A marketing automation audit is an objective third-party evaluation of your Marketo and/or Pardot (Salesforce Marketing Cloud) instance. The purpose is to know how well they are working with your salesforce automation software to achieve your lead and sales pipeline goals. Marketing automation audits can reveal many aspects of underutilization or lack of staff training that, when fixed, can make a radical improvement in your company sales pipeline and measurement. Remember, marketing automation audits aren’t just for the marketing department’s benefit. It’s for the sales department too. It’s your best first line of defense to diagnose and troubleshoot lead quality, and fix scoring and reporting issues.

We recently completed audits for two companies and found two completely different sets of results and issues. Surprisingly, a major tech company using Marketo for six years was using fewer features and functions than most companies that have used it for only 12 months. We began to train their staff on new features to organize, segment and track campaigns. And with further analysis of the data, we found we could save them $60,000 per year on their Marketo contract renewal through some pretty simple data cleanup. Wow!

And for the other audit—a smaller healthcare device company that was using Pardot for three years—we found a surprisingly organized set up. However it was paired with an inexperienced demand generation specialist in desperate need of training. The result was management’s unfulfilled desire to score and nurture new leads. We set out to fix these things immediately.

Changes that can precipitate a marketing automation audit

Many company changes can precipitate the need for a marketing automation audit. The following are five of the most common we come across.

Five good reasons to initiate a marketing automation audit:

• 3-6 months prior to renewal of your Pardot or Marketo instance (and for major MarTech tools)—to review structure and costs
• A top admin leaves (or high turnover in demand gen staff)—to smooth out transition period
• New CMO and/or Director of Demand Gen – to give a good analysis of the current install and what needs to change
• Need to benchmark progress (i.e. have follow-up audits every 6-12 months)
• Need an objective way to separate operational issues from sales & marketing issues

The value of an objective 3rd party audit can be in several areas and often pays for itself in cost savings with renewals:

• Helps budgeting and planning for:
• MarTech stack
• Demand gen staff & vendors
• Training and organizational alignment
• Helps uncover hidden issues such as:
• Missing MarTech tools
• Underutilized or incorrectly utilized features
• Lead leakage / loss and bottlenecks
• Data that can be eliminated (and thus not included in renewal)
• Helps analyze the meaning of the findings
• View data with fresh eyes to point out obvious patterns
• Share relevant “lessons learned” from other orgs

The four major areas marketing automation audits cover

A marketing automation audit typically covers four critical areas of analysis: contact management, data health, governance and campaign management. We will explore each of these areas below.

1. Contact Management

Goals

• To troubleshoot known issues in Pardot/Marketo to salesforce automation transfer of leads or values
• To identify inconsistencies or gaps in current lead management
• To define standards and rules for form creation and back end processing
• To document Pardot/Marketo to salesforce automation sync (current state and post-fix)
• Document any 3rd party connection synch processes

Focus

• Use of forms (type, consistency)
• Form field capture, and back end form processing (hidden fields, UTMs etc)
• Lead routing workflows and salesforce integration
• Lead statuses triggered or converting as expected
• Lead scoring (document profile / behavior score system)
• Review Prospect, Account, and Opportunity field mapping
• Review use of progressive profiling
• Review Pardot tagging strategy

2. Data Health and Gap Analysis

Goals

• To capture current state and provide a benchmark for judging data health e.g.
• Active database
• Marketable database
• To define standards and rules for field mapping
• Make initial recommendations for data normalization (e.g. US, United States, USA should all be US)
• Make initial recommendation for list segmentation

Focus

• Database size
• Marketable %
• Unresponsive data / junk data / duplication
• # and % of unsubscribed
• # and % of opted in contacts (with opt in date)
• # of fields, default / custom fields, field values, and field type
• Audit lists (document, size, last used)
• % of duplicate records
• CANSPAM, GDPR, etc. validation and recommendation
• Create list of top 20 values in each field to support normalization

3. Usage and Governance

Goals

• To recommend new standards if necessary
• To ensure compliance with data privacy rules&emdash;as appropriate by region/country, etc…
• To apply more controls as to Pardot/Marketo usage
• Verify email deliverability

