Tag Archives: Marketing Automation

Obsessed With Marketing Automation

Don’t Let Bots Dirty Your Data

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In many ways, robots are one of the foundations of modern luxury and comfort. From heavy industrial manufacturing to something as commonplace as vacuuming our homes, robots have been incorporated into nearly every facet of our lives. Despite their general utility, robots do pose a particular problem for email marketers. Bot traffic clogs up our databases and can interfere with the expected actions of our own attempts at harnessing the power of automation using the Adobe Marketo Engage platform.

Automated Interference

B2B marketing frequently runs into a problem where email service providers “test” links in emails as part of their efforts to categorize spam. Out of the box, Marketo lacks the ability to automatically tell the difference between an ESP testing links and a human click. Without the ability to properly discern actual, actionable clicks, your records can end up improperly triggering the actions you have spent so long planning and building in your Marketo Engage instance. 

One of the most obvious impacts occurs in the realm of scoring. Since scoring is one of the most impactful connections between Marketing and Sales, keeping everyone’s trust in the system is paramount. The false positives from the spam testing performed by email service providers could push more records into a MQL status which could in turn increase the amount of records Sales team members reject as not actually qualified. Similarly, email alerts and interesting moments generated by click throughs could be negatively impacted by common bot behavior.

Automated Protection

Marketo Engage has an option to enable bot activity filtering. However, this option is not activated by default. As a Marketo administrator, it falls on you to toggle this useful feature on. If you find yourself inheriting an old instance, we would always advise you to take a look to see if the feature is enabled, and immediately turn it on if it is not. 

Adobe recently released an update to the bot activity filter. Marketo Engage now allows two different kinds of filtering behaviors. You can either use the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) bot list or use proximity matching. Proximity matching identifies when two activities, such as two clicked links, are taken in under two seconds and considers that proof of bot activity. We recommend turning on IAB filtering in nearly all cases. Proximity matching is more aggressive in its filtering. Therefore, we typically recommend only activating proximity matching if bot activity continues to be a problem after you enable filtering by the IAB list. 

When using the IAB list, you are able to completely filter any bot activity identified by the list from being recorded by Marketo at all, but be prepared to see possible declines in your open and click rates in your reporting. Either method allows you to have Marketo log the noted bot activity in lead records. If you keep the activity logged, you can use smart filters and their constraints to filter out the bot activity from your intended audience. 

Human Intelligence Beyond the Automation

Leadous has years of experience dealing with bot activity and its deleterious impact on the Marketo Engage Platform. We would be happy to explain to you in greater detail why you should care about and how you can mitigate the problems that bot activity can introduce. While we are certainly happy that Adobe now includes native support for identifying bot activity, we have actually been helping our clients deal with it for longer than that feature has been available. If you find yourself in a place where the automated filtering still does not bring your bot activity in line, you can trust Leadous to provide you with other options and solutions.

Reach out to see what Leadous and our team can do for you.

 

 

Obsessed With Marketing Automation

Choosing the Right Vehicle for Your Strategies

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Your car is an integral part of your day to day life. You use it, you maintain it, and you have to fuel it. You are intimately familiar with it. Unless you are blessed with a limitless budget, when you are ready to look into buying a new car you have to balance what you want in your new vehicle versus what you need. This is a big purchase, and new cars are very complicated machines. 

What features are going to deliver on your needs? How many of your nice-to-haves can you get? Perhaps even knowing how to tell the difference between a want and a need is too far out of your element. What do you do? You go to your “car” friend, an expert, for advice. When that big purchase is a marketing automation platform instead of a car, think of Leadous as your expert friend, and we will show you how to get the most out of your budget.

The Leadous Evaluation Motor™

Using our Evaluation Motor™ model, the team here at Leadous breaks your marketing automation down into four key areas: Vision, Strategy, Features, and Resources. Think of each as a component of the engine that will drive your marketing initiatives. Our experts will work with you to understand how you currently use and plan to use automation in your marketing. Then we identify the platform best suited to your needs.

We start with your Vision. What are your goals? Do you have a roadmap for reaching your goals? Vision leads to Strategy. What portions of your business come from B2B and from B2C? Are you currently trying to break into new markets?  We can help you determine which of your channels needs development. Once you have a Strategy, we can help you identify the Features of a marketing automation platform required to implement your decisions. Finally, your Strategy and Features will inform what Resources will be needed to run your department, both human and technical. Do you have the database to support the initiatives you have planned? Do you have the man hours to realistically launch and maintain them?

Our discovery process will entail working with you, and you will need to be honest with us and yourself. Some people feel they absolutely must have a big pickup truck when they actually live in a downtown condo and do not even so much as dabble in manual labor. In reality, having the truck is a want. Sometimes those people need a trusted advisor to be honest with them, especially when it comes to budgetary discretion. If your only plans for marketing automation are to schedule email sends, then think of some of the more powerful (and expensive) platforms as more “car” than you need.

Committing to a marketing automation platform is not a trivial investment, just like committing to a contract for a new car. Changing platforms or implementing a company’s first venture into marketing automation usually involves more man hours than you think it will. So having to continually disrupt your operations is typically not the smartest way to go. Instead we will make sure our recommended platform can handle your plans. Alternatively, we can help you scale back your plans if you have to for budgetary reasons. We can show you what exactly you have to reconsider.

Car Enthusiasts Drive Nice Cars

You probably know Leadous is an Adobe Gold Partner. We believe in and use Adobe’s Marketo Engage as our marketing automation platform. You expect a car enthusiast to have a nice car. That said, we are still objective enough to help you decide if you have the need and ability to justify going to the top of the line solution. 

If you do decide to use Marketo Engage, the Leadous team will be able to guide you through the whole implementation. Our team can help you take your Marketo instance from a blank canvas to a high performance engine that drives global, multi-channel initiatives tracking every moment of your leads’ journeys through your fully customized sales life cycle.

Reach out today for expert guidance!

