical constraints that make it difficult for CRM
Some of today’s systems are considerably more flexible, but this is still
systems to support all marketing automation functions. These constraints
an area that requires close examination by prospective buyers.
will probably be overcome in the long run but, for the immediate future,
Another important difference between B2B and B2C marketing automa- the categories will probably stay distinct.
tion is that nearly all B2B systems are designed as “cloud” (Software as a
The one exception is “all in one” systems for very small businesses,
Service, or SaaS) systems, meaning the client only purchases a subscrip-
such as Infusionsoft and Ontraport, which already combine CRM and
tion to software that is actually run by the vendor.
marketing automation features. They can do this because their relatively
It also typically implies a “multi-tenant” architecture, meaning many small data volumes make it easier to support CRM and marketing auto-
clients run on the same instance of the software and security procedures mation requirements on the same architecture.
ensure each client’s information remains separate and private.
CORE FUNCTIONS
Core Functions
B2B marketing automation systems all provide the following core functions.
However, they differ considerably in the details of their implementations.
Email
Users can compose and send mass emails to lists of
prospects and customers. This is a critical difference
from CRM systems, which let salespeople send emails
to individuals but often have very limited mass mailing
capabilities.
Nearly all marketing automation systems support
personalization (inserting data values such as the recip-
ient’s name) and some allow dynamic content (inserting
different messages based on variables such as the recip-
ient’s industry).
Other differences involve the creation and use of stan-
dard templates, formatting and previewing for different
devices (smartphone, tablet, desktop), spam scoring,
and support for large message volumes.
B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 6
Landing Pages
Users can build Web forms that post information to the
underlying marketing database. These forms are typically
hosted by the marketing automation system, freeing the
marketers from dependence on their company Web site.
Some systems can generate forms to add to the company
Website and/or provide code that lets external forms post
to the marketing database.
Advanced features include pre-filling forms with known
data, automatically replacing answered questions with
new ones (“progressive profiling”), and asking different
questions based on previous answers or other customer
data (“branching”).
Some systems let users build surveys and multipage
microsites in addition to simple forms. All systems make it
easy to embed links to forms in system-generated emails.
CORE FUNCTIONS
Behavior Tracking
The system keeps a record of email and Web behaviors
such as email opens, link clicks, and page views. Indi-
viduals are tracked by dropping browser cookies that
identify repeat visitors; when a visitor explicitly identifies
herself by filling out a form or logging in, the identity is
connected to the cookie.
Tracking is sometimes limited to emails and landing
pages created by the marketing automation system but
can usually be extended to other webpages by embed-
ding a vendor-provided bit of Javascript.
Different technologies are needed to track behaviors on
mobile devices; some vendors do this better than others.
Systems also differ in how much behavior detail they
store, which data is accessible to external systems, and
how it can be used for segmentation, event triggers,
analyses, and other purposes.
B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 7
Lead Scoring
Users can define formulas that attach a category label or
numeric score to each lead. The formulas draw on behav-
iors and profile data stored in the marketing database.
Many systems create two scores, one reflecting the lead’s
similarity to the company’s target customers and the other
reflecting the lead’s apparent level of interest.
Systems vary considerably in the types of data available
for scoring, the sophistication of the scoring formulas, how
often scores are recalculated, whether scores are influ-
enced by all leads from the same company, and whether
one lead can have multiple scores.
Lead scores may be exposed to sales people through the
CRM integration; some marketing automation vendors
offer special modules to let sales people view and under-
stand this information.
CORE FUNCTIONS
Nurture Campaigns
Names in the database can be sent a sequence of
messages. These are typically aimed at people who are
not yet ready for direct sales contact, but the campaigns
might also have other purposes, such as encouraging
renewal or use of new system features.
Some systems send everyone the same set of messages
at fixed intervals (“drip campaign”). Others keep the same
intervals but vary the messages based on user attributes.
Some can deliver entirely different experiences based
on responses to previous messages (“branching”).
Systems vary in how users enter a campaign, how the
campaign flows are defined, how treatments can vary
within a flow, what data is available to guide treatments,
what actions can be triggered by a campaign, what
messaging channels are supported, and what informa-
tion is available for reporting.
Nurture campaigns are a very powerful part of marketing
automation, but complex campaigns can be difficult to
design and execute. Campaign features probably differ
more between systems than any other marketing auto-
mation function. Users need to look carefully to find a
system that matches their requirements and skills.
B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 8
CRM Integration
At a minimum, the marketing automation system must
be able to pass new leads to CRM. In practice, nearly
all marketing automation systems can both send and
receive CRM data, and have synchronization features,
to ensure that changes made in one system are later
copied into the other.
Systems vary in the types of data that are shared, the
control users have over which changes are accepted, how
processes such as campaign assignments are coordi-
nated, how new leads are added to the CRM system, and
whether marketing automation can send alerts or assign
tasks to sales people.
Typically, only some marketing automation data is copied
to the CRM database. Other information, such as detailed
behavior histories, is displayed on CRM screens but read
from marketing automation files. Most CRM integration
works through vendor-published Application Program
Interfaces (APIs) that are open to all systems.
Access to special features or to CRM systems without a
published API may still require custom programming.
CORE FUNCTIONS B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 9

