Used for sending automated emails only

Many believe that the only channel used by Marketing Automation Platforms (MAP) is email. However, most larger vendors can handle social interactions, create landing pages, process form submissions, SMS, website tracking and so on.

For starting point email is great, however, don’t limit yourself: start small and simple and extend your campaign activities with additional channels, test and learn what works well for your business.

Lastly, it allows you to have a complete 360 view of your customers and study their actions and behaviour so you can modify your marketing programs for better engagement and ultimately for better conversion.

Applicable for enterprise-level only

Every business size has repetitive, manual processes that could be replaced by automation, so you can focus on more strategic initiatives.

By default, large enterprises benefit more from automation because of sheer volume. Enterprise-grade platforms – like Oracle’s Eloqua – have the ability to handle all contacts within a single instance, allowing all data in one place while differentiating user access, activity frequency by business units, segments, etc. However, there are several hundred or more automation providers currently who focus on different business sizes. Therefore, even if you work on a smaller scale it is very likely that you will find a platform that will meet your budgetary limitations and a lot of them even offer a free trial.

Automation makes life easier than manual

If done correctly automation makes things better and saves you a lot of time, but it doesn’t necessarily make your life easier. However, it will create new challenges and tasks which will result in different kind of tasks, more exciting and creative.

After setting up your campaigns, programs and lead management processes you cannot just sit back and relax waiting for people to convert. You should continuously monitor each part of the funnel and using data from the platform to identify points to improve. You need to review and audit your always-on programs from time to time to see if they are still relevant for your audience. You should dedicate your resources to creating more creative and personalized journeys, trying out new channels and maintaining a clean database.

Automated marketing is finished after converting a lead to customer

The main purpose of lead generation is to turn new prospects into buying customers. However, marketing automation is more than just selling one product one time. You should strive for creating campaigns that engage your existing customer base for upselling and cross-sell opportunities. 

You might create automated workflows which trigger when acquiring or onboarding a new customer: sending them newsletters, product updates, discounts and doing so on multiple channels in a pre-configured, automated fashion.

Just an additional tool in your martech stack

While you will continue to use several technologies for different goals like CRM, Google Analytics, WordPress and so on, you should consider your Marketing Automation Platform as the heart of your marketing ecosystem.

In order to have a complex full view of your customers, you will need to store all the data in one place. All inbound channel data should be processed by the MAP while managing the outbound communication as well. It should receive all relevant data from other systems (CRM, Ads, etc.) and should send the necessary data to these systems as well. For example, Oracle’s Eloqua lets you use native integration with major CRM platforms, Facebook and LinkedIn. It is simple to configure requires no programming or heavy IT background.

To sum up, marketing automation changes the traditional approach of marketing tactics, with all the technology-enabled opportunities it really encourages thinking creatively. Marketing will not become easier but more exciting and rewarding if done right. Let’s overcome the misbeliefs and accept the challenge.

There are a lot of complex problems, companies are facing nowadays, so strategy consulting is a highly relevant market. Big accountant firms (the Big Four), small specialist businesses and traditional consulting firms also compete against each other in the market. What is more, agencies are also trying to broaden their knowledge and acquire more market share by hiring new specialists or merging with other companies.

Consulting firms are also trying to help clients with implementation processes, moreover, they also are trying to acquire digital skills, like digital analytics and digital marketing in the past 5-6 years.

What problems can a strategy consultant solve for you

A truly valuable consulting session can put you ahead of the competition. Consultants are excellent problem-solvers, what is more, they solve your problems in a structured manner. With Pattern’s more than 10 years experience in the strategy consulting business, we identified 3 main areas firms need outside help from consultants:

• Lack of inside experience

• Lack of time

• Lack of outsider feedback

1.Lack of experience from the customer’s side

Companies often find themselves facing a strategic challenge, which they haven’t dealt with before. In this case, an outsider consultant who has experienced such problems before can be a huge help and guidance for the project. Examples can be introducing a new product in the market, organizational changes or digital transformation projects. These kinds of tasks can be risky to do only with internal resources. Involving a consultant who has faced these problems before can give a sense of security and lower the risk of failing the project.
Make sure to check if the advisor has actual experience in the particular project. Some firms sell their senior consultants; however, only their junior consultants do work on the project. This is not always a problem, but resources have to be mixed and senior consultants with the appropriate experience should have the final say.

