Digital marketing has become a fundamental channel for marketers globally, especially now with customer behaviours in flux across the globe due to Covid-19. The applications and technology that delivers this are therefore essential to marketing departments everywhere to maintain relevant communications with their customer base at scale, and yet still retain the personalisation required to improve engagement. Marketing technology is of course the answer, but only if it is prioritised and integrated seamlessly. This is where the Martech Spine™ comes in. If you don’t already know our view on the Martech Spine™ over the ‘Martech Stack’, click here.
ABM, working in tandem with a strong Martech Spine, is not about buying more software, it is about prioritising and integrating the existing software/platforms you're using, in order to ensure seamless end to end customer journeys. Running an ABM strategy utilising your existing MA reduces the risk and cost of adding new software into your business, and the new processes and ways of working that come with that. Essentially, ABM is about targeting a unique message to a known unique audience based on their personal needs, and a well-integrated Martech Spine™ based on your existing software aids this process in two key ways:
- Sales and Marketing Alignment
- Data / Lead Segmentation
Sales and Marketing Alignment
Sales and Marketing must work together in order to create a seamless customer experience, especially during the handover of ownership from Marketing engagement to Sales conversations. This is made possible through the proper implementation of the Martech Spine™, and yet nearly three quarters (73.5%) of marketers don't have this Spine established.
In order for an ABM strategy to operate successfully, it needs to be managed ‘end to end’, meaning Marketing need visibility of the entire funnel process and customer journey, including what happens once customers and prospects are passed onto Sales. A Martech Spine™ is an essential part of this because the different marketing technology platforms must speak to each other to pass data seamlessly from the marketing automation platform to the CRM, with holistic visibility of the data being available through BI tool’s such as Tableau or PowerBI. This means that Marketing can see what Sales are doing with the conversations Marketing has generated, and Sales can see Marketing’s contribution to new business generation.
"A well connected and integrated Martech Spine™, aids Sales and Marketing alignment, which in turn creates seamless campaigns and customer journeys. A win-win for your business and your customers."
Roz Smith, Marketing Consultant, Clevertouch
Data / Lead Segmentation
Data is essential to the modern marketer, and segmenting it correctly is the best way to ensure your audiences are receiving the right content for them. This can become more complicated the more data you have, but it is good practice no matter the size of your business to have good data health.
Some key issues we regularly see with marketing data in organisations of all sizes are:
- Data cleanliness (e.g old values that are out of date)
- Incomplete or low populated data sets (e.g missing fields)
- Nonsense entries (e.g gsdlywgdcfgwfcd in the first name or company fields)
- Data standardisation (e.g UK / United Kingdom, or CT / Clevertouch / CleverTouch Consulting)
This issue has its answer in the successful implementation of the Martech Spine™. Data can quickly become confused when your CRM and MA platform are not properly integrated, with duplicates and poor standardisation destroying any chance of personalisation – you can’t sell to a customer you can’t identify in your database after all. The answer to this is not to buy new Business Intelligence software, but to ensure that your BI tools are working in tandem with the rest of your software such as your CRM and MA platforms. Integrate, prioritise and simplify your martech, and the above should all fall into place, allowing you to communicate at scale with the confidence your dataset is correct.
Another key issue with poorly segmented data is the inability to personalise communications at scale; an issue that, yet again, finds its solution in the Martech Spine™. As the world becomes ever more digital, and as marketers continue to push out campaigns and content at scale using technology; proper set up, prioritisation and investment in your martech platforms has never been more essential.
If you want to find out more about how the seamless integration of a strong Martech Spine™ aids in campaign and content management, download our guide below.