Obsessed With Marketing Automation

The 2022 Trends in Staffing for Email Platform Expertise

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The approach to staffing marketing resources has always toggled back and forth between hire or contract.  Budgets and resource requirements have steadily drove the decisions of which, in 2022 that is no longer the case. With the use of marketing technology exploding and the connection between creative and technically savvy intertwines it is often hard to find the right generalist that can provide a depth of technical expertise to help initiatives accelerate. Many times those generalists teach themselves how to use platforms and end up getting things to move forward, but by necessity instead of best practice, leaving large messes for the next to clean up as soon as they can market themselves with that specific technology experience and move on.

Although the marketing technologies have done tremendous jobs at building out certification and training programs, many companies and individuals are not willing to make the investment to ensure the technology can be fully utilized and don’t understand how to evolve from a foundational approach to one that is more advanced.

We have watched the market for automation platforms over the past 8 plus years, and this is what we know.  First, it is hard to have experience in one platform and move to another without a ramp period – the platforms are not the same no matter what they tell you. Second, the companies that believe in a cross discipline approach of having marketing and technology on the same team excel. And lastly, there is no comparison to the speed of trying to troubleshoot and figure things out on your own versus seeking the advance of an expert.

So how do you accomplish this? Staff for the generalist that can help push the strategy forward, the one who understands your industry and how to connect the dots between data, content, messaging, and technology.  Next if headcount is open, staff for the email campaign and social execution resources due to sheer volume and associated cost.  Then augment for the detailed expertise. The resource you need to do the one time things and/or provide a flux of help when needed and an expert that can align with your team so if resources move on your progress won’t take a hit.

Managed services options allow clients to control the amount of expert support they need to augment their teams and drive initiatives to success.  These services include everything from troubleshooting support for execution teams, to feature enablement, to custom integrations, instance administration, and just sheer extra hands when the team can be overloaded. Usually, organizations that offer these types of staff augmentation resources offer flexible plans for hours and volume pricing to make the investment worth it, letting organizations throttle up or down based on the support needed at any given time. 

The biggest challenge in this approach is knowing  how to partner with an organization that is top notch. This list is the top 5 must haves:

  1. They are an official part of the ecosystem of the technology provider, whereby they receive advanced training and insider updates to keep their joint clients happy.
  2. They are certified.  This is often overlooked by someone who has ‘experience’ but you can’t trade experience for the breadth of best practice training that a certified consultant has experienced.  
  3. They have a long term vision or methodology of how they help their clients evolve and have customer references to back it up.
  4. They are a cultural match and easily fit like a puzzle piece with the other resources you have.  Almost to the point you feel like they are on your team and not a partner resource.
  5. They have a track record of flexibility so they can morph to what is needed at any given time and have a history of going above and beyond.

At Leadous, we refer to our managed services offering as Campaign MentorTM. These services offer support in any area that touches the automation platform. We are a 8+ year 100% certified Adobe Platinum partner for Marketo Engage and leverage the Marketing Automation Progression ModelTM to help our clients realize the value of automation.  

To learn more about augmenting your staff with the dedicated expert support of Campaign MentorTM services or to learn more about the Marketing Automation Progression ModelTM feel free to download our informational one pagers or connect with us. 

Obsessed With Marketing Automation, Uncategorized

Making the Switch to Marketo Engage – Let Us Lead You

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Making major operational decisions about your company’s marketing stack is not an easy undertaking. The logistical effort of having to transition to new marketing automation software can seem like reason enough to just stick with the status quo. However, with the proper partner, you can actually make the transition a benefit in and of itself. Yes, you will need to put some work into the project, but it will also be an opportunity to reevaluate your strategies and make other cutovers that would normally go undone due to the disruption they would cause. Let Leadous be the kind of partner that makes you stronger for having decided to use the Marketo Engage platform.

Navigating the Logistics

The first task you’ll need to tackle is to catalog your assets and current programs. Leadous has been helping our clients through this process for years. Without a plan and end goal in mind, just getting started with this often proves overwhelming to companies at this early stage. We have developed documentation and processes that will help you manage what would otherwise seem to be a daunting task. We know you need to sort through everything from your landing pages to emails to specific audience groups. 

Once you know what you have, the next step is to determine what you want to keep. This will require your team to review your inventory. While Leadous and our experts can not make these sorts of calls for you, we can provide you with guidance about what you’ll need specifically to transition to your new Marketo instance. We can also advise on your broader marketing strategies which may influence the continued use of other assets.

We know you are likely coming from another platform. As such, we know your plans need to revolve around the loss of access to your old service. Our process will help you make sure you have everything you might possibly want to save before your old subscription ends. As we help you plot out your migration timeline, all of the relevant dates and considerations will be incorporated into your plan. 

Getting Into the Weeds

Once you have your migration plan in place, you will start the actual work of rebuilding programs and migrating assets. Outside of the migration itself, you will also need to start setting up your new Marketo instance. The experts at Leadous pride ourselves on our Marketo expertise. We can either guide you through the process, take it over entirely, or whatever mix of the two that meets your needs.

As Marketo experts, we will help you make sure all of your programs are properly adapted into the Marketo environment. Unless you are migrating between Marketo instances, you will have to rebuild the programs in your new instance. There is no ability to import a program from a different platform. Our experience will help smooth over the bumps that will inevitably arise as you have to “translate” into the new language of Marketo. If you are moving from one instance to the next, you can use the program import tool, but you may still have to do some specific rebuilds manually. 

Expect the Unexpected

An old military adage states no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Even the best laid plans have to be ready to change once the realities of the actual engagement reveal themselves, whatever they may be. When this inevitably happens to you, it will pay to have someone else around to offer assistance and advice. We have assisted with many migrations, and while every situation is unique, our history of service and happy clients means we have probably seen something similar to your current quandary.

Actually, we encourage our clients to take the migration as an opportunity to reassess their strategies and technologies. For instance, did you know Adobe has launched Dynamic Chat? Instead of paying for another 3rd party service, you can use a chatbot included with your Marketo subscription. When you make a realization like this and decide to leverage the new feature, the Leadous team is right by your side to help you understand what those changes to the plan mean for the rest of the migration timeline. 

As your team acclimates to the new platform, you can also engage with Leadous to train your staff. Even if you have to solely rely on Leadous during the migration because you are unfamiliar with Marketo, we have the resources to make sure your team doesn’t have to stay that way. From instructor-led sessions with our training expert to access to our managed learning system, Certous, Leadous can take your staff from novice to expert.

