Marketing Automation Best Practices

Marketing Automation eBook
Email and Marketing
Automation that’s complete.
Not complex.
BestPracticesfor
&
Marketing
Excellence
Operational
Efficiency

U
sually when a company implements a new application, it’s an all-or-nothing
proposition. For example, when the finance department wants to move to a new
general ledger application, it customizes and tests the application, runs in parallel
for a billing cycle and then cuts over to the new application, fully utilizing all aspects of
the system. Luckily, with marketing automation this doesn’t have to be the case.
While marketing automation can drive a wide array of business optimizations, adopting
them all at once could overwhelm your team and push out the time to launch and in
turn require accompanying process changes. This is why many marketers are finding it’s
smarter to start with a few key features and gradually grow in sophistication over time.
You can also choose to not implement key sections of the software for, say, six or nine
months while you focus on increasing the efficiencies and effectiveness of other facets
of your marketing automation installation.
With several aspects of marketing automation, you need to determine new workflows
or processes. One example may include new ways of integrating sales into the lead
scoring, routing and handling processes. To successfully implement new ways to track
and manage accounts in the sales funnel,
you’ll need to get the demand generation
team in alignment with definitions of the
various stages of lead development
as well as gain agreement on what
role various sales and marketing
individuals play in this process.
This alignment and agreement
may take time to accomplish.
You may decide you want
to tackle these alignment
discussions prior to installing your
marketing automation system, or
you may want to work on lead scoring,
routing and pipeline reporting after you’ve
implemented (and enjoyed the benefits of) other
marketing automation capabilities.
This strategy is mirrored in a detailed
December 2011 survey that Silverpop conducted
with its customers. The survey found that 24 percent
plan to implement personalized marketing based on
behaviors and data, while 21 percent indicated they were
planning to improve sales alignment, lead scoring and routing
capabilities in 2012.
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Marketing Automation eBook:
Best Practices for Marketing
Excellence and Operational Efficiency
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Other elements of marketing automation require much less workflow integration
between departments. Examples of marketing automation capabilities that may
not require as much interdepartmental discussion and collaboration include landing
pages, personalization, dynamic content, data collection and campaign automation.
To evaluate the impact of implementing various aspects of marketing automation,
consider the data and process flows that need to occur within your company. Many
elements of marketing automation deliver increased efficiency and effectiveness within
the marketing department and don’t directly impact outside departments such as
sales, customer service, billing or other company organizations.
In addition, using marketing automation can bring the marketing team even closer
together because it can replace many disparate marketing systems. The integrated
marketing automation platform improves the efficiencies and collaboration of the team
and increases the quality and success of the entire marketing department’s effort.
Companies should review all the capabilities and benefits that a marketing automation
solution has to offer, assess the impact these benefits could have for your company,
and develop a prioritized road map of which aspects you’re going to implement and in
which order. This eBook discusses many of the core aspects of marketing automation,
including:
• Email
• Landing pages and data collection
• Scoring and routing
• Programs and campaign automation
• Data management and integration
• Reporting and analytics
For each capability, we’ll discuss the benefits, foundational principles, and good,
recommended and better practices for you to consider when implementing, changing
or improving your marketing automation system. “Foundational practices” are
guidelines that the vast majority consider core to the vitality and the success of your
marketing program. “Recommended practices” aren’t considered “must dos,” but
they’re highly recommended for increasing customer engagement. “Better practices”
are those techniques that more sophisticated marketers are deploying to help take
their marketing initiatives to higher levels. While this list is comprehensive, it shouldn’t
be considered complete, especially given that technology is rapidly changing and
portions of marketing automation are relatively new.
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Why are we discussing email in a white paper about marketing automation?
Email is still the core activity and the central enabler of successful digital
marketing. It makes it possible for marketing engagement to progress from initial
awareness through final purchase and beyond. Without an effective email capability
embedded within your marketing automation solution, you’ll be relegated back
to voicemail and in-person conversations—and we’ve all certainly moved beyond
relying exclusively on those methods to engage prospects.
There’s a wide spectrum of uses, sophistication and effectiveness in email
marketing. Email can be used to communicate event invitations, new product
announcements, limited time offers and more. It’s also a preferred method of
transactional messaging such as order confirmations, renewals, loyalty balances,
application alerts, invitations and statements. Because email marketing as a
standalone application has been available for years, there’s a wealth of information
on email best practices. These recommendations should not be minimized or
ignored when embarking on a marketing automation initiative. Rather, they become
all that much more important. The following sections should serve as a valuable
checklist of best practices that should be considered to upgrade and improve this
core, vital aspect of marketing automation.
Foundational Principles
• Obtain permission. In email marketing, permission is the foundation of a
successful program, the first step in separating marketing messages from
spam. While the common industry refrain “relevance trumps permission” is
absolutely correct, it’s difficult to achieve high inbox delivery rates and ROI
without permission.
• Offer a transparent opt-in process. Subscribers must understand that they’re
being subscribed—and to what.
• Make it easy to unsubscribe—and honor unsubscribes. In most countries,
making it easy to opt out of emails is the law.
• Removing/suppressing abuse complaints and hard bounces
immediately—and never send to those recipients again. If you don’t employ
these practices, your subsequent emails may not be delivered.
• Avoid deceptive techniques. Against the law in many countries, deception
can also cause damage to your brand.
• Authenticate your emails. Doing so with DKIM and SenderID is becoming
critical to increasing the likelihood that ISPs will deliver your emails.
Email

