# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
While marketing automation enables many wonderful things like multi-channel marketing, analytics and creating journey campaigns, it is a challenge to introduce this in an existing environment.

Here's what happened in the last 24 hrs. I had three meetings where

An ex-colleague currently at a fintech firm wanted to know how he could automate collections and up-selling

A founder of a consumer tech startup wanted to scale up the traffic and sales 5X in the next 3 months now that his company was delivering on the Product Market Fit

A director at a leading OEM wanted to scale up customer engagement across all the strategic apps by leveraging the massive consumer data his disposal

On delving deeper there were questions that needed answering. Basic stuff like:

1. Are you able to track, and engage individual customers? Are you able to segment users and send them personalised messages so that the conversion is better?

2. Have you automated social media posting, offers and email workflows?

3. Can you measure the campaign ROIs? And many more..

Marketers need to constantly work extremely hard to drive growth, grab those leads, bump up the page views, drive more conversions, improve retention and drive repeat orders. Driving scale efficiently requires companies to seriously look at Marketing Automation as an integral part of the marketing strategy.

Marketing Automation is technology that streamlines, automates, measures marketing tasks so that marketing becomes more scalable, cost effective & operationally efficient. It helps revenue grow faster and most importantly, leads to an enhanced customer experience

While marketing automation enables many wonderful things like multi-channel marketing, analytics, content planning and creating journey campaigns, it is a challenge to introduce this in an existing environment. Before we get into that, here's a ready reckoner of the top 6 things that it delivers on.

Many marketing tasks like lead nurturing, email marketing, PPC campaigns, analytics can be automated thus freeing up value time to focus on strategy, communication and creatives. At any point of time there are at least 5-10 email campaigns running. Automation, allows specialists to allocate budgets better and drive greater ROI. It also helps in guiding the user efficiently through the purchase journey.

Automation of analytics and leveraging the CRM helps marketers to segment, target and communicate better with each user. With the right insights, marketers can leverage the right creative with a personalised message to communicate with 1000s of users simultaneously once the automation platform is in place. This also enables marketers to experiment with newer avenues like chatbots, offers, coupons, etc

Automation platforms collect & analyse data on leads, customers, sales, campaign success, and so on. It not only enables real time reporting of users in the purchase journey but also helps measure KPIs and visualise big picture data effectively. Marketers can also automate A/B testing to optimise campaigns rapidly. Many automation solutions can determine future campaign performance based on previous data using AI and machine learning (true story!).

Another key thing that marketing automation solves for is experimentation. You can keep trying 10 campaigns per week. Shut down those that don't work. Put the pedal on the others. In my earlier company we identified numerous cross sell opportunities based on multiple A/B tests which helped us get a big uplift in monthly revenues.

With timely analytical insights, automation of customer journeys and driving better customer experience, revenue sees a positive impact. Marketers are now expected to signoff on sales forecasts and revenues. Automation platforms help build predictability in revenues and can identify gaps which when closed can bring about a step change in growth.

As companies grow the marketing effort grows too. There are more customers in the funnel, much more content needs to get developed and the SEO & social game gets tougher. With an automation suite, this can me managed efficiently. Processes and workflows drawn around the platform can help the companies scale non linearly. At a previous company there were over 30 social campaigns, 50+ email and notification campaigns running simultaneously which was managed by 3 marketing executives on a daily basis. Scale such as this is only possible with a robust automation platform.

While the benefits seem awesome, a major challenge is to integrate the marketing automation platform with your martech stack. Marketers will also need to get a buy-in from the CEO, CIO, CFO while getting the sales folks on board.

Here is journey that I've used while implementing marketing automation at 4 different companies.

Figure out what you are trying to achieve with a marketing automation platform. What are the most repetitive and time consuming tasks? Will an automation platform help you achieve your marketing goals (more traffic, engagement, transactions). Also map out the existing martech stack in your company. Being able to integrate existing critical components into the stack is important. Many vendors enable easy integration while for others there is a tech effort required hence increasing the overall cost. Also map out existing workflows, data lakes and assets so that you can still leverage them once the automation kicks in.

Besides getting the CEO on board, it is imperative to get the CTO & product teams on board as this will require effort from their teams. An automation platform acts as the central nervous system of the organisation, leverages different data sources & existing systems to drive scale & efficiency. The last is to get tech debt into the system. The implementation will need to be forward-looking depending on the company's scale and goals. A case would also be made to the CFO since this will be an additional cost item in the marketing budget.

Out of the 100s of platforms available figure the best for your industry. Also take into consideration the existing marketing stack, scale, budget and features. Check how it integrates with your existing marketing tools. Many platforms give a free trial period. Use that to do some initial tests and evaluate the best fit. You'll need to be really good friends with the tech and product teams to test multiple platforms.

Define how the new platform sits in the stack, retire existing systems if required, reorganise the team to work with new workflows, reporting and systems. Your team will need to have a good understanding on how their work stack changes. Give them enough time to test the system. Marketing automation is a key skill, emphasize this to build consensus and drive motivation. Training your team to leverage the system is imperative. Only then will newer playbooks emerge.