A Steady Hand on the Wheel

Whether you decide to do the rebuilds yourself or you want to offload the whole task, with Leadous consultants available to help, the switch to the Marketo Engage platform doesn’t have to be a strike against making the move. You will have dedicated Marketo Certified Experts working as your consultants during the transition, but you won’t be limited to just them. Through your consultants, you will have access to the entire Leadous Services Team and our entire combined experience. With our knowledge, you can rest easy knowing that any challenges you encounter can be dealt with and overcome.

If you are thinking about making the switch to Marketo Engage, reach out to find out what Leadous can do for you

Tips

Preventative Maintenance for Your Marketo Instance

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Everyone knows you need a trusted mechanic. We all trust this person to diagnose and maintain the vehicle we use to navigate our lives. We can often take for granted how complex the machine we depend on daily actually is. Everybody can relate to the frustration and helpless feeling when your car breaks down unexpectedly leaving you stranded. So, you go to your trusted mechanic for preventative maintenance to try to make sure you are not caught stuck on the side of the road, right? Speaking of complex engines we too often take for granted, when was the last time you had a Marketo Certified Expert audit your operation? Let Leadous take a look under the proverbial hood.

An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure

Just like with your car, you need to make sure your Marketo instance is running efficiently. It’s worth the time and effort to catch a problem before it becomes a mess that needs to be dealt with. So, a platform audit starts from the bottom and without assumptions. From the basic technical setup to the general state of marketable records in the database, the Leadous team wants to make sure the foundations of your instance are sturdy and ready to support your lead gen initiatives. This includes checking that your website uses Marketo’s Munchkin tracking code, making sure you are using custom domains for your landing pages and emails, and analyzing the health of your database. 

From there, our experts will familiarize themselves with your instance. That means looking through your workspace(s) at how your programs and campaigns were built and how they currently operate. We can analyze how your habits compare to industry best practices. Even if you think everything is running well, an engine can usually use some form of tune up.

A Full Diagnostic Check

Does your instance have a center of excellence? Do all of your programs follow a best practice folder structure? Do you even have a consistent folder structure, much less one that follows industry best practices? A Marketo instance has so many moving parts, it can be difficult to make sure everything everywhere is working at its top capabilities. 

Leadous will look your instance over from top to bottom. Any area where we see room for improvement, our team of experts will lay out a plan to get your company to the top of its potential. We will then take all those various recommendations based on immediate, short-term and long-term priorities and the benefit they would bring, and work with your team to refine everything into an action plan tailored to you and your goals. 

Upgrading the Engine Parts

Maybe you are looking for more than a tune up. You decided you need an expert’s help to increase the power of your machine. Once we know what’s going on in your instance, we can recommend the typical next steps to continue leveraging the power of the Marketo Engage platform. When we compile our list of recommendations for improving your current build, we will include new processes you can introduce that will enhance your marketing efforts.

The Marketo Engage system is a hugely powerful and expansive tool. Leadous has developed a phased progression model with benchmarks that build toward a full Marketo implementation for a true global, omni-channel approach that is tracking and analyzing your contacts’ journeys through your lifecycle. Think of it like putting higher and higher performance parts into the engine getting more and more power out of it. 

Our platform audit goes a long way toward understanding where a new client is on that model and what steps they can take to reach the next phase. As a company works their way up the progression model, they will see greater personalization in their campaigns, more thorough reporting, and improved return on marketing. 

Everyone Needs Some Help Sometimes

Even the most savvy at-home gearhead eventually runs into a problem that’s better solved with some professional help. Maybe the shop has an expensive tool that is not worth personally purchasing. Leadous and our staff of experts can be your trusted answer for when Marketo requires more resources than your team can currently bring to bear. 

Sometimes a company just lacks a resource for a specific project. Leadous can certainly help finish out whatever project you have planned. Other times, your company needs to learn a new set of skills. The Leadous team is well equipped to train your staff with the knowledge they need. Even a very Marketo-savvy company sometimes just needs some reinforcement of man hours for a large project. Whatever we uncover in our platform audit, the Leadous Team can help your company get the most out of your Marketo engine.

Click here to reach out to a Leadous expert today.

Obsessed With Marketing Automation, Tips

The Best New Year’s Resolution? Marketo Engage™ Training

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With the new year right around the corner the whole office is going to be filled with folks making resolutions to ‘Sharpen the Saw’ as Steven Covey would say. Whether you call it sharpening the saw or just practicing self-care, people commonly vow to drink more water, eat better food and get more sleep. One of the more challenging dimensions of being your best self is keeping yourself mentally sharp. A great way to do that is take a course or learn a new skill.

Leadous offers plenty of ways for you and your team to freshen up knowledge, build a deeper level of understanding in a specific area or even get certified as a Marketo Certified Expert (MCE) or Marketo Certified Specialist.

  • MCE Certification Support – In 2022, Adobe’s most rigorous MCE test becomes the only route to certification. Leadous has helped people from all departments and across the country to gain certification.
  • Workshops – Give your entire team the gift of  Marketo Engage™ training in one of our signature workshops that dives deep into your company’s specific roadblocks and plans for success in 2022
  • Custom Courses – Start where you are and let our Marketo Certified Experts answer questions, provide context and advise on best practices. You determine the subject and we bring the resources and training assets you or your team needs.
  • Specialization Courses – Especially interested in strengthening knowledge in a certain area of Marketo Engage™? Currently there are 11 specializations and we can provide resources that are focused on your specific goals

1. Account-Based Marketing
2. Analytics Attribution
3. Analytics and Reporting
4. Customizing Creative Assets
5. Email Deliverability
6. Events and Webinars
7. Nurture and Engagement
8. Programs and Campaigns
9. Setup and Configuration
10. Social Marketing
11. Web Personalization

End 2021 with training that renews your team and brings recharged attention to the power of marketing automation. Let Leadous share our creative knowledge and training assets with you today. Contact Us for More on Marketo Engage™ Training

Obsessed With Marketing Automation, Tips

This Holiday Season Give Your Company the Gift of Sales and Marketing Alignment for the New Year

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The end of the year is an ideal time to revisit your lead lifecycle definitions or build a company-specific model that brings together management, marketing and sales with the hopes of more revenue for everyone in the new year.