Recommended Practices
• Use clear, recognized “From” names. Unrecognizable or confusing “From” names
will get lost in the inbox.
• Send welcome emails. Delivering an immediate welcome email to a new subscriber
can increase engagement much earlier in the relationship.
• Utilize segmentation and personalization. Targeting subscribers based on their
demographics, interests and behaviors generates substantial engagement over non-
targeted emails.
• Design emails for preview panes and multiple devices. Using single large images
without background HTML, for example, will render as a large blank in emails and
could greatly reduce click-throughs and conversions.
• Use preference centers during opt-in and throughout the relationship.
Preference centers provide data and self-reported information that can be used for
providing more relevant emails to subscribers.
• Practice good list hygiene. Poor list hygiene will cause deliverability problems.
• Test everything. Testing is critical to determining which practices, content, offers, etc.
will perform best.
• Define and identify inactive subscribers. Identifying disengaged subscribers
enables you to segment your database, potentially removing or targeting inactives
for reactivation and reducing possible deliverability problems.
• Incorporate “administrative” links within every email—typically in the footer
area. Including these links—unsubscribe, update preferences, change email,
contact us, subscribe, forward to a friend, etc.—in the same location in every email
makes it easy for subscribers to take action.
Better Practices
• Employ a multipart email welcome series. These typically deliver significantly
greater results than single welcome emails.
• Design emails for touch. Touch screens are becoming ubiquitous. Designing for the
“finger as mouse” will soon not be optional.
• Offer the subscriber alternatives during the opt-out process. These typically
include email change of address, frequency options, channel preferences, the ability
to “Snooze” and more and can retain a sizable percentage of subscribers who were
considering leaving your list.
• Focus early on inactives. Waiting to attempt to reactivate unengaged contacts after
six, nine, 12 months or more is too late.
• Integrate with social networks. Use email to promote your social network content
and grow followers, and use your social networks to capture email subscribers.
• Distribute emails based on individual recipient engagement history or time
zones. Whether manual or automated, this approach can have a dramatic impact
on engagement.
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• Bring transaction communications into your marketing automation platform.
Many businesses send email communications to their customers and prospects
that are managed by non-marketing systems. Bringing these messages into your
technology platform will allow you to better manage the overall communication
and interaction with each individual and ensure that the email has the correct
branding and content.
• Collect subscriber preferences. This will allow you to personalize
communications, continue to refine and enhance your marketing database, and
in turn further target and tailor each message.
• Use transactional emails to educate, cross-sell and upsell the recipient. Each
touch can be considered a branding and marketing opportunity.
• Drive social via email. Consider enhancing and extending your social networks
by using email to draw visitors back into revisiting social engagement.
CRM and Email Hygiene
A common challenge for B2B marketers occurs when they first connect their CRM system
with marketing automation and realize they’ve collected thousands of email addresses over
the years but are not sure if any of these people have actually opted in or subscribed. You
may have lists of emails collected by sales reps, trade shows badge swipes or purchased lists.
Below are some best practice considerations for dealing with stale data that’s housed in your
CRM system:
• Depending on the age of the data collected, recognize that to be successful, you may
need to purge a large percentage of the email addresses. This old data can seriously
hamper your ability to communicate with the people who want to hear from you.
• Purge email addresses that contain invalid syntax, such as info@company.com.
• Export the list into Excel and you will easily see pockets of bad data such as aaaaa@
company.com, 12345@company.com, asdf@company.com and even a whole host of
Disney characters. Obviously, you’ll want to purge these addresses from your database.
• If you’ve tracked the date the contact email has been added and know it hasn’t been
modified in more than a few years, and you’ve not sent them any email, you should
consider removing those records. These people have likely forgotten the one-minute
conversation you had with them three years ago at your trade show booth. As a result,
they’ll likely consider your new and wonderful marketing messages to be spam.
• In your first several emails to your CRM database, prominently display the unsubscribe
information at the top of your message. Include who you are, why you’re sending them
this message, how you likely got their email address and how they can change their
preferences or unsubscribe. It may seem too onerous and isn’t a regular best practice,
but it will preserve your email reputation, allowing you to get started on the right path.
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In many cases, landing pages and microsites are the first place that a
prospective customer comes into contact with your company, so making
a great first impression is paramount. Landing pages allow you to help your
prospects focus on your offer and ask them to take a specific action, without
them getting sidetracked by all your main website has to offer. They also provide
the ability for you to collect key information about site visitors so that you can
effectively market to them. Your marketing automation provider can host the
landing page and Web form for you, or you can i-Frame the page into your
existing website infrastructure.
Foundational Practices
• Make it easy for prospects to give you information, and ask only for the
data you need. Don’t bog down landing page visitors by requiring them to
complete lots of mandatory fields before they receive your offer. Initially, you
should only request email address, first name and perhaps one more vital
piece of data. This will allow you to begin your engagement process. You
can ask additional questions later.
• Immediately provide the promised content or value. If a visitor
comes to your page so that he or she can get your white paper or other
content, deliver an immediate, automated thank you or confirmation
page that includes a click to a download link. Don’t make them wait for
an email or force them to navigate to another area in your website to
receive the information.
• Minimize distractions such as extra navigation, animation or additional
content. Landing pages should be designed with one thing in mind:
getting the visitor to accept your offer. Keep the creative and copy both
crisp and direct.
• Provide a preference center. To increase engagement, use a preference
center to allow contacts to declare their interests and how they’d like to
receive communications from your company. This should include allowing
your visitors to decide the communication frequency, communications
method (e.g. mobile/SMS or email) and subject areas of interest. Within the
preference center allow for opt-out/unsubscribe. Your processes for opt-
out/unsubscribe should conform to CAN-SPAM laws in place for both your
country and also in the recipient’s country.
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Landing Pages
and Data Collection

