Marketing Automation For Dummies

Marketing Automation For Dummies

by Mathew Sweezey
Released April 2014
Publisher(s): For Dummies
ISBN: 9781118772225

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Book description

Multiply the effectiveness of your campaigns with marketing automation

Marketing automation technology has been shown to dramatically increase lead conversions and average deal sizes as well as improving forecasting and customer segmentation. A subset of CRM, it focuses on defining, scheduling, segmenting, and tracking marketing campaigns. This friendly book demystifies marketing automation in straightforward terms, helping you leverage the tools and handle the processes that will enable a seamless integration with your CRM program. Learn to establish a buyer profile, assess your needs, select tools, create a lead scoring model, and much more.

  • Marketing automation is a next-generation, CRM-related tool for increasing lead conversions and improving forecasting and customer segmentation

  • This book provides an easy-to-understand introduction to the tools and technology, helping you evaluate your current processes, choose the appropriate tools, and follow best practices in making the most of them

  • Written by Mathew Sweezey, Marketing Automation Evangelist at Pardot (ExactTarget), a leading provider of marketing automation solutions

  • Covers working with the marketing lifecycle, evaluating your assets, integrating marketing automation with CRM and with other processes, nurturing your leads, and using marketing automation to reach buyers via e-mail, social media, and more

    • Marketing Automation For Dummies is the ideal guide to get you up and running with marketing automation, putting your business on the cutting edge and enhancing your competitiveness.