We at Pattern work with a hypothesis in the beginning and we always test and optimize the hypothesis on the way. To come up with a hypothesis, we map the customer’s capabilities, internal processes, and exact needs. The more data the better. There are cases when market research is needed along with the internal data.

2. Lack of time

A former colleague of mine said that the difference between a strategy consultant and a client is that out of ten possible solutions, the client only considers 5, while the consultant will examine all the possible solutions. Thus, consultants do a profound work and they do not sleep on projects.

If a firm has the internal resources for a project, but they do not have the time for it, a strategy consultant can be a good solution. Consulting businesses make a product out of their services and they can exactly measure the time they need to deliver the results.

Pattern always pays extra attention to involve operational level colleagues and specialists in the project to build trust right from the beginning.

3. Lack of objectivity

There are 2 cases for this scenario. The first one is not the most ideal: if a C-level executive has a strong opinion about a project, he/she could involve an outsider second-opinion to validate his/her point of view. In this case, the hypothesis of the project will not be flexible.

The other option is when there is a coherent insider perspective for a problem, and it needs to be validated from an outsider source. These are usually enjoyable and really interesting projects because there are experienced specialists involved in the client-side, also. However, the team chemistry needs to be working to have the desired results.

Our method

To conclude, we at Pattern always start with a hypothesis and with gathering and constantly processing insider and outsider data, we form our final solution. When we have our winner solution, we do an ROI calculation to support the decision process. This number depends on some factors, for example, the quality of the internal data and the newness of the concept.

After these initial steps, we can move to the process of elaborating on the solutions and run tests. Here, we also insert design elements in the process.

Overall, we like to work with a lot of data and use creative elements in our strategy consulting projects. If you have a complex problem that you would want help with, send us a message.

Selecting a marketing automation tool

The market is full of SaaS solutions, so it can be a challenge to select the right system. There are a lot of technical, business and campaign requirements that need to be specified before selecting a marketing automation system. In our experience, a lot of companies concentrate only on the technical requirements and they don’t consider if the system is actually user-friendly and if it will be easy to use by the marketing colleagues. If you don’t pay enough attention to this, you can find yourself in a situation that your new system is a perfectly working system technically; however, nobody uses it.

So what should you consider besides technical capabilities when selecting a marketing automation tool that you want everybody to use in your company?

1. Change your strategic mindset

Introducing a new system can mean that you have to rethink your product and communication strategy. Marketing automation will help you understand your target markets and provide them with relevant, personalized offers. With new insights into your business, you will start to sell and market so far, less relevant products in bigger quantities and you will make connections based on new reports that you have not been thinking about so far. These new measures will force you to rethink business workflows and your organization structure, so be open to change and do not be afraid to let go of outdated marketing practices.

2. Define KPI’s

First of all, you need to define your KPIs from the beginning.  Without this step, departments in your organization can have different KPIs, which can lead to conflicts. Make sure to coordinate goals with the stakeholders of the project.

KPI’s to think about:

• What is the overall vision of the new system? To build a better customer relationship, to build brand awareness or to increase sales figures?
• How will you measure the effectiveness of the system? Define your metrics.
• What teams are responsible for the system? Marketing, CRM Team and/or IT?
• Do you have an attribution model that can divide sales between the offline and the online sales channels?

3. Laws and regulations

Before starting the purchasing process, consider what data you would like to collect in the system and what permissions and consents do you need for these from your customers.

You should involve your legal and compliance experts from the beginning and you should define your consents with a Marketing Manager. Believe me, your work will be much easier after this.

4. Data collection and analytical capabilities

The best system can be used without constant support from the IT team, what is more, it can visualize data in a way that everybody in the marketing team will understand. It should also collect data about your customers from various sources and display the data in the system in a clear and personalizable way.

Consider these questions:

• Can the system recognize customers based on ID-s, like cookies, or analytics IDs?
• What kind of data can the system collect about your customers? Can it collect transactional, behavioral or event data?
• Is the system able to consume external data ( i.e.: data sets created by your data team)?
• Can the system define new metrics and define new data from raw data?