• Use progressive forms to gather intelligence over time. Don’t feel that
you have to get all the pertinent data elements on one visit. You can use
the progressive forms capability to collect the data over multiple visits. The
solution is designed to remember data from one visit to the next, pre-
populate a unique identifier such as email address to confirm the visitor’s
identity and then only asking for additional, new information. You can
specify the order in which you ask for data over subsequent visits.
• Ask buyer discovery questions. Use BANT (Budget, Authority, Need,
Timing) and other related questions to determine where the contact is in his
or her buying cycle.
• Ask targeting or disqualifier questions. For example, if you only sell in two
regions, simply asking if they’re in “Region A,” “Region B” or “Other” will
allow you to prevent those in region “Other” from getting added to your lead
funnel.
• Append additional data into the existing record for the visitor. Don’t
introduce multiple records into your database when you use progressive
form technology. Instead, add the additional data collected to fields in
existing records.
• Label the form submit button with an action-oriented call to action.
Examples might include “Download Now,” “Register for Event” or “Request
Additional Information.”
• Optimize forms for mobile. Forty-four percent of Americans now own
smartphones, and with that figure rising interaction is increasingly happening
on mobile devices1
. With that in mind, allow smartphone users to input their
information on your landing pages and Web forms. Make sure these pages
are easy to use.
• Use pull-down lists and/or radio buttons as often as possible. This will
help minimize typos, improve the quality of your database and increase the
likelihood you’ll get a response. Keep asking yourself: Have I made it as
simple as possible for a visitor to give me their information?
• Match branding and corporate identity. Landing Pages should mirror your
company’s standard design elements, tone and other brand attributes. Use
language, color and iconography that’s consistent with your other collateral,
emails and website.
• Include a second option. If the offer requires a high level of commitment,
consider a smaller, more subtle link to a lower-value offer for the site visitor
who would otherwise abandon the form. For example, on a page where
you’re offering a request for a live demo, you could include a second call to
action such as, “Not ready for a live demo? Click here to watch the two-
minute overview.”
• Incorporate field validation to ensure cleanliness of incoming data. If
you can’t prepopulate your form data elements with information already
found in the existing database record, or if you don’t provide radio buttons
or pull-down lists, consider adding in field validation. By employing some
combination of these three practices, you’ll help ensure clean data is going
into your database.
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Better Practices
• Use hidden fields or URL parameters to store information regarding
the campaign, offer and advertising source. This will provide additional
metrics to gain deeper insight into the effectiveness of your content and
advertising.
• Employ A/B testing. Use it to determine the best imagery, offer tag lines
and even the number of form fields.
• Use an integrated data collection solution for trade shows and
events. This will allow clients (or employees) to easily capture visitor data
and place it immediately into your marketing database. As outlined in
the recommended practices section, use radio buttons, pull-downs and
prepopulated fields wherever applicable. iPads or other tablets are easy
to deploy and make show and conference data collection enjoyable and
seamless. This same platform can also be a great way to increase opt-ins in
a retail setting.
• Allow visitors to sign on with their social IDs. Instead of providing a blank
form for your visitors to complete, consider giving them an alternative:
Provide the option to allow visitors to sign in or opt-in by providing their
Twitter, Facebook, etc. login credentials. This will give you the contact
information you need to initiate the marketing relationship—and make the
sign-in process easier for your prospects.
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Scoring and routing allow you to improve the quality of leads you’re providing
to sales and increase the relevancy of information you’re providing to your
contacts. In a typical scenario, marketing will generate demand for your solution
and nurture the inquirers and leads until they’re appropriate for a sales resource.
Scoring allows you to dynamically assign values to each contact and give you
a true picture of your marketing pipeline. Scoring models should incorporate
demographic data and behavioral data and assign a tailored numeric value to a
contact. This numeric value can also be aggregated into a range that allows you
to summarily communicate the status of a contact. A robust marketing automation
solution will allow you to create your own score methodology tailored to the way in
which your sales, marketing and other organizations classify accounts.
• Where possible, involve sales and other key stakeholders. One of the key
purposes of a lead scoring and routing initiative is to hand off or integrate
sales or other channels outside the marketing department. To ensure that
valuable leads aren’t discarded or disregarded, it’s vital that marketing and
sales (and/or other interested parties) work together to define the criteria by
which an inquiry becomes qualified enough for routing to someone outside
of the marketing department. It’s also important to document when and how
leads are routed back to marketing if the company or contact is in fact not yet
ready to engage with sales.
• Determine your company’s data sync preference. Will all records be synced
between CRM and your marketing automation database, or will marketing
hold on to the unqualified leads for further nurturing? For companies that
choose to sync all records, it will be important to create work flow rules and
views in your CRM system to prevent unqualified or questionable contacts
from being assigned to a sales rep.
• If sales is not ready for an alignment exercise, still build a scoring model!
Marketers can gain tremendous insights and leverage scoring even if the
scores aren’t shared with sales. You can leverage the score or rank to target
specific content offers or place individuals in nurture programs based on their
buying stage.
• Design with change in mind. Lead scoring and routing implementations
need to be flexible. It should be easy to adjust routing rules and alerts based
on a changing sales organization. Additional behavioral-based rules should
be added based on the submittal of information on a new Web page, landing
form or other behavior.
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Scoring and Routing