The lead lifecycle model is a valuable tool which is enhanced using a Marketing Automation platform to better understand how a person goes from a lead to paying customer. Each lead’s process through the lead lifecycle reveals valuable knowledge for both the sales and marketing teams, as well as management. Sales can see how many leads are in each stage and marketing can see where lead scoring and email campaigns are positively affecting a lead’s movement through the lead lifecycle. Management is able to more easily identify bottlenecks in the process that require additional resources. Let’s discover what building a basic lead lifecycle can teach.

THE BEGINNING OF THE LEAD LIFECYCLE TELL US WHO LEADS ARE
Before a lead enters a company’s Marketing Automation platform, the lead usually arrives with the minimum of data – a name, a company and (hopefully) a valid email address. To learn more about who they are, marketing starts a group of basic leads in the lifecycle by adding the leads to an outreach campaign. Marketing teams spend time focused on what channels and tactics get leads to engage and connect with sales teams. Tactics can include lead scoring and nurture campaigns which help determine more data points on who this lead is, how the lead engages with the company  and how close the lead is to becoming a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL).

LEAD LIFECYCLE MODELING SHOWS WHAT WORKS
Effective marketing messaging is efficient at moving leads throughout the entire lifecycle. Marketing can use targeted messaging to help  eliminate bottlenecks in the lifecycle funnel or help leads in a sales stage to get engaged and moving again. As leads move through the marketing funnel the movement from one stage to another can be tracked to show what combination of marketing messaging works best at converting customers. For example, offering case studies of companies in similar industries to leads who haven’t yet engaged or to those that are stuck in the sales process and a reference would help move them forward.

LEAD CYCLE MODELING DETERMINES WHEN A LEAD MOVES TO SALES
Building a lead lifecycle requires that marketing and sales teams more tightly align to determine when a lead is qualified to move from a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) to Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). This conversation to define all stages of the lead lifecycle process helps marketing and sales see how they are connected and how those teams can work together to get better results and more revenue from closing deals and keeping customers satisfied.

HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN LEAD LIFECYCLE MODEL
A quick search will show that there are many different stages to include when creating a lead lifecycle model that works for your company. Leadous recommends that a lead lifecycle is envisioned as two connected parts – Marketing and Sales. Best practices for the marketing lead lifecycle includes stages like ‘Added to Campaign’, ‘Engagement’, ‘Connection’ and ‘MQL’. For the sales process, lifecycle stages are often defined in the following terms – ‘SQL’, ‘Qualified’, ‘Has Proposal’, ‘In Negotiation’ & ‘Closed Won/Lost’. By bringing marketing, sales and management together in Q4 a highly specialized lead lifecycle model can be created before the new year.

For assistance building a lead lifecycle model that utilizes marketing automation best practices  to effectively move leads to customers Contact Us.

Our Marketo Certified Experts can help Marketo users leverage Marketo Engage features such as the Lead Lifecycle or the Revenue Cycle Modeler.

Obsessed With Marketing Automation

Lead Scoring – It’s Spooky

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A quick search for ‘Lead Scoring’ tells you all about the methodology of assigning leads points for their demographic and behavior data to better qualify people for sales teams.  Adobe has ‘The Definitive Guide to Lead Scoring’ and countless other docs to tell you what and how. They all agree and so do we, that without automation and CRM integration lead scoring is a nightmare! This spooky season I want to share more eerie, spine tingling stories of ghostly lead scores that decay, scoring models brought back from the dead and leads that never die, they live on as lifelong customers.

Ghosts and Decay
A simple first step for implementing lead scoring is to initially grant points for specific demographic and firmographic data. Marketing teams are often stuck at this level of scoring and scoring models are abandoned because a solid scoring model needs more data. To build a robust lead scoring system a company needs to account for behavioral data as well. Marketing Automation platforms allow for tracking how the lead interacts with company communication. It also allows for tracking when a lead stops interacting with the company and how long it has been since the lead showed interest. In other words – how long have they been ghosting you? If a lead hasn’t interacted with the company, hasn’t opened emails or visited your site it’s time to implement score decay and begin to subtract points from their lead score. This insight helps sales teams filter which leads are responsive and which are unresponsive.

Leadous Brings Scoring Models Back From the Dead
Many companies have some version of scoring in place but lead scoring is a dynamic process; it requires constant attention or it dies.  Refreshing your existing lead scoring process produces the most current and effective lead scoring model. It allows marketing and sales to collaborate on the Ideal Customer Profile and strengthens alignment between the teams as they work toward a common goal.   Leadous will help you maximize your efficiencies, develop a strong lead generation strategy and build out your lead scoring capabilities to bring your current system back from the brink of death or help you iterate your model so it works for today.

Leads that Never Die (They Just Live On as Customers)
Lead Scoring models are built to qualify leads so that sales can start conversations with the most qualified leads and eventually turn those sales accepted leads into opportunities, but often these leads are lost to marketing once sales is involved. By utilizing marketing automation and CRM integration in lead scoring, marketing teams can track the quantity and value of their work from the first moment a customer raises their hand throughout the entire sales process. By tracking the amount of MQLs that turn into SQLs, marketing can prove their effectiveness and provide efficiencies for their sales team or uncover opportunities to redefine the Ideal Customer Profile or the entire scoring model. The best leads don’t die, they live on as your best customers.

Want more information on starting or re-starting your company’s lead scoring program contact us now or visit our Resources page.

Tips

Finance Makes the World Go ‘Round and Marketing Automation Can Help

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Have a finance department that is focused on cutting costs and being more efficient? We do too. (Hi Mike!) Finance leaders like ours are usually looking to streamline their processes and engagements. As business becomes increasingly more sophisticated, automation allows the Finance team to leverage the company’s existing investment in a Marketing Automation platform:

  • Accounts Payable – We historically think of cash flow issues and cash collection as a reactive process, but Marketing Automation can change the entire approach.  By shifting to a proactive communication and engagement process, you improve efficiencies and reduce late payments. 
  • Awareness – Policy changes and company updates are enhanced when you communicate to your clients, partners and employees regularly in order to create an awareness or understanding that may not have been apparent before.
  • Reporting – You can employ multiple different reports in your Marketing Automation platform  to automatically study the impact of various campaigns, their response, and gain key insights into future action.
  • Staying Competitive – Encouraging your team to use the proven tactics of Marketing Automation allows them to free their time to focus on other areas to put your teams and ultimately your business ahead of the competition.  

