So you’re starting your journey with marketing automation! While doing some research you may have come across marketing automation software offers in which their providers say how much easier life at your company will become immediately after you have started to use their solution. Like a magic wand, a marketing automation platform is said to solve all your operational problems, take the heat from your overwhelmed marketing specialists, generate high-quality leads when you sleep and, most of all, let you earn more money… We surely don’t want our article to damp your enthusiasm down as we strongly believe that marketing automation technologies are amazing :) But let’s face a few facts!
The untold side of marketing automation
First, marketing automation is not only about marketing. Marketing automation platforms offer possibilities of automating work of marketing, sales and customer support teams.
Second, in most cases there is more than just one business decision maker that decides by short yes or no. As those platforms are often all-in-one tools with plenty of application options, there are usually many stakeholders involved – from CEOs, marketing, sales and IT participants to accounting or purchase departments.
Third, due to different types of tasks that need to be performed, like, among others, establishing processes and confirming responsibilities, creating automation paths or managing projects’ execution, there is really A LOT of work required to set a new platform up. On top of that, a great variety of tools and options available, like for example many types of campaigns, different communication channels or a lot of content strategy ideas, do not make the implementation process any easier. We can briefly summarize it as follows:
So yes, you definitely can achieve all those goals described in the first paragraph.
But the truth is, proper implementation of any marketing automation platform is a good deal of work.
Now, once it has been said out loud, there is also good news – to make the marketing automation implementation as smooth as possible you need a good plan. And in this article we will help you come up with one!
Phase #1: don’t overcomplicate the technical part
For many companies the obvious point to start at is defining detailed list of business goals and sketching a plan for technical implementation of marketing automation software. Some involve their IT teams in reading and analysing every piece of technical documentation before they even know whether their company will at the end stick to the platform. And they do that without a second of testing! We believe that in most cases it is simply a waste of money and valuable time.
There is no doubt clear strategy, defined KPIs and technical documentation are extremely important and, if one, having successfully completed the testing phase, decides to fully implement the tool, using its full potential with clear set of goals we want to achieve thanks to marketing automation for sure pays off. But do not overcomplicate it at the very beginning.
Starting with the good basics and quick check of what a given tool really does is by far a better strategy than investing resources in the solution you may even no longer use after the trial ends. Quickstallation and possibly simplest set-up are in most cases enough to test whether everything works in a correct way and whether a marketing automation software satisfies our business needs to the extent we had expected. You can check different functionalities and confirm whether you’re able to track and process these data and information pieces that you really need. You will be able to check what exact types of data you can collect and, which is no less important, whether the user interface is intuitive and simple enough so that all your operational stakeholders can work with the tool.
instead of starting with detailed strategy and defining business goals, do the quick testing phase first as often this is enough to decide whether the tool is what you’ve been looking for.
Phase #2: define goals, scope of implementation, user stories, data structure and assets
Once the Phase 1 has been successfully completed and you have a tool or shortlist of tools you like, it’s the right time to go into details! Defining clear goals you want to achieve by using marketing automation software and describing the scope of implementation are crucial on the way to truly beneficial use of the platform at your company. The very wrong approach many organizations take is “I want it as it’s trendy” and “I want it ALL and I want it NOW”.
The fact that a solution is complex and combines many different tools does not mean that you have to make use of all of them. What is a rational reason for using functionalities your business does not need?
Using tools that do not bring any additional value for the sole sake of being able to say to yourself “I use everything as I pay for it!” is pointless.
We can compare it to saying that one will use MS Excel only when they use all its features because they pay for it. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? :) Why not to focus only on those elements of marketing automation software that really help your business grow and instead of using everything somehow start to use selected features smartly? Like we all do with MS Excel – the aim is not to use all the advanced features available but to use those that help us reach our goals in an effective way.
With marketing automation implementation you should define your goals and scope you need at the very beginning and stick to an old rule of eating an elephant one bite at a time. The problem is that many companies starting their journey with marketing automation solutions simply do not know what they want to achieve and what they expect from the platform.
We could say that marketing automation implementation is like a filmmaking process. And before the first day of shooting so creating automation paths, you surely need to set goals, think about limitations, write scripts and prepare props. In order to help you with that part, in the further course of the article we will discuss real-life examples of goals and implementation scopes for 3 industries: service companies, SaaS and e-commerce.
After defining goals and implementation scope, we will add the next important element which are user stories so clear descriptions of how, when and where marketing automation platform helps as a user interacts with your website or application. And then, for each user story we will define data structure, so information on which exact data types are needed or collected and what is their source or destination, and assets, which are content elements or files you need to prepare and later feed to the platform to achieve goals.