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• Determine the importance of what visitors tell you versus what
they do, and then weight your scoring model accordingly. High-
traffic sites with broad reach typically require at least an even balance
of demographic and behavioral scoring methods, but might put more
weight on demographic attributes to avoid the high volume of casual site
visitors who are only there for free content. Niche sites with lower-traffic
volumes can place more emphasis on behaviors and use demographic
data to disqualify those that should likely never be leads such as interns,
students, competitors or residents of untargeted geographies.
• Develop different content for different points in the buying cycle.
Recognize that not all site visitors and email recipients are at the same
point in the buying cycle. To increase relevancy, engagement and
progress, develop content and offers that have the buying cycle in mind.
For example, someone who comes to your website to learn more about
your industry needs different information than someone who’s comparing
product features and functions for the last time before selecting a vendor
partner. To help you achieve success in this area, develop buyer personas
and document the customary stages of the buying cycle. Determine
what you have to offer for buyers at these different phases and fill in the
gaps where you may not have the appropriate deliverables to offer your
customers and prospective buyers. Each offer should be associated with
a buying stage and a score.
• Leverage lead-ranking tiers. Once you develop your numerical scoring
system, it’s helpful to group a range of scores into a ranking system. This
could consist of hot, warm and cold; 0 to 5; or “A,” “B” and “C.” This
will allow your sales teams to focus on what they need to do next and
not nitpick individual numerical scores. For example, you can define that
an “A” lead is a lead with a score greater than 90. For routing purposes,
whether a contact is assigned a score of 90 or 94 doesn’t matter; what
matters is that sales follows up within an agreed-upon time.
• Incorporate behavior into the score. One of the best indicators of
someone’s propensity to purchase is behavior. These behaviors can
include submitting a form, visiting a Web page or site, clicking on a link in
an email, entering an automated campaign or program, downloading a
file from a website, playing an audio file or video, or clicking on a link in a
website. Consider assigning points in your lead scoring model if someone
performs any of these steps.
• Test the model. Run real-life examples of leads or customers through the
model you’ve created to see how they score. You can do this manually
or use a spreadsheet to model your score. After you run a few test cases
through the model, you’ll likely find there are some adjustments you’ll
need to make.
• Revisit lead scoring and routing processes regularly. Lead scoring
and routing can be a “set it and forget it” system, but that’s not
recommended. Instead, schedule get-togethers with key stakeholders