    Table of contents

      1. Introduction
        1. About This Book
        2. Foolish Assumptions
        3. Icons Used in This Book
        4. Beyond the Book
        5. Where to Go from Here
      2. Part I: Getting Started with Marketing Automation
        1. Chapter 1: Introducing the Concepts of Marketing Automation
          1. Defining Marketing Automation
          2. Recognizing the Relationship Between Marketing Automation and Online Marketing
          3. Marketing to the Modern Buyer
            1. Feeding the need for content
            2. Prospects are searching for answers
            3. Consumers are engaging over a life cycle
            4. Everyone is socializing online
            5. Marketing in the ultra-connected world
        2. Chapter 2: Creating a Business Case for Marketing Automation
          1. Writing a Business Case Document
          2. Knowing Why Companies Implement Marketing Automation
          3. Starting the Conversation about Marketing Automation
            1. Identifying the stakeholders
            2. Marketing automation isn’t just for marketing
          4. Driving More Revenue from Your Investment in Online Marketing
            1. Invigorating search engine marketing
            2. Removing the guesswork from SEO
            3. Reinforcing your investment in content marketing
            4. Making sense of social marketing’s impact to your bottom line
            5. Proving marketing’s contribution to revenue
        3. Chapter 3: Choosing a Marketing Automation Solution
          1. Aligning a Solution with Core Marketing Goals
            1. Setting realistic expectations
            2. Determining the need for a custom integration vs. an out-of-the-box connection
            3. Finding the correct level of technology
          2. Estimating Your Total Investment in Marketing Automation
            1. Judging the time required to build campaigns
            2. Judging other time requirements
        4. Chapter 4: Setting Up a New Marketing Automation Tool
          1. Listing Resources Needed for Initial Setup
            1. Breaking down your integration into steps
            2. Committing to developing content
            3. Teaming up for best results
          2. Targeting Efficiency in Your Implementation
            1. Identifying your quick wins and major pain points
            2. Uncovering the bottlenecks in your marketing workflow
          3. First Steps to Activating Your Solution
            1. Creating your alias
            2. Adding tracking code to your website
            3. Importing assets into your marketing automation tool
            4. Integrating traceable content
            5. Setting up SPF/Sender ID
            6. Setting up DomainKeys
          4. Removing IT from Your Marketing Work Flow
          5. Dragging and dropping IT out of your marketing work flow
          6. The single prospect record
          7. Learning that sometimes automation needs a hand
      3. Part II: Working with Data and Leads
        1. Chapter 5: CRM Integration
          1. Clearly Defining Your Wants and Needs for Marketing Automation and CRM
          2. Mapping out your CRM integration
          3. Diagramming your campaigns and lead-flow paths
          4. Cleaning Up Your Database
            1. Using tools to clean up your database
            2. Hiring someone to clean up your database
          5. Connecting CRM Data Fields to Your Marketing Automation Tool
            1. Connecting default fields to your marketing automation tool
            2. Inserting custom fields into your marketing automation tool
            3. Uploading your data sets into your marketing automation tool
          6. Testing and Troubleshooting Common CRM Issues
            1. Testing your integration
            2. Troubleshooting lead-assignment issues
            3. Troubleshooting data mapping issues
        2. Chapter 6: Creating Segmented Lists
          1. Understanding the Types of Segmentations
            1. Static segmentations and their use cases
            2. Semi-dynamic segmentation’s role in programs
            3. Fully dynamic segmentation’s use cases
          2. Generating Your First List
            1. Identifying your key data points for segmentation
            2. Developing a naming convention for segments
            3. Adding people to your list
          3. Exploring the Many Uses of Segmentation
            1. Segmenting from email actions
            2. Segmenting from prospect actions
            3. Segmenting from prospect inactivity
            4. Segmenting off of CRM data
          4. Creating Personas for Personalization
            1. Creating demographic personas
            2. Creating interest-based personas
            3. Identifying existing personas in your database
            4. Reaching out again to old leads
          5. Creating Advanced Segmentations
            1. Understanding if-then statements
            2. The importance of minimizing the complexity of advanced segmentations
        3. Chapter 7: Sending Leads to Sales
          1. Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams
            1. Working with sales to define fields in your CRM system
            2. Agreeing on sales-ready lead definitions and time frames
            3. Identifying the important data points of a lead, contact, account, and opportunity
            4. Collaborating with sales
            5. Asking sales for content suggestions
            6. Copying your best salespeople
          2. Turning on Sales Enablement Functionality
          3. Supporting Campaigns for Your Sales Team
            1. Building automated campaigns for cold sales leads
            2. Using lead assignments to drive leads to the sales team
            3. Impacting sales with lead notifications
      4. Part III: Running Automation Campaigns
        1. Chapter 8: Content Marketing and Its Place in Marketing Automation
          1. New Content for a New Tool
            1. Blogging and its place in your automation strategy
            2. Knowing when to use short-form content
            3. Knowing when to use long-form content
            4. Creating content for lead nurturing
          2. Managing Your Content
            1. Hosting content in your marketing automation tool
            2. Easy ways to track your distributed content
            3. Creating new content reports
          3. Tying Webinars and Video to Your Automation
            1. Understanding webinars for automation
            2. The world of video and automation
        2. Chapter 9: Creating Forms and Landing Pages
          1. Publishing Forms
            1. Identifying your questions
            2. Placing fields in your forms
            3. Developing form look and feel
            4. Setting form automations
            5. Placing lead capture forms on your website
            6. Knowing the importance of short forms with inbound marketing
          2. Publishing Your First Landing Page
            1. Avoiding landing page mistakes
          3. Building a Best-of-Breed Landing Page
            1. Optimizing for a single goal
            2. Using dynamic content to increase conversions
            3. Video embedded for increased engagement
            4. Microsite landing pages
          4. Adding Advanced Forms to Your Campaigns
            1. Pondering progressive profiling
            2. Data augmentation and its place in forms
          5. Creating Better Conversion Goals
            1. Quality vs. quantity