Talk to your finance team today. Employing Marketing Automation strategies opens up your team’s time to focus on other areas where they can create a positive business impact.  It becomes an easy process to put in place after working with your team on where you would like to initially focus and then scale your efforts. 

Have any questions about how to leverage Marketing Automation in the Finance Department and take your success to the next level? Contact us.

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The Customer Is Always Right, Especially If You Overcommunicate So They Can Never Be Wrong

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The Role of Marketing Automation for Customer Service Teams

As you know Marketing Automation plays a crucial role in the sales and marketing world, and automation in the customer service space can be a way to drive new value from your investment in a marketing automation platform like Marketo Engage. Since this business function is key to driving overall growth and developing deeper relationships with customers and other partnerships within your organization we have highlighted some areas where you can optimize your marketing  automation platform to increase customer service response and deepen engagement.

  • Consistency – As we all know it can be a challenge to constantly engage in a meaningful way with customers.  Marketing Automation facilitates an overall cohesion across all communication which increases brand trust and builds customer loyalty. 
  • Personalization – Based on how people are engaging and where their interests are, Marketing Automation can personalize content, trigger product suggestions, suggest solutions and customize an experience based on each individual’s preferences or areas of interest. 
  • Measurement – Built in reports and key measurements that tie back to the success indicators help build a story and create deeper customer engagement opportunities.
  • Responsiveness – Marketing Automation makes it easy to be more responsive so customers are not left unaddressed with their questions or changes in interests.  Triggers can be set up accordingly to respond throughout a customer’s lifecycle.  
  • Growth – As organizations grow, attention to each customer is key.  Marketing Automation can scale with your growth and become increasingly adaptive to the changes your customers experience with their unique needs.  

Have any questions about how to leverage Marketing Automation to drive Customer Service and take your success to the next level? Contact us.

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Marketing Automation Isn’t Just For Marketing Anymore

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The way to take your business to the next level is making successful automation principles work across your enterprise. In other words, Marketing Automation isn’t just for your marketing team anymore! From Finance and HR to Recruiting and Customer Service, automation drives efficiency and reduces costs – no matter how big or small a project.

By applying trusted automation functionality teams reap immediate benefits.

Even with the fastest technology at your fingertips, manual tasks such as sending follow-up emails, responding to texts, updating social media, creating event updates and collecting data can slow productivity for anyone, in any part of your business. Automation is designed to streamline and optimize your outreach while tying activities to goals. Leveraging a powerful Marketing Automation technology like Marketo Engage in business units across your organization is a way to make the most out of your company’s investment in a marketing automation platform and uncover opportunities for growth and cost savings.

Leadous can share step by step best practices in leveraging Marketo Engage’s Marketing Automation across key functional areas to improve alignment, efficiencies, and effectiveness. Contact us.

Have any questions about how to leverage Marketing Automation across multiple business functions and take your success to the next level? Contact us.

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Event

Executive Circle: How Marketing Automation Changes the Growth Game

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Growth and scalability. The two concepts go hand in hand for marketers looking to up their growth game, without the ability to invest increasing dollars and headcount to gain every percentage point of growth.

But how do you factor scalability into your marketing growth strategy?

That’s where many marketing teams turn to automation. Instead of working harder, with radically increased teams and budgets, work smarter with the team and tools you have using automation. 

Join our May 26th Executive Circle: How Marketing Automation Changes the Growth Game, to hear how Leadous, Dupont – Chemours, and Adobe are working smarter, not harder, to grow with automation. 

You’ll hear directly from the marketers making the growth calls, including Tracey Ellis, CEO at Leadous; Melissa Day, Global Digital Marketing Leader at Chemours; and Cyndie Chon, Director of Commercial Growth Sales at Adobe.

Walk away with best practices, and behind the scenes stories on how top marketers are executing more strategic, efficient marketing strategies, including the four key elements of a scalable marketing automation for growth strategy: people, process, technology and patience.

  • People – The right staff with the right mixture of competencies to support the technology and process.

  • Process – A clearly outlined process for the handoff between your MarTech stack systems and the different teams that support those systems.

  • Technology – The right technology to support your company’s ever-expanding needs.

  • Patience – The runway to properly measure, report on, and continually improve your marketing processes. 

Join this virtual event to learn more about the people, process, and the automation technology to level up your business’ growth.

Update

Leadous’ Marketing Automation as a Service Offering is now an Adobe Accredited Partner Solution

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Leadous is so honored to receive the Adobe Accredited Partner Solution badge for our Marketing Automation as a Service offering (MA-aaS) to support our best-in-class customers as they level up their marketing automation results. 

What is MA-aaS?

Marketing automation as a service essentially gives customers “rented” access to Marketo Engage’s full platform capabilities, while keeping the complex setup and tactical work in the hands of Leadous marketing automation experts, so you can simply focus on results.

It’s a value-driven approach to marketing automation for organizations looking to improve their digital marketing ROI, without needing in-house expertise or an expansive budget immediately at hand.

Our MA-aaS offering helps organizations test, refine and plan for a potential expanded use of Marketo Engage, without the immediate investment. Leadous’ service includes:

  • Strategy, technical prowess, and campaign execution by Marketo certified experts
  • Marketo Engage License
  • Access to the full feature set
  • Data backed results

What is an Adobe Accredited Partner Solution?

Adobe Accredited Partner Solutions solve a repeatable, industry-focused business challenge using the versatility of Adobe Experience Cloud technology combined with the domain expertise of an Adobe Solution Partner. It provides:

  • Adobe solution endorsement
  • Shorter implementation times
  • Exceptional delivery quality 
  • Maximized cost savings
  • Cost & risk reduction 
  • Accelerated time to value 

We couldn’t be more excited to offer MA-aaS to our customers as an Adobe Accredited Partner Solution. If you’re interested in learning more about Marketing Automation as a Service, or simply get more marketing automation best practices, read our new white paper on The Rise of Marketing Automation as a Service here or get all the details on Leadous’ MA-aaS offering here.