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at regular intervals to review all offers, visitor behaviors and new
marketing initiatives to make sure you’re scoring on all possible points of
engagement. Also, meet with sales and other involved parties to review
assigned scores and routing policies and gather lead-quality feedback.
Make sure to adjust scoring systems to accommodate the dynamics of
your marketing and sales environment.
• Make exceptions to the typical route leads follow. Allow “hand
raisers” (site visitors who request to speak with sales) to bypass the
scoring model and be routed directly to a rep.
• Match leads to sales reps. Leverage lead assignment rules to
dynamically assign a lead to the correct rep based on product, lead
score, geography, etc.
• Get inside sales involved. If a lead needs further qualification, consider
leveraging an inside sales team resource before routing the opportunity
to direct (or outside) field reps.
Better Practices
• Have specific, documented processes for lead recycling. If a lead
is routed to sales, and yet sales determines it’s not yet a qualified
opportunity, put a mechanism in place to recycle this contact back into
your marketing efforts. Also, debrief with sales to determine why the
lead wasn’t qualified and make sure a score wasn’t incorrectly assigned.
Adjust scoring methodology as needed.
• Incorporate lead nurturing into your marketing efforts. Lead Nurturing
is a process that builds and maintains engagement and relationships
with those prospects that aren’t yet ready to engage a sales resource.
Usually this consists of delivering relevant offerings and content such
as whitepapers, articles, and event and Webinar invitations. The lead
nurture system can be set up within the marketing automation platform.
Typically your lead score system assigns points to individuals who
download content, click on website pages and/or attend webinars and
events.
• Capture behaviors from other sites. Content that’s embedded on your
site, but plays from another site or routes the user to another site should
be tagged in order to be captured and scored as behavior. A common
example is a company’s YouTube video that is embedded to play within
a site page.
• Provide two-way integration with your CRM system. Because lead
routing and recycling is such a dynamic process, routing with emails
alone isn’t recommended. Routing works best when it takes place
between your marketing automation system and your integrated CRM
system. That way the leads that are sales ready will automatically show
up in the same system that the sales reps use for the daily management
of their sales process. Email alerts delivered from the marketing
automation system to the rep is a good supplement to a CRM-based
routing process.

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• Make it obvious to salespeople when they should act. Leverage
views, tasks and work flows in CRM to make it clear to sales reps when
they should follow up with a lead who’s taken a meaningful action.
Provide the date of the marketing alert and an introductory note so reps
get suggestions on appropriate steps they should take in following up.
• Develop and gain agreement with service-level agreements. The
definitions and discussions on how leads are to be scored and routed
have already been described as requirements in both the foundational
principles and recommended practices sections. The optimal practice,
however, is to document and enforce a service-level agreement for lead
scoring and routing. This requires the joint teams to put the attributes
of the lead scores and ranks in writing and agree to enact the specific
workflow processes within a certain amount of time. For example,
if a contact is assigned a rank of “A” because of his or her behavior
and activity, then marketing must conform to an agreed-upon service
level for routing those leads to sales within a specified period of time.
Likewise, if a qualified lead is received by sales, sales commits in writing
to contact the prospective buyer within “X” number of hours. These
documented service-level agreements become the basis to audit
effectiveness and policy conformance.
• Use negative scoring to eliminate certain contacts from being
qualified and therefore routed to sales. Every company has individuals
that are interested in your company but will never become a valid
potential buyer of your offerings. Examples include individuals who
work for competitors as well as students, consultants, members of the
press or industry analysts. A better practice is to have individuals from
certain website URLs or geographies omitted from your lead nurturing,
recycling, scoring and routing processes.
• Develop a system for identifying and routing the hottest leads. A
new lead for you might be your competitor’s hot lead that’s researching
other vendors. Provide clear ways for these “blue birds” to raise their
hand and get an immediate call from inside sales.
• Consider multiple scoring models. If you have different product lines
with different sales and marketing processes, consider establishing
unique scoring models and routing policies for each so that you’re
tailoring your activities appropriately. You may also want to establish
different scoring models for different regions or geographies.

