This article discusses the differences between email marketing and marketing automation and -- and offers tips for integrating your marketing automation platform with your CRM system.
Originally published in H1 2018 D365UG/CRMUG Magazine
More than 82 percent of companies—big and small alike—are using email marketing in some capacity to drive leads and sales, and they’re using it for good effect. Recent studies show that marketers rank email as the most effective channel for acquiring new leads and holding onto existing clients, and more than three quarters of marketers are happy with the ROI of email marketing.
But here’s the thing: Even though most marketers are leveraging email to drive leads and sales, only 42 percent of those same marketers are using marketing automation platforms to manage their digital strategy.
There’s a key difference between marketing automation and email marketing: Email marketing is a part of marketing automation, but marketing automation is not email marketing. Marketing automation is a way to automate how you handle most or all of your digital marketing efforts. The actions of automating your marketing (e.g., scheduling a task or creating workflows that automatically trigger based on actions) are then handled by a marketing automation platform—typically, software you access through a web browser which may or may not (but absolutely should!) integrate to your CRM. Think of landing pages, email send engine, form builders, surveys, and social media scheduling as the basic features in a marketing automation platform.
Take note of what I said above: Your marketing automation platform absolutely should integrate to your CRM, even if you’re not sure how to find value in your integration (hang on; we’ll get there).
If you’re in the category of marketers struggling to find value in your integration, you’re not alone. As marketers, we’re up against the challenges of data entry, understanding integration points, and defining sales triggers. Oftentimes we don’t know what to ask for on the CRM side to execute the campaigns we want to build on the marketing automation side.
A Successful Integration Starts with a Plan
Without a plan for your integration, the data you’re collecting in both platforms is meaningless. To make the most of your integration, start by thinking about your overall marketing goals (engage cold leads, cross-sell to existing Customers), followed by individual campaigns you’ll need to support those goals (nurture campaign for leads gone cold in the last 90 days), followed finally by how you’re going to gather and organize the information you need to run those campaigns (your CRM).
Let’s start with goals and work backward. There are some marketing automation tasks that CRM solutions are perfect for supporting, like:
- Lead Nurture
- Re-engagement of Cold Leads
- Creating Custom Audiences for Remarketing Campaigns
- Cross-sell and Upsell Campaigns
- Customer Retention
- Review Strategies
Once you know what goals you want to achieve (e.g., run a lead nurture campaign or create a review campaign for existing Customers), you can set up a path for the data you need to gather:
Let’s look at a few goals and sample campaigns you can build based on this model.
Nurturing What’s Already In Your CRM
There are two types of lead nurturing you should be thinking about with your integration: What’s in your CRM, and what’s in your marketing automation platform. To nurture what’s already in your CRM (say, existing leads that aren’t in the act of being converted), think about what you want to target and build a marketing list based on a specific field or action. Avoid broad generalizations, like “All Open Leads,” and look for specifics you can build a personalized campaign around. You might want to target a field that captures what the lead is interested in, completed phone calls, timestamps, or custom fields. Consider, too, if you want to run this campaign one time or have it running dynamically.
Once your marketing list is built, create a campaign in your marketing automation platform with a strong call to action that’s directly related to the field you targeted in CRM. For example, if you targeted leads gone cold 90 days prior, you could create an offer that entices those leads to re-engage. If you’re dealing with timestamps, you could add new leads into a learn more nurture. Once your campaign is ready, use your integration to map that list to your marketing automation platform.
Nurturing What’s in Your Marketing Automation Platform
These are your inbound leads, which may or may not be ready to enter in your CRM. Ideally, you should have control over what inbound leads get entered as CRM leads. For example, someone who is downloading content is not at the same place in the sales funnel as someone who has filled out the contact us form. Let’s focus on early funnel leads—people who have converted in your marketing automation platform but who have not filled out a form that asks you to contact them.
These early funnel leads are prime for nurturing. Use messaging on your landing pages that tells your would-be downloaders you won’t call them right away, as that will help you get more conversions. Next, build an automated email campaign with helpful information related to what they downloaded—say, a follow-up download that adds context to what they have, a link to reviews, a case study in their industry, etc. When they contact you, tag their CRM source campaign back to your original download campaign—this helps you prove the value of inbound.
Re-Engage Cold Lists
As much as a quarter of your email list goes cold each year, either through job turnover or role change. But you won’t know who’s still interested and who has moved on if you don’t ask. To make this work, build a marketing list around last activity date, modified on, opportunity close date (as lost), or created on date. Then create compelling content, like a how-to guide or an event invitation, and using your integration, send a series of emails to that list.
A few tips: Put a query in place on your marketing automation side that takes out people who have engaged at each step along the way, and let them know what value you will provide to them if they subscribe to your emails in the future. Remember, this is what value you are providing to them—not what value they are providing to you!
Don’t Forget About Your Contacts
Marketing has a role to play in Customer retention, and your integration can be a huge help here. In CRM, create triggered marketing lists targeted at contacts based on a cross-sell, upsell, or post-sale campaign objective. You might want to create a list around opportunity equals closed as won, or a contract renewal date, or a satisfaction score from Customer service.
Using this marketing list and your integration, you can automate campaigns around, “You might also like…” suggestion emails, product use cases for recent buyers, ready-to-renew contract reminders, or review us campaigns for happy Customers. Regardless of where you are in the process of moving beyond email marketing and into true marketing automation, the key to success is planning. Before you ever build a campaign, know what data you want to collect, why you want to collect it, how you plan to use it, and perhaps most importantly, where you’re going to get it.
Having an effective strategy for using a marketing automation platform is often the biggest barrier to success, and knowing what you hope to achieve from the outset can help you be successful quicker.