5. Automated marketing campaigns

One of the advantages of a marketing automation system is to create marketing campaigns based on the collected data fast and easily. Ideally, your system, can create scenarios based on data triggers and allows you to optimize campaigns on results with the visual editors built in the system.

However, you have to evaluate your existing campaign processes before you try to automate them. Ask yourself these questions:

• Is there a need to rearrange the campaign flows and customer journey in a more logical sense?
• Do you need more resources in the marketing team, IT team or CRM team for this?
• What channels should you distribute your campaigns on for the highest efficiency?

The conclusion

Selecting and implementing a marketing automation tool is not only a technical project. With the appropriate budget and the right team, technical questions can be answered; however, for the project to be successful, you need to change your team’s mindset, you have to define KPIs, pay attention to regulations about customer consents, plus consider data collection and campaign creation methods. 

We, at Pattern have been involved in several marketing automation projects over our years of the digital transformation experience. If you need help in your selection and implementation process, write to us.

At Pattern, we love numbers, so let’s start with some statistics.

• According to Gartner’s study on the subject: Customer Experience in Marketing, 81% of companies think there will be competition in the next 2 years on the market based on CX.
• 48% of them have already identified a connection between CX and their business goals.
• 47% of them have already used customer journey mapping successfully to fully understand their customer’s needs.
• 41% of them experienced higher results from CX optimization than they ever expected.
• However, only 22% of them actually exceeded their customer’s expectations of CX, and let’s face it: this is not a big number.

What doesn’t work in the process of improving CX?

During my 10 years in multinational businesses, I had the chance to experience a lot of good, but also some poor practices in CX optimization. I would like to start with the strategies that do NOT work, so we can later concentrate only on the effective ones.

1.Having a separate team of CX specialists

Nobody likes outsiders trying to control their work. Team members can feel undermined and it can feel unfair that experts from different teams without responsibility are trying to influence their hard work. This model is not going to work for you in the long run.

2. Trying to define CX goals without involving commercial metrics

Executives need to be persuaded that CX efforts won’t be without real results for the business. You can’t expect them to care about CX, because it’s a trendy topic nowadays. CX has to toughen up and contribute to the success of your business just like any other KPI. You have to connect CX with KPI’s, like conversion, customer retention or customer satisfaction. Figure out your metrics and make sure your CX efforts can be measured with real numbers in relation to revenue.

3. Measuring CX differently on your various channels

If you would like to map out your omnichannel usage and identify your underperforming channels, you have to measure your CX at every channel with the same methodology, with the same frequency to have reliable results.

4. Trying to make a ”Channel Competition”

Yes, you have to measure every channel with the same methodology; however, this does not mean that you have to compare digital and retail channels and rule out one or another channel from your distribution strategy. On the contrary! It is crystal clear that your channels with human support will always be more effective than your self-care digital channels. After all, your digital channels cannot fix everything with a nice ”We are sorry, Madam”. The goal here is not to find a winner; it is to develop and optimize every channel at their own pace based on feedback from customers. 

5. Closed mindset

Almost every big corporation we have worked with stated that they would like to implement an omnichannel mindset into their corporation. In practice, this is not always the case. In every team, their own channels are the priority and often they do not have the time or motivation to find synergies between their channels and other channels. A good solution could be to provide cross-channel targets and KPI’s to channel leaders and make business development a common goal across the organization. Oddly, this never happens, in spite of the constant talking about the importance of omnichannel mindset. We don’t really understand why.

6. Preaching water, drinking wine

I was working at big corporations where they always included parts about the improvements of CX in their presentations to stakeholders; however, in reality, they only measured the growth of EBITDA margins. However, this metric will not help you to measure CX in the business, as CX requires long term investments from the business side.

So, we listed you all these practices that won’t contribute to improving your CX. You can reasonably ask, why do you still need it if it’s this hard?

Because it will benefit you in the long run!

Very few corporations will take effort and resources to improve their customer experience. First of all, it’s a long term project for the company. It takes months to see results and most companies are not willing to wait that long. Moreover, you have to make people from different teams work together and this can be a hard task to do. You have to convince people to break their old habits and change their day-to-day lives.

