Marketing automation is like any other complex technology — it requires maintenance.
We don’t buy cars without the intention of changing the oil every so often, because we know from experience (or the experiences of others), that not maintaining a car costs us a lot of time and money down the road. As more and more companies adopt marketing automation and approach the 3,001st mile, they are learning the same principal applies to their automation solutions.
Complex things require regular check-ins to continue delivering the value we originally purchased them to deliver, and it is the same with your marketing automation solution.
Trickily, just like pesky oil changes or a small mishap in alignment, issues in your automation solution are not a big problem at the moment they begin, but the things we let slide in our databases can cause a lot of pain down the line. So much so that businesses frequently chuck out all the work they’ve done and choose to start over completely, losing monumental value and wasting hours of work over a perfectly preventable issue.
How can you avoid this pain? Or, if you have the nagging feeling that you’ve been neglecting your automation solution– how can you fix it going forward?
1. What’s an oil change look like for Marketing Automation?
The most common thing we find in clients is that at some point in the past one to three years, their processes have changed. What failed to happen at the point of change, was a full consideration of the domino effect that seemingly small change would have. The question, “If we move this block, what else is impacted and what do we need to re-calibrate?” was never fully asked or answered.
The small adjustment is often a change in their lead statuses, lead scoring model, or a change in the CRM currently synced to their automation solution. Whatever the change, the intricacy of marketing automation translates into everything is affected by everything. Just like a non-car-expert would have difficulty projecting the total impact of not changing the oil in a car, it takes an expert in marketing automation to account for all of the little (but important) details impacted by process changes.
2. How do I know I’m not getting full value out of my automation solution?
There are a few tell-tale pain-points:
- There isn’t a clear connection between your reporting and your ROI
- There is some degree of dissonance between your marketing team’s definition of a qualified lead and your sales team’s definition of a qualified lead
- There is a disconnect around where a lead came in and where it is now
- There seems to be an increase in bounce rates and a decrease in overall engagement
- Something just seems off
3. How do I fix it?
I could point you to a quarter dozen videos on how to fix any number of issues on your car, but unless you’re familiar with such work, you would still need to know what the core issues were before settling on one to follow. And even then… you’re welcome to work on your own car, but I’m probably not taking you my squeaky Jetta.
I could also point you to just as many (if not more) customer support blogs on any solution to fix any number of issues. Like your car, it still requires familiarity and expertise to know what the core issues are so that you can cure the actual problem and not just the symptoms.
I’d encourage you to consult someone you trust, who has serious expertise in marketing automation. Perhaps you don’t need them to do the actual fix, but getting someone who knows what they’re doing to make recommendations could save you a lot of time chasing symptoms and a lot of money missing leads.
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