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The Marketing Automation Progression Model: Phase 4 – Global

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In our last blog post, we walked through the steps in the Advanced phase of the Marketing Automation Progression Model that marketing teams take when bringing predictive engagement into the marketing funnel. 

For this post, we’ll dive into the fourth and final phase of the model, the Global phase, which provides the necessary strategic planning that ties marketing spend back to revenue and the backdrop for marketers to tell the story of how marketing is truly impacting revenue – across regions. 

The global phase of marketing automation progression is all about analytics. If you’re in this phase you already have the foundation of a solid martech stack, multi-channel marketing strategies, clean data across the funnel, and a clear predictive strategy. 

From there you need the full analytics picture to apply those strategies globally across the enterprise. 

For organizations ready for a global marketing automation approach this usually means 2 key things: 

  1. Advanced Revenue Analysis
    By analyzing the revenue cycle marketers can gain a clear picture of the customer journey. From there you can streamline campaigns to close new business, as well as upsell customers.     
  2. Custom Training and Management Services
    Failing to plan is planning to fail. Knowing where you need to beef up the expertise on your team, or what views you’re missing into your data is the first step. From there you can work with a partner to augment those lacking areas and start to build out the full picture you need to see for real-time, omni-channel campaign insight and optimization. 

Leadous provides key services including Custom Training, Revenue Acceleration Analysis, and Campaign Mentor services to help organizations achieve the global phase of  the Leadous’ Marketing Automation Progression Model and get a clear picture into marketing campaigns across the enterprise. 

For more information on our Marketing Automation Progression Model, contact Leadous!  

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The Marketing Automation Progression Model: Going from 0 to 100 Digital Marketing Execution

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Every business needs to start their digital marketing journey somewhere. Maybe you’re just dipping your toe into marketing automation by procuring a tool like Marketo. Or maybe you’re on the opposite end, with too many tools, and too much complexity across marketing systems. 

No matter where you are on your journey, Leadous has put together a Progression Model to help you increase efficiencies and drive opportunities in your pipeline.

Successful businesses know that in order to execute with focus and effectiveness, you need to know two key things about your marketing journey:

  • Your base level marketing performance (where you’re coming from).
  • Your strategic marketing and sales goals (where you’re going).

By establishing these two things, you’re well on your way to more strategic, efficient marketing campaigns. We call this journey the marketing automation progression model, and here’s more about what that looks like. 

The Leadous Marketing Automation Progression Model

PHASE 0 – Experimental – Prior to Adoption

The journey to leveraging the power of marketing automation always starts here. Have you been only doing batch and blast emails to one huge email list? This is the place for you.  Make your budget dollars go further by driving efficiencies across programs. You’ll need to start by laying the groundwork for automation with your technology stack, scheduling out time to measure and adjust regularly based on the findings, and outlining a strategy for your long-term marketing goals and processes. 

PHASE 1 – Foundational – Single-Point Engagement

The next key foundation of your marketing automation progression is integrations. If your CRM and marketing automation tech stack aren’t talking to each other – you’re still relying on manual processes and the whole “automation” piece of marketing automation will fall flat on its face. By building out your foundational CRM integrations, you can then start to build out repeatable basic programs and campaigns leveraging more comprehensive automation technology.  

PHASE 2 – Expanded – Multi-Touch Nurture

Once you’ve got the automation machine humming, it’s time to solidify marketing and sales alignment to make sure you’re all marching toward the same goals. Once you’re speaking the same language you can get to work planning, building, executing and managing complex multi-channel campaigns to increase revenue and marketing results. 

PHASE 3 – Advanced – Predictive Engagement

After your multi-channel campaigns are in place, you can start to use that information for more advanced, predictive campaigns. Advanced automation takes time and patience to reach. You need to have a solid marketing and sales funnel with data you can trust in order to make actionable decisions. From there, you can optimize your revenue acceleration model using advanced reporting and predictive data to fuel advanced strategies like ABM and predictive web and email content. 

PHASE 4 – Global – Omni-Channel

Finally, truly omni-channel marketing programs tie marketing spend to revenue to show the full lifecycle of marketing attribution in your funnel. This phase enables you to use predictive modeling to forecast marketing-influenced pipeline, and better adjust and track marketing KPIs globally across all multi-touch and predictive campaigns. 

Next Steps 

So how do you go from phase 0 (or maybe even phase -1) to phase 4 in your marketing automation programs? Well, it takes people, process, technology and patience. 

  • People – The right staff with the right mixture of competencies to support the technology and process.
  • Process – A clearly outlined process for the handoff between your MarTech stack systems and the different teams that support those systems.
  • Technology – The right technology to support your company’s ever-expanding needs.

At Leadous, we take care of the people, process, and even the automation technology to get you all the way to marketing automation dominance. Contact us for more information on how we can help your organization level up through our marketing automation progression model. 

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Three Key Components to Accelerate Growth with Marketing Automation

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According to Forrester, marketing automation spend will reach $25B by 2023. With more than half of all businesses already using marketing automation, and the other half planning to, It’s clear that marketing automation is a mainstay for the modern marketer. Particularly growth-focused marketers. 

In order to scale operations, at some point growth marketers’ need to automate some of their work. As your business grows, often so does the workload on your marketing and sales team. 

Whether it’s working to automate lead qualification, nurturing prospects, or cross-selling and up-selling into an existing customer base, marketing automation makes those processes more efficient and effective. 

But marketing automation is more than just the tools that power it, it’s about the people and strategies that govern those tools. In order to truly accelerate growth – you need all three components in your business to reach success. 

The Right Marketing Automation Toolkit

A carpenter is only as good as his (or her!) tools. And in the carpentry of marketing automation, this couldn’t be more true. Without the tools that make sense for your business case, it’s going to be difficult to get your marketing strategy off the ground, no matter how brilliant your strategy or your team really is.

Marketing automation tools can be extremely powerful, or extremely cumbersome, depending on what your goals are, and how you want to get there. One of the reasons we work exclusively with Adobe + Marketo, is for its power and ability to scale from small and medium businesses up to huge enterprises.