Analytics
Marketing automation systems provide basic statistics
on email performance (messages sent, opened, clicked,
bounced, etc.), landing pages (views, unique visitors,
form fills, etc.), and campaign events (leads added, leads
removed, active leads, leads per stage, etc.).

Some provide more detailed information, better visual-

izations, drill-down into segments, and custom reports.

Automated predictive modeling is occasionally available,

but usually relies on external software. Some systems
create return on investment reports based on revenue
data from CRM or other systems.

One key challenge with such reports is that CRM

systems often don’t attach the revenue to the contacts
or accounts that exist in marketing automation.
SPECIALTY FUNCTIONS B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 10

Specialty Functions
As the core marketing automation features have become established, vendors have expanded in several directions.
These include social marketing, marketing administration, and Web traffic generation. Each category has its own functions.

Social Marketing Feature Social Marketing Feature

Social Monitoring Social Publishing and Sharing

This is listening for public mentions of a client’s product
or other keywords on social media such Twitter, Face-
book, LinkedIn, and blogs. Advanced monitoring might
use artificial intelligence to classify the mentions and
direct them to appropriate individuals for response.
Some systems also identify influencers or import influ-
ence measurements from external sources such as
Klout, PeerIndex, and Kred.
It is now fairly common for B2B marketing automation to
let users add sharing buttons to system-generated content
such as email and webpages.
These buttons let recipients repost the content to their
own social networks. Many systems also can now publish
content directly to major social networks through the
client’s own accounts.
These systems also providing tracking reports to show
readership and traffic generation.
SPECIALTY FUNCTIONS
Social Marketing Feature
Social Promotions
Some systems support specialized promotions through
Facebook and other networks, or run general promo-
tions such as contests and games.
Some can also produce landing pages, surveys, and
similar contents that is tailored to specific social networks.
Marketing Administration Feature
Budgeting and Planning
Basic features are attaching expected costs and revenue
to campaigns and comparing these with actual results.
More advanced features include: assigning campaigns
to hierarchies related to product, regions, strategies, or
customer segments; estimating costs based on volumes;
and associating costs with revenues for return on invest-
ment reporting.
B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 11
Marketing Administration Feature
Revenue Forecasts
Some systems assign leads to funnel stages and forecast the
timing and amount of revenue they will produce, based on
historical data.
This is similar to the sales pipeline forecasts in CRM systems
except that the leads are at an earlier stage in their lifecycle.
The stages may be a simple sequential funnel or more elabo-
rate flows that move customers in specified patterns among
alternate states.
Marketing Administration Feature
Project Management and Workflow
These features let marketers define the tasks required to
create a promotion, assign those tasks to individuals, and
track progress. Some B2C marketing automation products
offer very sophisticated project scheduling features, but
these are rare among B2B systems.
More B2B systems have basic workflow to manage content
development, such as tracking approvals and revisions.
SPECIALTY FUNCTIONS B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 12

Traffic Generation Feature Traffic Generation Feature

Blogging and Content Marketing Advertising Management

Some systems provide built-in blogging and website
management tools. This makes it easier to add subscribers’
names to the marketing database, add blog and Web
readership to behavior profiles, and publish personalized
promotions on blogs and webpages.
Similar advantages apply to managing other types of
content, such as downloadable white papers, within the
marketing automation system.
An increasing number of systems integrate directly with
search engine advertising tools like Google AdWords to
set up and manage paid search campaigns from within
their marketing automation interface.
This makes it easier to identify the campaigns associated
with each response and provides easier integration with
planning, budgeting, and return on investment analysis.