Below we’ve created a separate paragraph for each of the three industries:
1. Service companies
2. SaaS
3. E-commerce
In each paragraph you’ll find a detailed industry-specific example of 1 goal, along with its implementation scope, related user story, data structure and assets. Then, at the end of each paragraph we’ve included the Marketing Automation Implementation Canvas with a bunch of other common examples typical for a given industry.
Service companies
Let's start with online service companies and have a look at one of the most common examples of industry goal, implementation scope, user story, data structure and assets.
Goals
- Collect more contact details from current traffic
And that determines the following scope of marketing automation implementation.
Scope of implementation
- Basic contact information collection through exit intent popup
Now it is time to create related user stories.
User stories
- When an anonymous user is on my website and is about to leave (exit intent) without subscribing to newsletter or submitting a detailed contact form, a pop up with basic data inputs (name, email, phone number) appears. If a user leaves contact data, they receive a thank you email with a free ebook.
Then, let’s focus on data structure and assets.
Data structure
- a) User attributes: name, email, phone number
b) Event: exit_intent
Assets
- a) popup form with content
b) free ebook
c) thank you email campaign content
Goals:
- Generating new leads from current traffic
- Effectively structure our messy sales processes
- Making better marketing investment decisions D
Scope of implementation:
- Lead generation chatbot
- CRM set-up – working with deals and activities
- Lead analytics (source, conversion, segments)
User stories:
- A user comes to specific webpages of my website – pricing or special deals pages – thus showing their interest in the purchase. If they spend there more than 60 seconds (true interest), a chatbot sends first message to welcome them, then send the next message to ask how it can help. If a user is interested in the offer and in the next question selects a particular area/subscription plan they are interested in, a chatbot assigns them to an agent, inform that human product advisor is on the way and asks for a bit of patience. If an agent has not responded within 3 minutes or it’s outside office hours, a chatbot sends another message and, if they are anonymous users, asks for contact details: name, email address and phone number. After that it enables a user to open the calendar and select the best timeslot for a call. It informs that the company will be in touch on selected day & time and thanks for the chat. If they provide an email address, chatbot adds them to a mailing list and send thank you email. If they click “unsubscribe” they are removed from the list.Then, in the other scenario, so If a user is not interested in any help, the chatbot replies that it is perfectly fine and, if they are anonymous visitors, it asks for email address in case they want to be in touch or subscribe to newsletter. If in that scenario user gives their email address, the automation adds them to a list and sends a thank you email campaign. If they click “unsubscribe” in an email, they are removed from the mailing list.
- Until now (the moment of CRM set-up) our activities and processes related to sales haven’t been managed. All potential deals were passed to my sales team and the reps have contacted potential clients by emails. We haven’t calculated nor tracked conversions from “sales-qualified-lead” to “purchased”. We haven’t counted time needed for different activities of particular sales reps, we also haven’t had any idea how much time it usually takes for a given lead type to convert. We needed to organize it in structured and repeatable processes so we create our main pipeline which is composed of 5 stages. Every time there appears a potential deal, it is created in the marketing automation system, along with additional details, like related company, related user, responsible sales agent, value of a deal etc. A sales agent adds the deal to a correct stage of the Sales Pipeline. Each past and future activity connected to that deal and additional information pieces about them are stored, i.e. calls, meetings or scheduled demos. The whole Sales team is able to see the status of a given deal and its stage in the Pipeline as well as all its additional characteristics and related information. Whenever a particular agent is assigned to a given activity, like for example call with a client, they are notified automatically.
- I am able to analyse where users come to my website from as well as check which traffic source brings the highest percentage of conversions to paying customers. To be able to do that, I check user segments based on traffic source (different segments for different traffic sources, like facebook, LinkedIn, Google search, newsletter) and compare them to user segments based on traffic source and attribute saying whether they have started a trial/paid service. I can calculate conversion rates in the Dashboards section. Moreover, I can track the effectiveness of my sales team and calculate average deal numbers and values per agent and check the effectiveness of different campaigns and special offers.