            2. Be prepared for the big dip
        3. Chapter 10: Sending Emails and Nurture Campaigns
          1. Getting Up to Speed on Nurturing
            1. Mass email sending vs. email nurturing
            2. Nurturing use cases
          2. Getting Started with Nurturing
            1. Defining your nurturing program’s goal
            2. Adding people to nurturing campaigns
            3. Branching out in your nurturing programs
          3. Building Your First Nurturing Programs
            1. Building net new lead nurturing campaigns
            2. Building a sales lead-nurturing campaign
            3. Building a cold lead-nurturing campaign
            4. Building a cross-selling nurturing campaign
            5. Nurturing leads who are using competitive solutions
          4. Setting Up Nurturing Email Templates
            1. Bringing in your first email template
            2. Formatting your email for optimized engagement
          5. Copy Writing for Email Nurturing
            1. Learning the importance of the subject line
            2. Using a stage-based tone and dynamic content
            3. Writing with a personal tone
          6. Effective Calls to Action for Lead Nurturing
            1. Using creative CTAs to help increase engagement
            2. Increasing engagement by better targeting of CTAs
          7. Improving Email Deliverability with Email Authentication
          8. Determining the Pace of Nurturing Emails
          9. Ending Nurturing Programs
      5. Part IV: Mixing, Scoring, and Reporting
        1. Chapter 11: Combining Automation with Other Marketing Programs
          1. Placing Marketing Automation at the Center of Your Marketing
          2. Leveraging Social Media with Marketing Automation
            1. Syncing social media with marketing automation
            2. Leveraging LinkedIn with marketing automation
            3. Building programs to connect to Facebook
          3. Integrating Video into Social Media
          4. Driving Leads to an Event with Automation
            1. Setting up event registration
            2. Using multiple marketing channels to promote your event
            3. Staying relevant after an event
        2. Chapter 12: Scoring Leads
          1. Recognizing Basic Scoring Concepts
            1. Understanding what a score can tell you
            2. Scoring behaviors versus actions
            3. Discovering the best opportunities with account-based scoring
            4. Taking action on lead scoring
            5. Scoring leads over time
            6. Combining lead scores and lead grades
          2. Knowing When to Score Prospect Actions
            1. Identifying key actions for scoring
          3. Building Your First Scoring Models
          4. Scoring Prospect Actions and Behaviors
            1. Learning to score form behavior
            2. Scoring prospect interactions with landing pages
            3. Scoring on web interactions
            4. Scoring on downloads
            5. Scoring on email engagement
            6. Correctly scoring search terms
            7. Scoring social media interactions correctly
          5. Advanced Scoring Models
            1. Using lead scoring for a net promoter score
            2. Scoring multiple buyers for sales readiness
            3. Using tally fields for scoring
          6. Monitoring Your Scoring Model
            1. Learning to use the multiple-column approach
            2. Making use of score degradation
            3. Using a checklist for refining your scoring model
        3. Chapter 13: Generating Reports
          1. Understanding Appropriate Reporting Methods
          2. Implementing Marketing Qualified Lead Reports
            1. Understanding an MQL report
            2. Setting up your first MQL report
          3. Implementing Sales Qualified Lead Reports
            1. Understanding an SQL report
            2. Setting up your first SQL report
            3. Tracking marketing-sourced leads
          4. Looking at the Influence of a Campaign on a Lead
            1. Creating influencing campaign reports
            2. Limiting factors of influencing campaign reports
          5. Gauging Future Lead Flow by Tracking Lead Stage
            1. Creating lead stages
            2. Understanding how to measure velocity through stages
            3. Building a velocity report
          6. Proving Value with ROI Reporting
            1. Beginning with ROI reporting
            2. Limitations of ROI reporting
          7. Keeping up with Marketing-Sourced Opportunities
          8. Looking at Smaller Metrics for Better Campaigns
            1. Evaluating your cold lead nurturing campaign
            2. Looking at the results of your white paper campaign
          9. Tracking Twitter Engagements
      6. Part V: Putting It All Together
        1. Chapter 14: Mastering Your First Campaigns
          1. Mining Your Existing Database for Hot Leads
            1. Finding your hottest leads first
            2. Getting more lemon from the squeeze: Reaching back out to old leads
            3. Measuring your early campaigns
          2. Crafting a White Paper Campaign
            1. Inbound white paper campaign
            2. Outbound white paper campaign
            3. How to increase the engagements in your white paper campaign
          3. Upselling Campaigns
            1. Building your list of possible prospects
            2. Upselling with special content
            3. Driving leads to the sales team
          4. Sales Support Campaigns
            1. Staying relevant with lost deals
        2. Chapter 15: Implementing Advanced Marketing Automation Techniques
          1. Auditing Your Performance for Improved Results
            1. Creating a sustainable review process
            2. Benchmarking your performance over time
          2. Benefitting from Split Testing
            1. The basics of split testing
            2. Testing emails for conversions
            3. Comparing forms, content, and landing pages with split testing
          3. Agile Marketing for the Modern Marketer
            1. Execute often
            2. Review constantly
            3. Eliminate the need for perfect
          4. Integrating Marketing Automation with Offline Efforts
            1. Maximizing trade show effectiveness with automation
            2. Integrating direct mail and automation
      7. Part VI: The Part of Tens
        1. Chapter 16: The Top Ten Marketing Automation Mistakes
          1. Biting Off Too Much
          2. Skimping on Content Creation
          3. Having Only One Nurturing Campaign
          4. Underestimating the Impact of Social Media
          5. Looking at the Wrong Numbers
          6. Involving Sales Too Late
          7. Overbuying
          8. Forgetting to Audit
          9. Underestimating the Power of a Website
          10. Undertraining Sales Teams
        2. Chapter 17: The Top Ten Marketing Automation Blogs You Need to Read
          1. Jay Baer
          2. Content Marketing Institute
          3. Clickz.com
          4. Brainrider
          5. Joe Chernov: Helicopter to Work Blog
          6. SiriusDecisions
          7. Velocity Partners Ltd.
          8. eConsultancy
          9. MarketingProfs
          10. Mitch Joel
      8. About the Author
      9. Cheat Sheet
      10. More Dummies Products

    Product information

    • Title: Marketing Automation For Dummies
    • Author(s): Mathew Sweezey
    • Release date: April 2014
    • Publisher(s): For Dummies
    • ISBN: 9781118772225