Focus

• Review Naming convention and folder hierarchy
• Check for Explicit opt in management
• Review Current users and permission levels
• Review and recommend tag normalization
• Document and recommend archiving of lists, templates, forms, campaigns, etc…
• Test deliverability to ensure the domain is not identified by Spam blockers
• Inventory and review all email and landing page assets

4. Campaign and Nurture

Goals

• To identify what ‘clean out’ efforts are needed
• To make it easier to see what’s active or not
• To support better practices around template use

Focus

• Document a full list of all Pardot/Marketo assets: forms, landing pages, templates, campaigns, and engagement streams
• Current status of all assets (archived, draft, active, not in use)
• % of duplicate records
• Troubleshoot email and landing page templates

An audit will result in a report on each of these areas and a set of observations for good findings and areas that need fixing.

Small changes often yield big results. Big changes yield even bigger results

Every marketing automation audit we’ve conducted has yielded a different set of issues and the fixes needed. We often rank the fixes needed in order of priority and help the client to determine the tradeoffs or benefits gained for investing in them. Even small data cleanups can yield big cost savings, and significantly improve lead quality. Bigger investments in fixing nurture streams and lead scoring can yield big results in ushering better leads filling the pipeline – something that will surely warm the heart of marketing and sales alike. Because the marketing automation audit isn’t just for marketing, it’s for sales too. They have a vested in interest in what is being pushed over to the salesforce automation system, and a marketing automation audit is your best first defense to ensure better quality leads get there.

Need a marketing automation audit? Contact us for a free consultation.

By Laurie B. Beasley

The post Five Good Reasons to Get an Objective Third Party Audit of Your Marketing Automation System appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

I remember the first time as a young marketing manager at a software company in the 1980’s we were given an email account to communicate with our co-workers. It was text only, kludgey, and the very foundation of email inbox systems we use today. The first email sending platforms in the 1990s only allowed text emails, and in those days email marketing often had 50-75% click-through rates. That seemed like the golden age of email marketing from a response and simplicity standpoint. Emails were easy to set up. Copy was clean and clear. We’ve come a long way since then by adding images, personalization, and dynamic content to emails. But, with the complexity we may have taken away from clean design and clarity of message. However, we may be coming “full circle,” returning to a simpler, cleaner and more text oriented design for email nurture. We’ll explore the reasons why in this article.

Simpler may be better…for a lot of reasons

The trend back to a more text-oriented design for emails started a couple of years ago, but I’ve noticed it gain huge momentum in the past six months. There a number of possible reasons for this. Text emails are:

• Mobile compatible (not a lot of big images taking up viewport area)
• Fast to execute
• Feel authentic (like a real person is writing/sending them)
• Easy for a busy person to get through

Huge proponents of these types of emails are Ann Handley, of Marketing Profs, Ryan Deiss of Digital Marketer, and even LinkedIn and Marketo have gotten into the swing. Check out the latest nurture email I just received from LinkedIn this week. Very simple text explaining new company page features. It has a text link with no button! They leave the images and video out of the email and put them on a very well done landing page.

Example text email nurture from LinkedIn. All text, no logo, and no buttons.

The biggest motivation might be mobile

Designing emails for mobile compatibility can be a huge struggle to get everything you want to say in the first view/scroll area. Big images, or any images for that matter, can push your main message too far down and get in the way of what you’re trying to accomplish with nurture messaging. That’s why I think many brands are moving away from images, big logos and big buttons on their nurtures and moving to a more text-oriented, clean approach to email design. That approach looks great on desktop and mobile.

Less to program means faster to execute

A text oriented email means you have less to program. You don’t have to over-engineer the email with responsive design and @media commands. It can be a single-column, albeit narrower mobile aware design done in simple HTML or a template that almost anyone in the marketing department can manage.

Text feels more authentic

There is a big push in marketing for brands to feel more authentic to their customers. There’s nothing more authentic than a personal note or letter. Many marketers are having their email nurtures signed by assigned account reps and if their name is going on it, it better feel like it’s coming from them with a more personal note rather than a splashy promotional email.