Marketo marketing automation allows you to efficiently streamline and automate personalized one-to-one experiences for your business use case, from email to social media to digital ads to website content experiences to SMS text messaging, the list goes on!

Getting the right capabilities setup in your marketing automation system can be difficult at first, with tools like Marketo, you have a lot of customizations to choose from depending on your business needs. Choosing a partner to help you onboard, implement and integrate successfully is key. From there, ensuring you have the support and reporting to tune up your instance will only further ensure your success. 

A solid, cohesive marketing + sales strategy

Once you have the right tools in place, or even before if you’re in the process of selecting the right platform for your business, you need a clear strategy in place for your marketing automation that aligns across marketing and sales. 

Without knowing your current state, and the direction you’re headed, you can’t prescribe the right marketing automation mix to get you where you need to go. Making sure that destination jives across both marketing and sales makes both sides of the house happy. 

Ultimately, both marketing and sales want the same things: more leads, more revenue. Agreeing on the plan and the way to get to that goal makes both of your jobs a little easier. This is another area where a trusted partner can step into help. As a third party advisor, they can look with fresh eyes at both sales and marketing operations, what’s working, what’s not, and help to nail down how the two can better work together to reach their ultimate goal of revenue growth. 

The right people to rule it all

Once you’ve got your tools and strategies in place, you need the right people to make it all work. This is where a lot of companies struggle. The marketing automation field is a hot one, and it can be difficult to find the right talent with the right skillset in your company. 

But without people to build, monitor, report on and adjust your marketing automation toolkit, your growth will be stunted. Technology without people can only get you so far. 

A partner with a proven track record in your marketing automation platform (or the ability to help you choose the right platform for your needs) is key. By working with a partner, you can scale up or scale down the support you need, whether it’s a full marketing automation team that builds and improves on your programs, just ongoing support, or a bucket of hours to focus where you need them. You can scale up or scale down the support you need when you need it, to ensure your programs stay fresh and are helping you grow. 

Overall, the key to any successful marketing growth strategy goes beyond the technology you need to make it all work. Of course you need the right technology that will give you the tools you need to achieve your plans. You also need an aligned strategy between sales and marketing. And you need the right people to manage and improve on it all. 

Leadous, an Adobe campaign and Marketo consulting partner, can help you optimize all three of these components in order to accelerate your growth. Check out our full suite of services designed to build the custom Marketo journey for your business, and let us know if you’re interested in learning more! 

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Work Smarter, Not Harder, with Marketing Artificial Intelligence

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It’s no secret that today’s marketers are constantly being asked to do more with less. As consumers get more and more savvy, the demands on businesses to provide increasingly personalized, tailored experiences continues to grow. 

But the hard truth is there’s only so many hours in a day. Marketers can’t be expected to create personalized experiences that will speak to the situation of every potential consumer. We need a way to work smarter, not just harder. 

That’s where Artificial Intelligence (AI) steps in. According to Marketo, Marketing  AI “advances and accelerates marketers’ ability to transform from one-size-fits-most marketing, to delivering value through deeply personalized communication at an individual level instead of volumes of interruptions that leave consumers exasperated.”

Here are three ways AI can empower marketers to better personalize your outreach, without taking up all of your waking hours. 

Bucket consumers into the correct programs

By inputting your criteria and goals, AI can bucket your broader consumer base into segments that fit their stage.

Personalize your content

AI can help to tailor the content themes and messaging to each individual, so the right message is being received at the right time on the buyer journey.

Maximize your data

By gathering, and learning from, your audience data, AI will continue to improve on personalized experiences. This means you’re continuing to optimize your marketing processes without all the manual work. 

As customer expectations continue to grow, marketers need a way to work smarter. AI takes the manual work out of campaign optimization to make sure you’re exceeding customer expectations by providing the right message in the right channel at the right time. 

So you can focus on providing insights and tracking campaign success, instead of the manual program tweaking that takes up much of the marketing automation strategist’s time. 

If you’re looking for more guidance on implementing Marketo AI in your marketing automation strategy, drop us a line! We can help make your Marketo campaigns work smarter for you. 

 

 

Update

Rounding out the year (and the decade!) at Leadous

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With only a few more weeks left in 2019, we’re taking stock of our whirlwind of a year as a preferred Adobe and Marketo Partner. 

In the last year we’ve grown bigger, and taken on more epic projects than we ever could’ve dreamed of just a few short years ago. We’re so grateful, especially during this holiday season to be working with the industry’s best and brightest. 

So in case you missed any of it, here’s just a few of our highlights from the last few months at Leadous.

Achieving Marketo Engage Specialization Partner

Our biggest honor to date was receiving the Marketo Engage Specialization from Adobe’s leadership team, an achievement given to the few who have reached the highest level of Marketo expertise. 

Marketo Acceleration Certification Partner

Leadous was also awarded the rare Marketo Acceleration Certification in our commitment to provide everything you need to design and deliver exceptional digital experiences for your end customers. These combined accomplishments position the team to be among the top Marketo experts in the world.    

Solidifying our Commitment to Customer Success

Specializations and certifications are not just great for our virtual trophy case, they also help us to better serve you, our customers. By highlighting our best-in-class Marketo solution practice, we’re better positioned to get you a direct line to the latest education, best practices and updates coming out of Adobe/Marketo. And you can always trust you’re in the hands of 100% certified experts architecting, configuring and managing Marketo Engage to drive results for your business.

Leveling up our Team of Experts

On that note, we’ve celebrated more Marketo certifications among our team of consultants this year than any other! With numerous MSAs, MCEs, and MCSAs added to our certs roll call, our team is leveling up to be able to provide you the best Adobe/Marketo experience you can find. 

Taking That Expertise on the Road

From donning our 80s best at the 2019 Business Excellence Gala, to talking all things #smarketing on the Twin Cities Startup Week Panel to the Adobe Conference and beyond, we’ve taken our special brand of Leadous expertise on the road to share best practices, and hear directly from you about what you’re prioritizing in your digital marketing.