Traffic Generation Feature

Search Engine Optimization

These features let marketers specify the search terms or
types of readers they wish to target, and then assess the
likely performance of webpages, emails, and other poten-
tial marketing content against those goals.

At its simplest, this involves scanning the content for

keywords and other attributes that help with search engine
rankings. More advanced systems can recommend addi-
tional search terms to target or suggest content to add.
KEY CONSIDERATIONS B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 13

Key Considerations
The functions described so far are supported by underlying technologies that have a major impact on user experience.
Issues to consider include:

Content Management Database Management

Emails, landing pages, and other marketing content are Early B2B marketing automation databases often held little
usually created within the system using some sort of more than a single profile record and behavior history for
visual designer. each individual, with only a handful of user-defined fields.

Beneath this layer, systems differ in how easily content
can be shared across promotions, how it is stored and
accessed, and the controls provided over versions and
changes.
Multi-national organizations will also be concerned
about support for multiple languages.
Even today, many systems rely on email addresses as a
unique identifier for each individual. Some systems are
now much more advanced, allowing additional user-de-
fined tables, multi-layer data structures, and user identity
matching on multiple keys.
There are often still limits on the total amount of data that
can be stored or the amount that can be extracted to other
systems. Marketers with large data volumes or exten-
sive analytical needs should examine database features
closely before selecting a system.
KEY CONSIDERATIONS
User Rights Management
Smaller marketing departments are often comfortable
letting all users access all system functions and data,
but larger departments typically need to control who
does what.
These limits might reflect divisions along product lines,
geographic regions, or functional specialties. Larger
organizations are also more likely to require a supervisor
or compliance officer to approve a program someone
else has created before it is released.
Systems vary substantially in how finely they can control
user authorities and how easily users can manage
complex authorization hierarchies.
B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 14
Open API and Apps
Most marketing automation systems were originally
designed as self-contained systems with little integration
to other software except for CRM.
Today, major vendors have published APIs that let external
systems access marketing automation data and functions.
Many also let the marketing automation system itself
access other products’ APIs.
Typical uses include: integration with Webinar systems
to send invitations, register participants, and track
attendance; integration with search engine advertising
campaigns; and integration with external data sources to
clean data and enhance customer profiles.
Some vendors have created their own application market-
places that make it easy to find and incorporate third-party
systems with a few mouse clicks.
VENDOR LANDSCAPE B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 15

Vendor Landscape
Marketing automation is a composite of several “point solutions” within FIGURE 2: ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE
the larger category of marketing software.
Enterprise Management
To put it in a broader context, marketing systems are part of the CRM
environment (broadly defined as including marketing, sales, and service BACK OFFICE CUSTOMER INTERACTION

systems), which in turn is nested within customer interaction management

(incorporating CRM and website management), which sits alongside “back Manufacturing Web

office” systems (accounting, human resources, and manufacturing).

CRM
Human Resources
Marketing
Integrated suites exist at every level of this structure: complete enterprise
Sales
management systems like SAP; complete customer interaction systems
Accounting Service
like IBM; complete CRM systems like Salesforce.com. Since these suites
all contain some form of marketing automation, they are all part of the
competitive landscape.
FIGURE 3: MARKETING STRUCTURE
But companies that purchase such suites are rarely focusing on
marketing automation as their main priority, so the most relevant Marketing
competition for B2B marketing automation vendors is still other B2B
MARKETING AUTOMATION Budgets &
marketing automation vendors. Planning
Advertising

Revenue Social
Web Web Analytics
Forecasts Monitoring

Managing Social
Landing Pages Analysis
Projects Publishing

Managing Social
Lead Scoring Blogging
Campaigns Promotion

CRM Integration Marketing Content

SEO
Database Marketing

CHART 3: MARKETING STRUCTURE

VENDOR LANDSCAPE B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 16

Those vendors fall into three rough groups, based largely on the size and sophistication of their target clients.
Some vendors serve more than one client group, but each is probably best suited to a single segment.