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Programs or campaigns provide capabilities to design and deploy automated
processes that move contacts through repetitive marketing steps without
the need for queuing, sending, or other batch or manual marketing efforts.
Each automated program consists of rules for entering and exiting the program,
decision logic (for example, if a contact has exhibited a certain behavior or has
a certain value in his contact record, then he or she advances to a determined
step; otherwise, do something else) and content elements. In Silverpop’s 2011
Customer Survey, more than 70 percent of respondents indicated that they plan
to design and implement additional automation campaigns in the upcoming year.
According to George Goodall, senior analyst at Info-Tech Research Group, when
marketing integrates behavior into the marketing mix, ROI can reach a striking
256 percent.
• Define your audience. Automated programs or campaigns are only going
to include audience members that meet the entry criteria. In order to begin
this process, you need to determine who you want to include. This definition
should include database criteria such as title, industry, country or other fields.
You can also elect to place contacts into your automation process when they
meet certain lead score ranges or exhibit certain website or email behavior.
Properly defining who will (and who won’t) be included in an automated
program is vital to your success, so take care in defining the rules for
including and excluding contacts.
• Consider campaigns that would help you proactively target and
communicate to various segments in your marketing database. Think of
programs that allow you to invite participants to engage with you. Examples
include upsell/cross sell, buying cycle nurture programs, event marketing,
and trial-to-purchase conversions.
• Implement campaigns that help you respond to a visitor’s action or
request in real time. Think of these as programs that are waiting for a visitor
to take a specific action and then responding instantly. Examples include a
Webinar/event registration follow-up and an offer download follow-up that
includes a next recommendation offer link.
• Use automation for campaigns that will be triggered based on an
important date or time frame. Reach out to a contact based on something
that happened in the past. Examples include an approaching free-trial
expiration, lack of activity over a period of time, the contact’s birthday, or their
anniversary of becoming a customer or entering a loyalty program.
Programs and Campaign
Automation

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• Consider having lead gen, lead nurture and customer-focused
automation programs. The latter can help you stay connected to
existing customers, increasing loyalty and customer satisfaction.
• Establish a program timeline. You need to decide if the program will
run indefinitely or for a determined period of time, what the timeline is
for new contacts to be able to enter the program, and which program
elements are date-relative. This means that the campaign step can
occur relative to other steps in the program. For example, step 3 occurs
seven days after step 2. Also, determine which program elements are
date-sensitive. For example, if you have a Webinar or show, those
activities will most likely occur on a pre-determined date.
• Pre-develop your content. Once you recognize the need to automate
a series of marketing activities, begin documenting the content that you
need to support your efforts. In order to define the program, you don’t
need to have every campaign offer or element in final form (you can use
placeholders for steps where content is forthcoming). However, pre-
developing all the content prior to campaign launch will eliminate a last-
minute scramble to fill a content gap.
• Where possible, test your automation with a seed list. This will ensure
you don’t have a segment of responders who are “stuck” in a step.
• Incorporate autoresponders. Autoresponders are mailings that are
triggered based on certain events and should be added as a defined
step for campaign elements such as reminders and registration
confirmations. This practice will dramatically increase the efficiency
of the marketing staff. Autoresponders can also be a wonderful way
to cross-sell and upsell add-ons such as suggested maintenance,
extended warranty or additional training courses.
• Follow up content requests. When a site visitor requests content, a
program can provide an automated follow-up mechanism by asking
them if they would like to chat with a rep, promoting the next piece of
content in the series, asking their opinion or inviting them to share the
content on their social network.
• Pay attention to timing. Specify the times at which an automated
program is allowed to send out email so that messages don’t appear in
contacts’ inboxes while they’re sleeping.
• Use data from CRM to dynamically populate messages. This
personalization can improve engagement. Have the email reply address
belong to the sales rep instead of an unmonitored mailbox, which might
be perceived as impersonal.