It’s been a fabulous year, and decade, for Leadous. Thank you to our entire team of experts for sharing your time and talents with us, and to our customers for trusting us to transform your digital strategies, we can’t wait to see what next year brings!

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Email Best Practices To Improve Deliverability

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You’ve got your audience list built, your email flow steps are setup for success and you’re itching to press send and see the opens and clicks come flooding in from what’s sure to be another amazing email program.

But the success of your email campaign all hinges on one thing — your email actually making it to your subscriber’s inbox. Below are some tips on how you can optimize your email deliverability.   

Deliverability is the single most important aspect of your email program. Without ensuring that your email makes it to your subscriber’s inbox – your catchy subject line and your beautifully designed email won’t stand a chance.

So what can you do to make sure your Marketo email won’t get blocked on its way to your subscribers? Take a look at these 5 best practices to improve your Marketo email deliverability and optimize your business results.  

Respect your audience list

This one is pretty obvious, if you want to improve email deliverability, only send to recipients who have opted in to receive your email communications. Respect your subscribers’ inboxes and they won’t mark you as spam, affecting your future deliverability.

Keep your HTML clean

Email deliverability will give preference to text versions. So you want to make sure if you’re sending an HTML version that your code is very clean. Keep HTML tags properly closed, make sure your code includes a <title> tag, and always add a text version to ensure readability.

Consider the subject line

Reread that subject line a few times and remove any ALL CAPS words, excessive punctuation and spammy words (think FREE, limited time, act now, etc) so your emails don’t get blocked on their way to the inbox.

Pay attention to email body content

It’s not just your subject line content you need to pay attention to. Make sure you’re also following general best practices for your content in the body of your email. Keep font size between 8 pt and 14 pt. Don’t use the same key words in a row. Do a thorough spell check for misspelled words.

Keep your images proportionate to text

The highest deliverability rating is always going to be a text email. But, we obviously want to show off our design skills! Try to keep to a 70 / 30 percent ratio of text to images. Be mindful about how many images you include, keep flash media and embedded images to a minimum, and don’t attach files to your emails.

Overall, successful email deliverability relies on a careful adherence to best practices. It also depends heavily on the reputation and email authentication of your email sending platform. Marketo in particular is optimized for email deliverability and reputation management. Marketo also offers advanced email deliverability packages for customers who need even more reputation management capabilities.

Leadous’ proven email deliverability package addresses everything from templates, to delivery monitoring and reporting. If you’re looking for guidance on how to make sure your emails are making it to your subscribers’ inboxes or have questions about Marketo’s email deliverability, contact Leadous and let us lead you!

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Is Lead Generation as a Service Right for Your Organization?

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Are you considering outsourcing a portion of your marketing automation operations? You’re not alone.

According to a study conducted by Marketo & Ascend2, 75% of successful marketing automation software users outsource a portion of their marketing automation strategy.

And it’s no surprise why. In today’s market, it’s difficult to find and retain top marketing talent. It takes serious skill to manage marketing automation operations, and not every organization has the time and budget to recruit and train for those skills.

That’s where Lead Generation as a Service (LG-AAS) comes in.

LG-AAS changes the way marketers look at the world. At Leadous, we partner with Marketo to bring best in class automation into organization’s hands, so you can see results from your lead generation strategy without the headache.

Our LG-AAS process takes a crawl, walk, run mentality. We give organizations the ability to fill all of the gaps, test, refine and plan for an expanded use of Marketo and its powerful features to drive digital demand generation.

What type of organizations see value from LG-AAS?

We work with organizations from B2B to B2C to maximize their marketing automation systems and drive results without the hassle of managing operations day in and day out.

  • Are you finding it difficult to recruit the right team in your budget to manage marketing automation operations?
  • Would you like to focus more of your time and efforts on results instead of processes?
  • Do you need to get tools setup quickly so you can start seeing results?
  • Are your revenue goals closely tied to your marketing demand generation?
  • Are you having difficulty scaling up your marketing operations to meet sales goals?
  • Do you often work with agencies or other vendors and have experience managing them?
  • Do you want to implement marketing automation, but need to take a methodical approach?

If you’re nodding to one of these scenarios, LG-AAS is for you! The key to success in marketing automation is driving results. So if your organization isn’t in a spot to drive those on your own quite yet, LG-AAS could be a fit.

Let us lead you to better lead generation. Contact Leadous today to learn more about our LG-AAS offering.

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Transforming Consumer Engagement using Marketo (and Leadous!)

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Today’s consumer is marketing savvy with high expectations for the brands they choose to engage with. Your business has a limited amount of time to make a good impression, and much of that impression relies solely on marketing.

Most of the research houses estimate that between 60% and 90% of the buyer’s journey is now completely digitally self-guided.

Marketing automation is really the one, efficient way to transform that digital journey and keep customers engaged with your brand. In this post, we’ll talk to Marketo’s consumer marketing solution, and how Leadous can help your business find, engage and retain consumers by implementing a smart, holistic marketing automation strategy.  

Find your people

Any good marketing campaign starts with a targeted list. You need to know who you’re marketing to, where they’re finding your brand, and how they want to interact with you. Once you can figure out where they are (and where they’re coming from) you can incorporate targeted messaging in Marketo to deliver meaningful experiences.

Omnichannel engagement with personalization

Marketo allows you to follow your customer from your website, to social media, through emails, on to content, the list goes on! If it’s a marketing channel, Marketo can track it. By connecting the dots between your various marketing campaigns, you’re able to make sure you’re providing a consistent, cohesive digital experience that your consumers will enjoy and not be annoyed by.

Create brand advocates to increase the lifetime value of the customer

Once your opportunities convert, the journey doesn’t have to stop! Continue the conversation with customer nurture programs to make sure your consumers are becoming loyal brand advocates (and hopefully being inspired to buy more products or services from you as a result!).

Track revenue driving metrics

Data is what keeps the marketing automation machine humming along. With a unified view of the customer, and the marketing activities driving consumer engagement, you’re able to also report on what’s actually working to drive acquisitions, and what the lifetime customer value really is, so you’re able to improve on results as you go.

Looking for more tips on improving consumer engagement and providing a holistic digital experience for your buyers? We’d love to help lead you to better, smarter, consumer engagement campaigns. Contact us today!