Micro-Business Vendors Small to Mid-Size Business Vendors

These serve the very small businesses, typically under 20
employees and often with fewer than five. Companies this small
rarely have a professional marketer on staff, so the owner or one
other person runs the system.
Because one person handles all the marketing and often all the
sales, buyers want a single system that offers as many functions as
possible. This simplifies training and avoids the need for technical
skills to move data from one system to another. Vendors serving
this market stress extreme ease of use, comprehensive scope,
limited complexity, and low price. This is the realm of “all in one”
systems that combine CRM with marketing automation.
Major vendors include Infusionsoft, Ontraport, and Venntive.
This segment is also served by several systems that add nurture
campaign capabilities directly to a CRM database; while not true
marketing automation, they meet the same purpose for many
companies. Examples include CoreMotives and ClickDimensions,
which both integrate with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ZohoCRM.
This segment is also served by several companies that specialize
in small service businesses, such as dentists and plumbers,
providing help with appointments and local advertising. This group
includes companies like ReachLocal and DemandForce. Pricing for
a full marketing automation solution in this segment usually starts
around $200 to $400 per month, although lower cost options are
often available for companies who want only limited features.
This is the heart of the marketing automation industry, where
the most vendors compete for the most revenue (although
the micro-business vendors have more individual clients).
Clients in this group range from $5 million to $500 million in
revenue, with exceptions in either direction. These firms have
at least one full-time marketer and a separate sales staff.
They run more complicated marketing programs and
use most core marketing automation features, content
marketing, social publishing, and promotions. However,
these marketers are less interested in integrated CRM,
advertising, and website management, since those are
often handled by someone else. Major vendors in this
segment include Act-On Software, HubSpot, and Sales-
force/Pardot for smaller clients, and Marketo, Oracle/
Eloqua, and Silverpop serving larger firms. This segment
also includes systems that are sold primarily to marketing
agencies who use them to support their own clients.
This group includes Optify, Net-Results, and LeadLife. The
sector also includes many other, small vendors with strong
products. These often have specialized features or exper-
tise that make them worth considering if they happen to
fit the buyer’s needs. Pricing in this segment starts from
$1,000 to $2,500 per month.
VENDOR LANDSCAPE B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 17

Enterprise Vendors
These serve businesses over $500 million in revenue.
Those firms have large marketing departments, often
reaching several hundred users in multiple locations.

They need high scalability, precise user rights manage-

ment, advanced budgeting and planning, revenue fore-
casting, project management, and extensive content
management including multiple language support.

Oracle/Eloqua is the leading specialist in this group,

with competition from Marketo and Silverpop among
conventional B2B marketing automation vendors and,
for the largest accounts, from B2C marketing automation
systems including IBM/Unica, Teradata, Adobe/Neolane,
SAS, RedPoint, and SAP.

Prices among this group start around $5,000 per month

and often reach much higher.
ANALYST BOTTOM LINE B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 18

Analyst Bottom Line

The benefits of B2B marketing automation are firmly estab-
lished, but they are not guaranteed.

Marketers need to understand what these systems can

do, identify how their company will use them, and pick a
system that matches their needs.

They then need to follow a disciplined implementation

strategy that ensures they have the training, resources,
programs, and sales alignment necessary to gain real value
from their investment.

Careful execution will ensure they become part of the

successful majority of marketing automation users, not the
unhappy minority whose deployments have failed to match
expectations.
THE EVOLUTION OF SHOPPER MARKETING B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 19

B 2 B M A R K E T I N G AU TO M AT I O N
ACTION PLAN
Cloud technology and monthly subscriptions make it very simple to deploy a marketing
automation system, but successful implementation is still hard.
Here are some key practices to get full value from your investment.
ACTION PLAN B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 20

1 Select

2 Define Pick the Right Vendor

3 Improve Marketing automation systems all have the same list of core
functions, but there are still significant differences in the prod-
ucts and the vendors behind them. Every function can be imple-
4 Align mented at different levels of sophistication and ease of use.
Marketers must carefully assess their own requirements to find
the right balance power and complexity.
5 Invest
In addition to features, vendors differ in their size, support
services, partner networks, pricing, and industry expertise.
6 Strategize Finding a vendor you’re comfortable with – and checking with
references to be sure your impression is correct – is essential to
a successful relationship.
7 Plan
Marketing Automation Vendor Evaluation

8 Measure

VIEW RESOURCE
ACTION PLAN B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 21