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Better Practices
• Use personalization and dynamic content. Tailoring an offer by
segment, industry or contact name will increase readership and success
rates. Consider tailoring both the copy and the images based on fields
in the database. In many instances, dynamic content only requires
one email template, with the message then deploying in many different
versions based on fields in your database. This can provide substantial
increases in efficiency and effectiveness.
• Provide specific programs that sales reps can use to add contacts
to during their sales process. Examples can include inflection points
such as completing a meeting, demo or phone call. Program examples
can include a 60-day introductory nurture or a deep-dive nurture on a
specific product.
• Weed out unqualified leads. Set system rules that prevent unqualified
contacts from receiving high-value offers and content.
• Weed out leads that are close to buying. Leverage CRM opportunity
information to prevent contacts at a high-probability deal state from
receiving nurture offers.
• Leverage relational table information. Use relational table data such
as products purchased, customer service calls, abandoned shopping
cart and more to make the message content and timing match the
contact’s interest.
• Create campaign templates that are simple to copy. This will save
you valuable time when implementing routine marketing tactics such as
Webinars and events.
• Create campaign hierarchies. Specify entry criteria within each
campaign that removes people who are in a similar but higher-value
campaign.
• Leverage lead scoring rankings to remove people or add them to
the appropriate programs. This will help ensure that a higher-ranked
lead doesn’t end up in a general nurture program.

P17
Having an effective data management and integration strategy is
fundamental to the success of digital marketing. In Silverpop’s December
2011 customer survey, more than 65 percent of marketers surveyed
indicated that they wanted to get more insight from their marketing data.
We’ve all heard the famous Stephen Covey quote, “Begin with the end in
mind.” This adage is absolutely the truth when it comes to data. If you build
and implement an effective data strategy, you’ll get far more insight from your
marketing data.
Often, companies let the pressures of deadlines relegate data management
decisions to the back seat. It’s far too easy to import one-off lists to fulfill a
project need without considering a strategy and planning for integrating the
list into a centralized persistent database. Resist this temptation by carefully
considering the short- and long-term requirements for all data elements. Plan
for and implement integrations to other systems including CRM systems,
Billing Systems, and Product Catalogs. In the Silverpop December 2011
customer survey, more than half of respondents indicated that they wanted to
improve segmentation. Having a well thought out data strategy will contribute
greatly to the improvement of your segmentation efforts.
• Design and adhere to a single, persistent master database if
possible. A central marketing database will allow you to communicate
with an individual across all marketing channels (email, web, social,
location, mobile) and understand their interests and intent. Having a
singular place that houses your database of record also enables you to
take advantage of programs that track interactions over time such as
Send Time Optimization.
• Determine which data elements you want in your database and the
proper format for that data. Regularly run routines that validate the
data for format conformance. If you’ll never use a data field, don’t import
or maintain it in your database. For example, only integrate the fields
from your CRM system that are relevant in marketing communication
and business rules.
• Capture and incorporate behavioral data for use across many
marketing automation functions. Behavioral data can include actions
(clicks, downloads, views, opens) that a visitor took on your site or in
your emails.
Data Management
and Integration

P18
• Always append new data to existing records and update existing
data fields with newer data. This will dramatically reduce the
introduction of duplicates into your primary database.
• Define who will have which types of data management rights. Will
sales have access and be able to update all fields in your database? If
not, carefully define the rules for data access and update capabilities in
your organization.
• Map it. If two-way real time integration is required between systems,
build a data map that defines each field and the integration
requirements (one-way, two-way). Determine which fields will have
precedence if both are being updated.
• Decide between marketing automation and CRM. If you’re integrating
with a CRM system, decide if all your records are going to be in both
your marketing automation system and your CRM system or if your
CRM system is only going to house selected records (e.g., only integrate
the accounts where a contact has a lead score over a certain threshold).
Better Practices
• Implement Web tracking to capture and record all website visitor
metrics. This will allow you to gain insight into where your prospects are
visiting, where they’re clicking and engaging, and where anonymous site
visitors take the time to identify themselves through a Web form.
• Use queries instead of contact lists for ongoing programs. Contact
lists are static one-off lists that never change. Queries dynamically
access your database and include all recent records, increasing
your target audience and ensuring you’re using the most up-to-date
information.
• Incorporate relational tables to allow for the real-time use of related
data. Examples can include client billing information, product tables
and support history. Plan for consistent integration of this data into your
marketing automation system so that you’re going to market with the
most up-to-date and relevant information.
• Give reps the power to add accounts into nurture. If your CRM
system is integrated with your marketing automation system, allow reps
to add self-selected accounts from their CRM into a recycling or nurture
program in your marketing automation solution.
• Put external data to use. Allow demographic and other information
collected by sales reps or third-party data append tools to drive
marketing programs, business logic and lead scoring.