Text emails are easy for the reader to get through

The competition for eyes and readership in the inbox is huge. You’re better off if you’re known as the brand that “gets to the point fast.” Or at least fast and in an interesting way. Ann Handley of Marketing Profs writes very entertaining emails, but more than that she gets her point across fast without a lot of visual hoopla. So if you’re cruising through your inbox and want to see the latest course details or find out what’s on Ann’s ever curious mind, boom you can usually get through her emails in 5 to 10 seconds.

MarketingProfs emails are clean, simple and easy to get through.

Even the big boys, like Marketo, are thinking that simple text is better. Check out this email nurture example. It’s an invite to a webinar on artificial intelligence and personalization. They chose good old, simple text to get this invite out the door. Not much foo-foo in this email. And honestly, I didn’t need more than what they put in that one sentence to know whether I wanted to attend the webinar. We were both served well by the simplicity and brevity.

Marketo chose a very simple text email note to promote an upcoming webinar.

Less is more…response

The return to text email style is supported by the fact that even outside of marketing, workers are struggling to simplify communications with popular productivity tools like Slack that are simple text-oriented communications. Going back to our email roots may also revive our response rates. If our email readers know that they can get the stuff they need quickly and easily from our emails, then they may be more likely to open them. This is being tested by many, and I believe will bear out meaningful results in increasing open and click-through rates. And in the words of the poet Robert Browning, “less is more.”

Is your email marketing nurture campaign failing? Our email marketing team can help. Contact us now.

By Laurie Beasley, Co-Founder and President, Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

The post How Using Good Old Fashioned Plain Text Emails May Become the “New” Email Nurture Tactic appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

When you search Google on the phrase “Integrating your CRM with Google Ads,” about 2.8 million results are offered. Obviously, this is a common integration issue. Having an integration checklist will help you plan your process before starting (which is the reason I wrote this blog). I hope my checklist will save you time, money and create ROI for you in the long run.

For the sake of giving examples, we’ll use Marketo as our representative Marketing Automation Platform (MAP), and explain how it connects to SalesForce (our CRM). These are not the only choices in the market, but they will serve to illustrate common opportunities and challenges.

Integration Checklist Questions

We list here a series of questions we will explore in the following sections. You might want to jot down answers to these questions first before we review each in detail.

1. Do you have a separate Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) and Customer Relationship Management system (CRM)?
2. Do your MAP and CRM systems have a clean, well-documented connection/interface?
3. Is there a direct connection to the CRM from Google Ads?
4. Are the forms on your site native to the MAP/CRM or do they pre-date it?
5. Is your campaign naming convention consistent between the MAP, CRM and Google Ads?
6. What elements do you wish to track across the three platforms?
7. How long is your sales cycle in both time and number of touches to a closed deal?
8. Do you have steps in your sales qualification process that are manual, requiring a human to make a judgement call?
9. Will there be multiple touches before the MQL is handed off to the sales team?
10. How many people will own this process?

Here are Additional Details on each Question and what they Imply

1. Do you have a separate MAP and CRM?

Some CRMs have great marketing automation built into their infrastructure and do not need the addition of a MAP. Often though, companies start with a MAP and eventually move to a full-blown CRM.

If you do not have an integrated MAP/CRM connection, budget additional time and resources to connect the two. This often can be a major hurdle in launching your campaigns. One of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing’s (BDOM) clients ran into this issue and an additional 6 weeks of development time was required to launch the campaigns.

2. Do your MAP and CRM systems have a clean, well-documented connection?

Both Marketo and SalesForce have invested time and money into creating these connections at the API level. Take advantage of this and use what’s there instead of trying to recreate the wheel.

Be sure to test the connection between the MAP and CRM before launch. In spite of having off-the-shelf solutions, BDOM has found allocating time and budget for running initial tests is key to long-term campaign and larger marketing initiative success.

3. Is there a direct connection to the CRM from Google Ads?

Is it one way or two way? Being able to send sales data back to Google Ads will make a much more efficient campaign over time. BDOM has found that where this exists the integration process is easier, and we are able to see a much more detailed view of what’s happening from click to meeting to closed sale. Be sure to spend time familiarizing both your marketing team and sales team with what results say. Having your sales team understand results goes a long way towards getting them to take online leads seriously as they allocate limited time to what they view as the best prospects.