Data structure:
- a) User attributes: email, name, phone number, unsubscribed_from_emails
b) Events: lead_generator_chatbot_started, lead_generator_chatbot_finished
c) Event attribute: URL (source webpage URL)
d) newsletter subscriber list - a) Deal attributes: name, value, assigned_to, stage, status
b) Company profiles with at least basic information pieces
c) User profiles with at least basic information pieces - a) Campaign measurement user attributes: first_utm_medium, first_utm_campaign, first_utm_term, first_utm_source
b) User attribute: first_payment_made
c) Event: trial_started, paid_service_purchased
d) Event attributes: service_purchased_name, discount, contract_type
e) Deal attributes: value, assigned_to
Assets:
- a) lead generation chatbot automation path with all messages and answer possibilities
b) 2 different versions of thank you email with content
c) newsletter with content - a) Sales Pipeline and its 5 stages created
b) all sales agents invited to the user.com (and actively using the CRM) - a) different user segments created
b) dashboard for traffic analysis and campaigns effectiveness
c) dashboard for sales team management
SaaS
Now, let’s move on to SaaS businesses.The example below is mentioned by the majority of our clients.
Goal
- Effectively structure our messy sales processes
Basing on that we can now define which elements or modules of a marketing automation system SaaS companies need in that case so, in other words, we can define the scope of implementation.
Scope of implementation
- CRM set-up – our sales will be working with deals and activities
The next step is to prepare a user story strictly related to our goal defined above.
User story
- Until now (the moment of CRM set-up) our activities and processes related to sales haven’t been managed. All potential deals were passed to my sales team and the reps have contacted potential clients by emails. We haven’t calculated nor tracked conversions from “sales-qualified-lead” to “purchased”. We haven’t counted time needed for different activities of particular sales reps, we also haven’t had any idea how much time it usually takes for a given lead type to convert. We needed to organize it in structured and repeatable processes so we create our main pipeline which is composed of 5 stages. Every time there appears a potential deal, it is created in the marketing automation system, along with additional details, like related company, related user, responsible sales agent, value of a deal etc. A sales agent adds the deal to a correct stage of the Sales Pipeline. Each past and future activity connected to that deal and additional information pieces about them are stored, i.e. calls, meetings or scheduled demos. The whole Sales team is able to see the status of a given deal and its stage in the Pipeline as well as all its additional characteristics and related information. Whenever a particular agent is assigned to a given activity, like for example call with a client, they are notified automatically.
Having that part ready, let’s now focus on data structure and assets. To provide you with a clear view, we have attached a few screenshots to better illustrate the example.
Data structure
- a) Deal attributes: name, value, assigned_to, stage, status
b) Company profiles with at least basic information pieces
c) User profiles with at least basic information pieces
Assets
- a) Sales Pipeline and its 5 stages created
b) all sales agents invited to the user.com (and actively using the CRM)
Goals
- Measure satisfaction of current customers
- New leads from current traffic
- Increased conversion rates (lead to trial)
Scope of implementation:
- NPS & feedback collection chatbot
- Lead generation chatbot
- Educating drip campaigns after lead acquisition (email)
User stories
- When a user enters my app 1 month after starting a paid plan, a chatbot welcomes them and asks whether they have 1 minute to share their feedback with us. If they agree, chatbot asks 3 questions: an open-ended question about their general impressions, an open-ended question about whether they had any difficulties and if they do, then of which type, and the third one is an NPS scale question. If the NPS is lower than 7, an agent assigned to that user is notified and call the client to get more insights on their dissatisfaction. When a user submits answer to the last question, chatbot send a thank you message. I also store the date of last time a user left feedback as I don’t want to invite them to the survey too often and thus spam my clients.
- A user comes to specific webpages of my website – pricing or special deals pages – thus showing their interest in the purchase. If they spend there more than 60 seconds (true interest), a chatbot sends first message to welcome them, then send the next message to ask how it can help. If a user is interested in the offer and in the next question selects a particular area/subscription plan they are interested in, a chatbot assigns them to an agent, inform that human product advisor is on the way and asks for a bit of patience. If an agent has not responded within 3 minutes or it’s outside office hours, a chatbot sends another message and, if they are anonymous users, asks for contact details: name, email address and phone number. After that it enables a user to open the calendar and select the best timeslot for a call. It informs that the company will be in touch on selected day & time and thanks for the chat. If they provide an email address, chatbot adds them to a mailing list and send thank you email. If they click “unsubscribe” they are removed from the list.Then, in the other scenario, so If a user is not interested in any help, the chatbot replies that it is perfectly fine and, if they are anonymous visitors, it asks for email address in case they want to be in touch or subscribe to newsletter. If in that scenario user gives their email address, the automation adds them to a list and sends a thank you email campaign. If they click “unsubscribe” in an email, they are removed from the mailing list.