More importantly, you have to craft a strategy and connect measurable goals and KPI’s to it. This will make the process easier, as you will be able to track your progress.

But, here is the good part: your improved customer experience will be your best unique selling point for your company. Competitors can copy everything from your products to your marketing strategy; however, they cannot copy your customers’ unique experience with your brand. It’s almost like shaping the personality of your brand. Make it unique and stand out from the crowd. Your customers will be thankful.

If you don’t know where to start send us a message.

The above statement summarizes the main message of most of the presentations and articles on digital transformation.

This message is the core of many Ted talks, this message comes up on LinkedIn, and is recognized and discussed by experts from large consulting firms on popular morning radio shows. The professional community, those who have already gone through a digital transformation or a little part of it, are trying to teach (very rightly) the market and encourage companies to go ahead and take the plunge. At the same time, they are also emphasizing how it will fundamentally affect organisations: operations and people will all experience major changes. If I were a decision maker, I’d stop here and swallow hard. This surgery is necessary, that is not a question, we are going to become healthier and more efficient in many ways, but it may come with a little pain.

In fact, the above statements are very true, we cannot just get at the task of digitalization purely from a practical or instrumental point of view, as both the human and the technological adaptation will be needed in the process. However, few people mention that the key to successful digitalization is setting the right pace, determining what momentum we will be starting with and the milestones we decide to set for ourselves.

The pitfalls of introducing digital transformation

One of the biggest mistakes is that companies tend to set themselves a goal that is too far away or not well thought out and at the same time they wish to get to this goal as quickly as possible.

In general, both the internal (who has to be removed from everyday routine to learn and later produce value with new methods) and external (how much it will cost and who can contribute) resources tend to be poorly assessed. We may introduce some technology that replaces a previous, less efficient process/function, but this technology rarely gets adopted seamlessly and more often than not fails to achieve the planned metrics.

This means it is very important to stop for a moment and assess the current situation before embarking on the process of digital transformation: we need to have a clear overview of our processes, a good understanding of our mistakes and an understanding of what purpose we need to introduce new technologies for, along with determining if we are capable of adapting or whether we even want to adapt our current systems and internal resources to these new technologies at all.

In the course of consulting projects, we have repeatedly run into the type of request that starts with asking us to help and determine how much it is going to cost to digitalize, say, the sales operation, since a new target requires online sales reach a 10% channel share. The answer from a technological perspective to such a question just requires conducting the appropriate assessment and based on this, provided there is an adequate budget, project planning and later development can begin. At this point you should stop for a moment and formulate some probing questions that touch upon the core of the business strategy and the foundations of the customer journey. The answers given to these questions will help you create your goal and set the pace during the digital transformation process in a way that it matches the company’s resources.

We solve the internal tension of business development

At Pattern, to avoid disappointment at the first major milestone of a project, we decided to highlight this key moment in the process and spend some quality time on it at the very beginning. At this point we collect all the necessary information from the stakeholders in the form of a structured workshop in order to create a solid foundation. To illustrate the importance of this phase, we run these exploratory workshops as an investment on our side for a nominal fee. Our goal is to highlight hidden opportunities and problems that would result in outsize impact or, in specific cases, to highlight the fact that the goal itself is wrong and that we are looking for magical optimization of business processes and better results behind the wrong door.

We support businesses during the first, most important step of transformation

The methodology of this workshop is infinitely simple, and I encourage those of you embarking on small and larger digitalization projects to try and run the exercise by yourself even without external help, it will help clarify the direction. The length of the workshop and the individual steps heavily depend on the specific topic, but you generally should follow the steps outlined below:

Organization:

First and foremost, decide who should attend the workshop. If we are talking about transformation, the project is certainly going to be cross-departmental, so there should be at least one stakeholder each from marketing, from the department of product/service development, from the digital team, as well as colleagues from the customer-facing departments who meet customers every day. When it comes to a larger project, it is advisable to create several teams with the same role profile mix and cover different chunks in parallel. For example, in the case of sales, a team can deal with the acquisition phase, another one with retention, and so on.