1 Select

Define Scenarios
2 Define

3 Improve It’s easy to say that buyers should define their requirements, but
many first time marketing automation users really don’t know
what they need.
4 Align
One solution is to create scenarios that describe the specific
steps needed to complete projects you plan to execute, like
5 Invest running a newsletter program or nurture campaign. Once you’ve
done this, have potential vendors demonstrate how they would
execute the scenario using their system.
6 Strategize
The goal is to see what’s required to do real work, rather than
just looking at a disconnected sample of whatever features the
vendor wants to highlight.
7 Plan
Make sure your scenarios include some of the more complicated
marketing programs you intend to develop, such as elaborate
8 Measure segmentations or event-based branches in campaign flows.
These are where product weaknesses will be most visible.
ACTION PLAN B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 22

1 Select

2 Define Improve Data Quality

3 Improve Don’t be surprised if your initial load uncovers poor data in the
sales automation system. If anything, you should be surprised if
it doesn’t.
4 Align
Sales users can easily ignore obsolete, incorrect, or duplicate
records, but your marketing automation system will treat every
5 Invest entry as equally valid unless you tell it differently.

Take a preliminary look at the sales data as soon as possible,

and work with sales people to find ways to eliminate or correct
6 Strategize
bad information.

Then agree on standards and audit processes so you’re sure

7 Plan that only good information is shared between the systems in
the future.

8 Measure
ACTION PLAN B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 23

1 Select

2 Define Align with Sales

3 Improve Data quality is just one area where marketing automation

requires new levels of cooperation.

4 Align Other key interactions with sales include defining target

customers, building formulas for lead scoring, setting rules
for when leads are passed to sales, creating the lead transfer
5 Invest process, and agreeing how much effort sales will invest in
marketing-generated leads.

You’ll need even more coordination and training if your marketing

6 Strategize
automation system sends alerts to sales people, assigns leads
directly, or shows sales people the lead scores and behavioral
profiles that marketing automation has created.
7 Plan
Sales & Marketing Alignment Tool

8 Measure

VIEW RESOURCE
ACTION PLAN B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 24

1 Select

2 Define Invest in Training

3 Improve No matter how easy the marketing automation system looks in

sales demonstrations, your staff will still need training to use it
effectively. This training extends beyond system operations to
4 Align
how to design effective programs, monitor performance, and
improve results over time.

5 Invest Be sure the vendor’s start-up process leaves you with more
than a handful of prebuilt programs your staff isn’t able to
adjust. And be sure to continue training after the initial deploy-
6 Strategize ment so you staff can deepen their skills and learn new system
functions over time.

7 Plan Demand Generation Training Course

8 Measure
S TA R T L E A R N I N G
ACTION PLAN B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 25

1 Select

2 Define Map the Buying Process

3 Improve Customer understanding is the foundation of marketing success.

Map the stages in the buying cycle, with particular attention to the
portion before leads are turned over to sales.
4 Align
Then match your marketing programs against the stages to iden-
tify any gaps where you are failing to guide leads to the next step.
5 Invest This will be your framework for future program development and
analysis.

6
You’ll further refine this framework over time by identifying different
Strategize buyer personas and constructing programs to meet their particular
needs.

7 Plan
Buying Process Stage Template

8 Measure

VIEW RESOURCE
ACTION PLAN B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 26

1 Select

2 Define Set a Long-Term Plan

3 Improve You can’t do everything at once. Start your marketing automa-

tion deployment with some basic campaigns that use primary
features such as emails and landing pages. But to be sure you
4 Align don’t get stuck at that level, set a long-term plan to add more
advanced features such as lead scoring and social media
integration.
5 Invest
Track progress against the plan as part of your standard perfor-
mance reporting to ensure it doesn’t get lost amid the inevi-
6 Strategize table short-term crises. You may not truly need every feature
included in your marketing automation system, but remember
that the most successful marketers generally use the broadest
7 Plan range of capabilities.

Marketing Automation Strategy Scorecard

8 Measure

VIEW RESOURCE
ACTION PLAN B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 27

1 Select

2 Define Measure Results

3 Improve If there is one key to marketing automation success, it is

measuring results so you can prove system value and track
improvements.
4 Align
Measures start with outcomes, such as lead counts and
response rates, but should extend to efficiency metrics, such as
5 Invest cost per qualified lead and, ultimately, to value measures such
as incremental revenue and return on investment.

Measurements must always be placed in context by comparing

6 Strategize
performance against plan or past results. Reliable measurement
supports other critical disciplines such as rigorous testing and fact-
based decisions, which themselves contribute hugely to success.
7 Plan
Marketing Automation Metrics Dashboard

8 Measure
VIEW RESOURCE
ABOUT DEMAND METRIC B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION BEST PRACTICES GUIDE 28

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