- When a user has become a qualified lead it’s now time to encourage them to start a free trial. What I need at that stage is a good lead nurturing strategy. Nurturing can be defined as a process of taking care of leads and gradually increasing their involvement and interest in a product by providing them with useful content adjusted to a pipeline stage they’re at. So after they have left contact data in a form, I send them a thank you email campaign. They are added to a list “Nurturing”. If they click “unsubscribe” in an email, they are removed from the mailing list. In 2-3 days I send another email and invite them for a free webinar. In a week I send them an email with interesting business case study. Then, after 2-3 days I check whether a user has not converted to trial nor has been taken over by one of my sales agents and if they are still on “Nurturing” list, the next email campaign is sent to check how they are doing and to provide them with some tips regarding my software and how it can help their business grow. One week later, the process of checking whether a user has not converted yet is repeated and, if they still need nurturing, the invitation to start a trial is sent. This email contains a free e-book on how to get started with your software in a few simple steps.
Data structure:
- a) User attributes: current_plan, last_time_feedback_left (date of the most recent filling in the survey), first_payment_date, NPS_general_feedback, NPS_answer_difficulties, NPS_score
b) Events: paid_plan_“X”_start (necessary to create an event for each paid plan); feedback_chatbot_accepted
c) Event attributes: NPS_general_feedback, NPS_answer_difficulties, NPS_score event attributes to be connected with the event “feedback_chatbot_accepted” - a) User attributes: email, name, phone number, unsubscribed_from_emails
b) Events: lead_generator_chatbot_started, lead_generator_chatbot_finished
c) Event attribute: URL (URL of webpage on which chatbot started)
d) newsletter subscriber list created - a) User attributes: email, unsubscribed_from_emails, trial_start_date, marketing_consent
b) Events: form_submit, trial_started
Assets:
- a) feedback chatbot questions / messages to be filled in the automation path
- a) 2 different versions of thank you email with content
b) newsletter with content
c) feedback chatbot questions / messages to be filled in the automation path - a) Thank you email campaign
b) Webinar invitation campaign
c) Case study email campaign
d) Software tips email campaign
e) Start a trial email campaign
e) E-book – beginner’s guide to my software
Interested in other examples of common SaaS applications of marketing automation tools? Have a look at the filled-in SaaS Canvas below.
E-commerce
Similarly to the way we’ve done it for service companies and SaaS, let’s now focus in detail on 1 example of e-commerce goal, implementation scope, user story, data structure and assets. At the end of the section you’ll find the Canvas with a few more cases.
Goals
- Generate list of newsletter subscribers (from current traffic)
Having that in mind, we can come up with scope of implementation.
Scope of implementation
- Popup with first purchase discount for new newsletter subscribers
Now, it is time to prepare a related user story.
User story
- When an anonymous user enters my website (any webpage), after 5 seconds a popup appears with email input field and invitation to sign up for newsletter and thus get a 10% discount for the first purchase. When a user provides their email address, they are added to a newsletter mailing list. Also, right after the signup, a thank you email campaign with discount code is sent. If a user clicks “unsubscribe” in the email, they are removed from the newsletter list.
Once we have a user story written down, let’s take care of data structure and assets.
Data structure
- a) User attributes: email, unsubscribe_from_emails
b) Events: newseltter_signup
c) a newsletter subscription mailing list
Assets
- a) ready popup with content
c) thank you email campaign with content
Goals
- Increase opening rate of newsletter by customizing its content
- Increase revenue by approaching abandoned carts
- Increase revenue by reactivating inactive customers
Scope of implementation:
- Newsletter campaigns based on segmentation
- Abandoned cart recovery email campaign
- Email campaign with special offer
User stories:
- If a user is already a subscriber of my newsletter, the content they receive depends on a user segment they are in. Different user segments receive different newsletter content. My core segmentation is based on the geographic location and gender as I run an international e-store with personalized sneakers and availability of products differs by geography. Each newsletter subscriber receives a monthly newsletter adjusted to their location (LATAM, NA, EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST + AFRICA, AUSTRALASIA) and gender (WOMEN, MEN). A newsletter is sent on the 1st day of each month.
- When a user has added a product to cart but but didn’t reach purchase confiramtion pagethen closes the browser window within the next 3 hours and we already have their email address, they receive an email with reminder that their item is still in the cart with the link to purchase finalization. The abandoned cart recovery automation is set to “once per day” frequency so it will be activated only once per day for a given user. We wait 24 hours and check whether a user has actually purchased the product – if yes, the event “abandoned_cart_recoverd” is fired.
- When a user has not made any purchase at my website for more than 30 days and I have their email address, a special email campaign is sent with a 10% discount coupon to encourage them to come back. When an email is sent, an event “recovery_email_sent” fires and if they come back and make a purchase at my website using the discount code, another one is fired – “inactive_recovered_by_email”.