Executive support is key: in our experience, it is much easier to organize such a workshop with the support of a senior and inspiring project sponsor: more people will attend and colleagues will see it as a more important issue. So at least ask the sponsor of the transformation project to start the workshop with a motivational speech, or perhaps have them send out the invitations.

Topics:

1. The first task is to understand where we are at the moment. This is called the AS-IS mapping stage, where we review together what the processes of the area to be developed currently look like. Here, it is imperative to always ask the right questions. Looking at a website development case, it could look like this: What kind of sales activities does the visitor encounter on our website as it is today (depending on the team, this is either acquisition related or about an existing customer).
2. Visualize the target. Feel free to dream big at this point or to set distant goals. If participants from different teams / backgrounds take the time to think about this together, you will end up with a diverse set of objectives in a very efficient way. No need to be worried if these goals became too granular or get off on tangents, since right now the task isn’t synthesis or translation of the goals into strategic steps yet.
3. Pain points/blockers: We outline the obstacles that threaten our goals. This could be a status quo issue or a specific technical problem, but the main point is to ensure that everyone expresses their ideas on what may hinder progress.
4. Town hall: If we have more than one participating team, each one should take turns commenting and fine tuning the work of all other teams. There are various methodologies on how to facilitate this best, but all are geared towards ensuring that any discrepancies resulting from inadvertent mismatches in team composition are ironed out.
5. Summary, evaluation: It is advisable for the moderator to do this on the day following the workshop because then the experience is still fresh. Focus on capturing raw, “as is” output to make sure no nuance is lost at this stage – clustering and streamlining can be done in subsequent phases.

The workshop steps may sound familiar because they contain elements from the Google Design Sprint methodology. Feel free to adapt this method (although some experience is useful to have) in order to fit it into the culture of your company so that it will actually help bring you closer to the goal. For further inspiration, check out the AJ&Smart Youtube channel

The above-mentioned workshop and its result is not going to fix all your issues with a snap of a finger (except, maybe, for ardent Avengers fans out there). However, it does provide a very good basis as to which direction to think about further and discover where there may be errors in the digitalization plans. In addition, the success of a well-organized workshop in the context of a more rigid organization, where several departments have been present working together, can promote the idea of collaboration for other similar projects. 

Whatever the term, the need to communicate across channels in a consistent manner is real. Customers (and potential customers!) perceive a company as a single unit and mentally assign all messages received from it to one company.

Making this work in real life is trickier than it might seem and requires a lot of data applied in the right way. Even the big guys have to make do with some obvious anomalies – just think of the last time you actually booked accommodation and kept on receiving booking.com ads for the exact place in perpetuity… after the trip. And this is on a single channel, digital.

Speaking at the 2018 Marketing Summit Hungary I introduced the areas we dig into when working with clients to build better campaign operations. And it’s not only about data.

• Processes: aligned campaign planning processes for acquisition and base management across own and 3rd party communication channels augmented by automated, transparent measurements and diagnostics.
• Targeting: move from product focus to customer journey focus and strive for micro-segmented , contextual messages.
• Tools and system capabilities: rely on fast and efficient tools that not only consume data from various sources but also feed all your relevant channels. Even better, they should be intuitive enough to operate without heavy IT involvement. Strive for a high degree of automation and real time feeds.
• KPIs: run all campaigns with clear conversion KPIs to ensure aligned business objectives and consistent evaluation and attribution across channels.
• Data: make all your demographic, transactional and behavioral data equally accessible for segmentation and targeting.
• Organisation, legal & compliance: this is a bit of a mixed bag with all vital enablers. Make sure you have crystal clear RACIs across the business throughout the campaign management value chain. Finally, leverage the legal framework to deliver the most convenient targeting to customers while maintaining efficiency for the business.

The balance between customer journeys and AI generated triggers is probably where approaches differ most, but either is better than doing nothing and can be the best solution in any given industry and maturity level.

Approach all these topics in parallel and you will eventually deliver better content across channels. Omnichannel? Maybe.

However, all of it has to do with communication in some shape or form. It can be through any channel to any customer segment, which is where most of the complexity comes from. Serving automated ads on Facebook to micro-segmented audiences is very different from delivering Next Best Activity offers to retail agents in real time.

