Marketing Automation in the Enterprise - Lessons Learnt

On July 14^th CleverTouch hosted a Marketing Automation breakfast event at the Wellcome Collection, London. Adam Sharp, Co-Founder & MD of CleverTouch, hosted the event, with three guest speakers throughout the morning. The event, ‘Marketing Automation in the Enterprise – Lessons Learnt’, provided insight and advice to potential users starting out on the Marketing Automation journey or looking to optimise what they already have.The first speaker was Peter Bell, Senior Product Marketing Director at Marketo. Marketo is currently building new features sets into the platform, including Account Based Marketing (ABM) and Increased Data Analytics.Peter emphasised the importance of business growth through trust, using both individual and multiple touch points to create a cumulative experience. He advised that marketers should focus on revenue cycle metrics, aggregating impact on company revenue, pipeline performance, and predictive forecasts.Peter also advised that marketers should measure ROI to find out not just what works, but what works better. Goals and ROI estimates should be established up front, using control groups to focus on the decisions that improve ROI.The second speaker of the morning was Bernard O’Brien, Head of Agency at Deloitte. Deloitte uses Marketo around the globe to create dimensional marketing. Bernard explained the five stage process for developing and delivering Marketing Automation campaigns:

• Brief
• Plan
• Produce
• Activate
• Report

Alongside this, Bernard recommended that marketers should define a strategy to evolve their digital presence. The ‘three R’s’ of the company should be the focus of Marketing Automation campaigns – Reputation, Relationship, and Revenue. Bernard said succinctly, if a campaign cannot support any of these ‘R’ then we simply don’t do it.The final guest speaker of the day was Anne-Marie McConnon, EMEA Marketing Director at BNY Mellon. Anne-Marie’s talk was centred round the Marketing Automation gap that is apparent in many companies, and she suggested ways that can bridge the gap between business strategy and Marketing Automation deployment through reinventing their organisations and partnering with new services providers.Anne-Marie also discussed how the old model of marketing structure by communication channels is outmoded – marketers need to turn to a very different, hybrid model. New people and skills need to be introduced to the company for successful Marketing Automation deployment, including Data Analysts and Marketing Ops.To close the event, Adam Sharp emphasised that Marketing Automation should be ‘a strategic play’, stepping into the unknown. A scary, but necessary, step.Adam also gave the audience three Marketing Automation considerations for Marketing Automation deployment:

• Keep it simple
• Don't look for perfection
• Make the logic (dashboard reporting of outcomes) explicit

These three considerations were also referenced by Bernard and Anne-Marie in their talks. Their considerations for an effective Marketing Automation deployment went beyond just filling the sales funnel, it is a new way of working with Marketing Automation. For Anne-Marie Marketing Automation had an important role to play outside of ‘just Marketing’, whilst Bernard suggested  Marketing Automation enables Deloitte to be less about Deloitte and more about their customers and the resulting insight and intelligence in their Marketing Automation platform is as important as lead generation.All the speakers at the event emphasised, in various ways, that the days of content creation have given way to the requirement to deliver pragmatic commercial marketing that is credible and accountable. CleverTouch would like to thank the speakers for sharing their Marketing Automation stories, Marketo for sponsoring and thank all those who attended.