Data structure:
- a) User attributes: email, unsubscribe_from_emails, country/location, gender
b) Segments: LATAM women, NA women, EUROPE women, MIDDLE EAST + AFRICA women, AUSTRALASIA women, LATAM men, NA men, EUROPE men, MIDDLE EAST + AFRICA men, AUSTRALASIA men
c) Newsletter subscribers list - a) user attributes: email
b) events: added_to_cart, purchase, abandoned_cart_recovered
c) product event: add_to_cart
c) product attributes: name, image_URL, price
- a) user attributes: email
b) events: recovery_email_sent, inactive_recovered_by_email
Assets:
- a) 10 different newsletter emails content
- a) email campaign content for abandoned cart recovery
b) product feed (optional) - a) email campaign content for reactivation of inactive customers
The preparation work we have just performed above will very much help you to carry out the marketing automation implementation smoothly and possibly painless. Do not want to prepare everything from scratch? Not a problem! As said, we have prepared for you a Marketing Automation Implementation Canvas you can use and fill your own goals, scope of implementation, user stories, data structure and assets in a well-organized way.
Phase #3: do take care about the technical implementation
Having the final marketing automation tool selected and having completed the Phase #2 so having defined all necessary elements, it’s now the time to focus on the technical part in more detail. You now know what granular goals you want to achieve by marketing automation platform. You are as well aware what exactly you need as you’ve written down scope of implementation, user stories, data structure and assets.
Before proceeding to the next phase, you should double check with your IT team and make sure the marketing automation software has been installed everywhere you need it (your main website, blog, app etc.). Having in mind the defined data structure, decide what is the best way to integrate your marketing automation platform with other systems you use (like accounting system or external applications) so that your able to pass all the data you need.
Phase #4: create automation paths & test
Only now, so having completed phases #2 and #3, it’s the right time to create automation paths in the marketing automation software and make them live on your website or app. Once the preparation has been made correctly, dragging & dropping automation modules and activating the paths is an easy ride.
However, like you don’t start film shooting unless there is a script ready, you also shouldn’t take care of automation paths before having all the necessary elements ready, i.e. goals, implementation scope, user stories, data structure and assets. Many businesses get it wrong here and start with automation paths without even thinking about goals or potential user stories.
Once you’ve created automation paths, don’t forget about debugging and testing. Use the preview mode to double check whether all content elements are right and in place. Then, activate the automations on your website and test them with your team! Thanks to incognito mode you don’t need any help from developers – it’s easy and... exciting :) If you spot any mistakes or think about small improvements, it’s the right time to make amendments.
If you need some additional inspiration while working on your automation paths, take a look at the library of our ready-to-use automation templates!
Phase #5: analyze & optimize
The work doesn’t end with activating your automation paths. Once you’ve completed phases #1 to #4, it’s time to see how your customers respond to those new elements. At this stage you should define clear KPIs and track the performance over time.
Not everything works as you had expected? Don’t panic! Thanks to observing how your users interact with your website or app enriched with automated processes, you can identify white gaps or improvement areas. If you want to compare the performance of alternative versions of a given element (like button color, text or icon) carry out quick A/B tests. If your customer support agents notice that it’d be useful to collect additional event attributes, don’t hesitate to add them. Stay agile and open to improvements. You can of course make automation paths more complex with time, modify their original versions or add new ones. It’s important to track and analyze how your users react to the automations and related content you’ve implemented at phase #2 and optimize them to better meet the expectations of your customers.
Not all companies pay attention to analysis & optimization phase. And they often lose in mid- to long-term. This phase is a very important (and often underestimated!) part of creating the top-level user experience and constantly improving your marketing, sales and support processes to respond to the changing user preferences.
Do you really need to get the Oscar?
We could well compare the elements of preparation for marketing automation implementation to film shooting process. In both cases you need to specify goals and implementation scope, which for movie industry can be defined by budget, timeline or equipment limitations. For marketing automation implementation you need user stories, while for film shooting you should definitely have a script. A counterpart of our data structure and assets for professional movie makers are cast, dialogues, costumes and props.
And once everything is properly set up and prepared, creating a single automation path, similarly to performing one shooting day, is relatively easy and quick. But considering all those preparation steps you need to take care about in the first place, the vision of magic marketing automation platform solving all your business problems in the blink of an eye is nothing more than nice marketing babble.
There will always be companies claiming they need it all and now. But ask yourself whether your business really needs that all.
Not every great actor gets the Oscar but despite that they can successfully develop their careers and earn a lot of money. If we may have one final suggestion for you, it is – do not overcomplicate marketing automation.
Keep it as simple as possible to achieve your goals. As simple solutions usually work best.