Creating personalized experiences for authenticated customers and making sure the right eDM leads are followed up by telesales require different data sets from a wide variety of sources and touch processes across various departments in more complex organizations.

I shared some thoughts on the above at a meetup for KÜRT Academy’s Intelligent Marketing Getting to help get to grips with the basics of omnichannel campaign strategy, including the right focus, segmentation logic and business rules.

I always find meetings like these hugely refreshing because they bring together very diverse crowds and challenge me to step out of the world of large sales and service organizations.

Helping banks and telcos take the next step with accelerated enterprise scale rollouts is all well and good, but how does this apply to event managers, restaurateurs and SMEs of all shapes and sizes? Tools that slash costs for large organizations are way too expensive here and the most dramatically short implementation times at corporate level need to be cut in half to be relevant.

Large businesses will never be startups and vice versa and trying to force this in many areas has created a lot of strain, but looking over the fence once in a while for inspiration on doing things better makes a lot of difference. Certainly for me.

The course is really hands-on, practice focused with some complex exercises throughout the participants can learn and practice the magic of customer journey based marketing planning.

For further details please visit Kürt Academy’s website.

Which brings us nicely to something I’ve encountered on 99.99% of those projects, and it is not the fact that it is difficult to even count them. Something equally important is just as difficult to quantify: their impact. And I’m not talking about the numbers swirling around in impact calculations and business cases without which bigger projects in more stringent companies will never get off the drawing board. Or even on it. As the old saying goes “excel will take anything”, and in fairness oftentimes genuine effort is made to get those numbers right. Sometimes they even are, to the extent to which any forecast can be accurate in the first place.

More importantly, I’ve found it to be exceedingly difficult to isolate the actual real-life impact of any project after go live. This is particularly true for self-service oriented digitization projects, which more often than not have some kind of contact deflection target attached to them. On paper, these look decent enough, but if I add up the expected contact deflection numbers assumed on all the self-service projects I’ve worked on, then a number of contact centers would have had to be closed a long time ago. Which, of course, never happened.

The list goes on, typically the bigger and more complex a project, the bigger the difficulties in attributing any kind of impact. Add to this the fact that quite often projects running in parallel hope to impact the same drivers, and total confusion starts creeping in. Of course, people typically don’t care, mainly because the next project in line is already waiting to be kicked off. However, another reason for not caring is that deep down, everyone involved can feel whether any given project was a successful one and if that feeling is not a resounding “yes” then transparency is not everybody’s friend.

Many times, a successful project is still defined as one that made it to “live”, with limited accountability for anything that happens afterwards. And God forbid if anyone manages a project that is cancelled halfway through implementation, even if that would have saved hundreds of thousands or even millions of euros down the line. Not a great career booster.

I have the faint suspicion that this interpretation of project success has contributed more than a little bit to the shift towards rapidly launched, lower complexity projects. Contrary to the fashionable narrative, not everything can be broken down into 2-week sprints (although many things can and at Pattern we are using rapid prototyping and implementation wherever we believe it makes commercial sense, but only then and not as a gimmick) but it is true that shorter projects mean more frequent cause for celebration and less chance that someone pulls the plug before go live.

What to do then?

There is no one size fits all solution of course, but some interesting initiatives I’ve seen that can help foster a more sensible approach to measuring project success in any organization include:

• Running less parallel projects. Sounds simple but is actually quite difficult to enforce — impact isolation will be more straightforward if there is nothing to isolate from. What works for scientific experiments deserves a shot in more practical areas, too.
• Having valid impact calculations for each project…
• … and making owners care about the target numbers. A good way to make sure this happens is to (a) introduce regular reviews and (b) link target fulfillment to budget allocation for upcoming projects. This one is especially difficult to pull off in a way that it doesn’t stifle the willingness to take risks, but that is a topic for another time.
• Rewarding cancelled projects. Don’t get me wrong, the good ones should still happen, but killing projects that should not have been started in the first place is a good thing.

Bottom line, try to bring transparency into your project and portfolio management, even if it isn’t popular at first.