Review the impact of the automation platform on key metrics. Analyse the data to find out what is working and what you can improve. Watch how the A/B tests are doing and constantly optimise. Drive efficiency and scale by constantly analysing the data. While the platform is automating the processes, it is still the marketer that drives the strategy and optimisation.

Any company can implement marketing automation and reap its benefits. Not only does a marketing automation platform pay for itself with the first 6 months, it also frees up marketing bandwidth to scale up the organisation faster. Hopefully this helps answer some of the initial questions about marketing automation.

Here are some helpful Links on marketing automation:

Have any questions about marketing automation? email me. Would love to help and share ideas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While marketing automation enables many wonderful things like multi-channel marketing, analytics and creating journey campaigns, it is a challenge to introduce this in an existing environment. Here's what happened in the last 24 hrs. I had three meetings where An ex-colleague currently at a fintech firm wanted to know

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
More companies are looking to build scalable processes for superior customer experience. With the share of marketing spends moving to online even more, and with the medium lending itself to real-time feedback and optimisation, marketing automation is bound to take CenterStage in 2020 again. Here are the top 5 trends :

The Martech landscape in 2020 already has over 8000 companies according to chiefmartech.com which represents a 24.5% growth over last year.

A whopping 5233% growth since 2011!

For once the CFOs love marketing automation too since it has improved bottom-line growth, with over 70% of Indian businesses using it primarily for improving their lead conversion rate. This is one space where ML & AI are used effectively to gain insights, create segments and drive targeted recommendations.

Numerous platforms are making strides in using ML& AI to sharpen their engines so that companies can leverage them to achieve scale. Customer data platforms (CDPs) are also gaining prominence and no MarTech stack is complete these days without the holy trinity of CRM-MAP-CDP. The only way to map, store, analyze and act on the complete end-to-end customer journey is by having all the data in one place using a Customer Data Platform (CDPs).

The Gartner Hype Cycle has highlighted chatbots and conversational marketing as a key trend

Gartner explains "Conversational marketing technologies enable interactions between companies and customers that mimic human dialogue and do so at scale. This category is near the Peak of Inflated Expectations phase"." Messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger also had huge success after integrating Chatbots for brands. According to a study, over 60% of users who received a chatbot ping on Messenger

WhatsApp is en route to allow brands to integrate chatbots with their API, opening up a whole new avenue for brand-user engagement. With over a billion MAU, this is a tremendous opportunity for businesses.

Chatbots will enhance their role in managing customer engagement and doing the heavy lifting for customer support and enhancing customer experience however they till struggle to understand the human context at times. The evolution is on!

Marketing automation has enabled businesses to drive personalization of not only the messaging & content but also the medium that the user prefers to interact with. Additionally, platforms are also able to optimise on time of communication for each user depending on the email open rate time that is best for the user.

At any given time, there are over 1000 campaigns running without cluttering the user's inbox or notification drawer. Deals and communication can be configured at runtime depending on the customer's online shopping habits, preferences and past purchase data.

Companies use platforms to understand churn and retention. With each passing day, retention is becoming the new acquisition since it is 5X more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.

Driving a personalised experience for every user, enhancing customer experience and predicting user needs will drive retention. Martech platforms are stepping up to solve these problems efficiently and marketers are stretching the asset even further.

With growth loops taking centre stage, we often hear that funnel marketing is dead since customer journeys are nonlinear today. Marketers need to consider communications from a customer point-of-view throughout the customer journey. They need to create a co-ordinated 'always-on' contact strategy for the whole customer lifecycle to boost conversions and retention.

The focus on users will depend on their Customer Lifetime Value ( CLTV). Marketing platform will let brands create highly accurate user CLTV profiles by analyzing behavioural and past purchase history. Additionally, with segmentation, brands will be able to design highly personalized marketing campaigns at a reasonable marketing cost

While mobile becomes the primary device for browsing, entertainment, communication and shopping, building a mobile 1st approach has become imperative for marketers. They will leverage tools like push notifications, SMS, mobile wallet and in-app popups effectively to drive personalised communication with users. Marketing automation platforms will play a key role to analyse, segment and deliver personalised communication on the mobile platform.

Mobile will become the go-to channel for marketers in 2020 for engagement and retention. Marketing tools will enable capturing behavioural and transactional data on the mobile and predict user's intent and buying behaviour. Using a platform that can optimise the message across channels is important, as not playing this right can border on spam and the user can just as easily block a communication channel which is a step toward reduced user engagement and churn

In conclusion, keep an eye out for these trends, plan well to leverage the platforms and retain your hard-earned users.

Reach out to me if you need help in solving marketing automation problems.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
More companies are looking to build scalable processes for superior customer experience. With the share of marketing spends moving to online even more, and with the medium lending itself to real-time feedback and optimisation, marketing automation is bound to take CenterStage in 2020 again.