P19
Reporting and analytics provide the foundation for improvement in all areas of
your marketing efforts. As mentioned in the previous section, more than 65
percent of marketers in Silverpop’s December 2011 customer survey wanted to
get more insight from their marketing data, putting reporting and analytics near the
top of the list of 2012 marketing goals. Without a well-defined data management
discipline, though, you may be missing key insights, or worse yet, arriving at the
wrong conclusions because your data is either incomplete or inaccurate. Reporting
and analytics provide the insight you need to optimize and improve marketing
tactics, marketing budget and ROI, as well as predict future revenue streams.
There are three primary methods for reporting and analytics: Standard “out-of-the-
box” reporting, extracting and manipulating marketing data into Excel incorporating
pivot tables and report template frameworks, and performing multidimensional
data analysis using analytics applications.
All methods can be used simultaneously to provide the insight you need.
• Review each standard report provided by your marketing automation
vendor. Evaluate these reports to determine their usefulness within your
department and among other interested parties. Also, review the campaign
and pipeline reporting capabilities of your CRM system if installed. This
will allow you to easily gain insights across the entire marketing and sales
pipeline.
• Determine ownership. Who will run the reports, when will they run and to
whom they will be distributed? Determine who will interpret the reports and
share key findings.
• Develop standard procedures. Adopt a standard process to evaluate
each report, interpret the data and make recommendations both within the
marketing team and to other departments.
• Track how your customer found you separately and distinctly from what
they found. This means that the offer should be tracked separately from the
source. Examples of a lead source could be a pay-per-click ad, a tweet, an
organic search, or an article in a publication. These are the places where the
prospect first heard about you. This is a completely different measurement
from the offer. The offer is what you develop to entice someone to take
action. Examples of offers could be a white paper, and invitation to an event
or Webinar, or a discount. To help you with your budgeting and resource
planning, you need to consider both of these attributes of your leads.
Reporting and Analytics

P20
• An originating lead source should be maintained forever. The originating
lead source represents the first time a person ever responded to your
company’s information and took action. Over time, storing and analyzing this
information will give you valuable insight into which channels (e.g., Twitter
link, email link, trade show or pay-per-click ad) are the most responsive for
your company. If you overwrite this originating lead source with subsequent
visit information, you’ve lost the ability to use that critical information as the
basis for future budgeting and planning efforts.
Better Practices
• Regularly report and assess the performance of individual components
of your marketing mix. This includes individual mailings, offers and events.
• Look for patterns you can act on. Review trend information such as list
growth and collateral/offer consumption to see if there is valuable, actionable
insight.
• Track and report on individuals as they move from anonymous site
visitors to customers. This “research-to-revenue” tracking and reporting
will provide important insights that will allow you to assess both sales and
marketing effectiveness.
• Use an Excel plug-in. If you want additional segmentation, statistics or
comparisons that aren’t found in the standard reporting capabilities of you
marketing automation solution, consider using an Excel plug-in to extract the
data from your marketing automation installation. From there you can slice,
dice, sub-total and calculate a wide array of data elements to get you the
insight you need.
• Leverage snapshot metrics to track your progress by month or quarter.
This will help you identify strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement.
• Offer a dashboard view for the C-suite. Consider implementing a
Web-based, self-service dashboard or portal where executives and other
key individuals can get metrics and performance information on a
self-service basis.
• Look at data on an account-wide level. Although B2B companies
market and sell to individuals, aggregating behaviors and results of actions
(or non-actions) to gain an account-wide perspective is invaluable.
• Make each offer a campaign in your CRM system if applicable. This
will allow you to see the contribution that each offer has across the entire
marketing funnel.
• Add an analytics application. If you want multidimensional analysis or
would like to assimilate large quantities of data out of your marketing
automation system, consider the addition of a commercial multi-dimensional
analytics application.

P21
CONCLUSION
When reviewed in its entirety, email, landing pages, data collection, scoring,
routing, programs, automation, data management, integration, reporting and
analytics offer a comprehensive suite of functionality that can dramatically
improve the efficiency and effectiveness in the marketing department. Never
before has this array of functionality been available to help marketers achieve
and exceed their business objectives, but today’s marketing automation
technology puts all these tools at your fingertips.
Using this book as a road map can help you adopt a phased approach
for implementing marketing automation and achieving outstanding results.
Review where you and your organization are in the adoption of these core
capabilities and gradually increase your sophistication in the functional areas
of your choice. Moving from foundational practices to recommended practices
and then on to better practices provides a practical guide for operational and
business success.
Footnotes
1-Nielsen, “Generation App: 62% of Mobile Users 25-34 Own Smartphones,” Nov. 2011

Marketing Automation Best Practices

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