From Lead Source to Salesforce With Marketing Automation

On September 20th, CleverTouch hosted a breakfast event titled ‘From Lead Source to Salesforce with Marketing Automation’ at the London Stock Exchange. The event focussed on companies starting their journey to Marketing Automation, with the speakers offering vital advice and guidance to the attendees. Adam Sharp, CleverTouch Co-Founder and MD, hosted the event with four guest speakers.After a warm welcome from Adam, Brigid Charmant, AVP of Salesforce Pardot, took to the stage. Brigid discussed the changes that have taken place in marketing in recent years, emphasising the close relationship between Sales and Marketing.Brigid encouraged the audience to speak the language of the customer; marketers are now able to reach their audiences across multiple platforms, which is made particularly easy when implementing Marketing Automation.The second speaker was Simon Hansford, CEO of UKCloud, a company recently named the number one in the Sunday Times’ Tech Track 100. Simon explained the ‘Sales and Marketing misalignment’ that was apparent in his company, offering the audience a CEO’s perspective on marketing and Marketing Automation.Simon listed what a CEO wants from their marketing team, including:

• High quality content
• Embracing the digital experience
• Delivering high quality qualified leads
• A pragmatic commercial perspective
• Providing the sales function great customer intel

Simon also discussed the importance of the marketing team being able to understand data. Without a clear understanding of data, he said, the marketing and sales team will not be able to understand company numbers.The third speaker of the morning was Heidi Bryant-Simpson, Head of Wholesale & Retail Marketing at BMO. Heidi was joined by Andrea Astone, the European Sales Director at BMO, to exaggerate the importance of both sales and marketing coming together to use Marketing Automation and Salesforce to drive company sales.Heidi began her presentation by stating that “Marketing Automation is the future and we need to embrace it”, encouraging the audience to teach Sales and Marketing to think like each other, as marketing can also be used to drive sales. Heidi highlighted the importance of Marketing Automation being a journey, rather than just a destination and ensuring that the consulting partner chosen really had Marketing Automation understanding and capability.The final presentation of the day was from Richard Barnes, Marketing Automation Director at Orange Business Services. Richard talked through Orange Business Service’s marketing past, with Excel sheets holding various forms of data that confused the marketing and sales teams.Richard also encouraged the audience to adopt Marketing Automation and Salesforce with baby steps, allowing the marketing teams to get to grips with the platform rather than jumping in headfirst.All speakers at the event highlighted the importance of marketing teams adopting Marketing Automation and used their own learnings to offer advice to the audience. CleverTouch would like to thank all speakers and attendees at the event, and thank Salesforce for sponsoring.Registration is now open for our next event on Tuesday 15^th November - Data Management, Reporting & Forecasting With Marketing Automation.