4. Are the forms on your site native to the MAP/CRM or do they pre-date it?

It will save you time and lots of effort if you bite the bullet and convert all your forms to the native version offered by your MAP. This is probably the biggest source of frustration and delay when going through this process.

One of our clients chose to have a hybrid approach with new forms being built in Marketo and older forms being “imported” into the system. While they were able to make this work, it required additional development time when a new campaign would target the marketing collateral associated with an older “imported” form.

Spend the time and effort up front to convert older forms to your MAP. It will allow your team to be more agile and effective for future campaigns.

5. What elements do you wish to track across the three platforms?

Make sure your SalesForce campaign fields match your Google Ads fields. Also, importing your cost data into SalesForce can make your ROI much clearer at a glance.

This comes back to the idea of managing your resources effectively. We all have limited budget to drive traffic to our site, whether from paid search or email outreach. Being able to understand which traffic is driving the best leads and how much those leads are costing your company will allow your team to make better decisions on which campaigns are performing best. It also cuts down on the number of “poor” leads your sales team needs to shepherd from marketing qualified to sales qualified.

Your sales team has limited time to devote to qualifying marketing leads and will begin discounting them over time if poor leads are being sent because they appear to be “affordable.”

6. Is your campaign naming convention consistent between the MAP, CRM and Google Ads?

Keeping the naming convention consistent from the start will cut down on significant data issues. It’s easier to match them up at the outset of your integration process than going back to retrofit the data later.

One key field that needs to be included in SalesForce is the “gclid” field. This is the container that Google Ads uses to transmit all the campaign, ad group, ad, search term, targeting and cost info into a nice little package that SalesForce can decode.

7. How long is your sales cycle in both time and number of touches to a closed deal?

The more touches needed, the more you need to make sure you’re getting a clean, two-way data stream between Google Ads and your MAP/CRM.

Our team spent a lot of time and effort ensuring we are able to follow the lead stream with our clients to understand what is working. Having good, two-way communication between the eventual sale and the click that drove it is key. This can be the area in which a well-connected MAP/CRM solution pays for itself, giving the marketing team the data they need to focus on the best source of high-quality leads for the sales team.

8. Do you have steps in your sales qualification process that are manual, requiring a human to make a judgement call?

This is known as shifting a lead from an MQL (marketing qualified lead) to a SQL (sales qualified lead).

BDOM will sit down with our client’s marketing and sales teams at the beginning of any new engagement and ask how they qualify the lead, what makes for a good SQL vs. an MQL and what history the two sides have. This will often result in a better understanding on both sides and better long term buy-in to a process that may not be turnkey.

9. Will there be multiple touches before the MQL is handed off to the sales team?

Be sure that these are used to score the lead and it transmits to your CRM when the lead is transferred.

This again is a key step for getting sales and marketing on the same page in understanding the process and developing trust with the quality of the leads as they go through the pipeline.

10. How many people will own this process?

Is it just one person or are you splitting the work among different people and teams? Getting the multiple parties involved at the outset to discuss goals and possible issues is vital to having a successful process. Be aware that different team members will have different goals for the integration. Some may not want to do the work required and will need to be convinced of the final result’s value.

The ins and outs of the process will be very dependent on planning details before any steps are taken. Like any project, a road map with clear responsibilities will make your integration much more successful.

Additional links that can help you get started.

Link Salesforce and Google Ads accounts
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7538740

Import conversions from Salesforce
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6299296#setup_steps

Google Ads Integration Questions? | Marketo Marketing Nation
https://nation.marketo.com/thread/44948-google-adwords-workings

Google Ads Integration: Optimize Ads Using Marketo Offline Conversion Data
https://www.marketo.com/cheat-sheets/google-adwords-integration-optimize-ads-using-marketo-offline-conversion-data/

Do you need assistance integrating your Marketing Automation Platform and CRM with Google Ads? We can help. Request a free consultation here.

For digital marketing case studies, go here.

By John Thyfault
Vice President of Search and Social Media Marketing
Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

The post 10 Steps to Integrate Marketing Automation Platforms and CRMs with Google Ads appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.