Using an Enterprise Marketing Automation Software System Increases Profitability

By Kristin Hambelton

Marketing professionals are facing increased accountability for the results of their campaigns. Marketing resources must be justified through improved measurement and analysis of the results of their campaigns, which in turn must show results that meet or exceed the requirements issued by senior management.

Enterprise software tools are increasingly being investigated by companies looking to enhance the efficiency and ROI of their marketing programs. There is however, a reluctance to embrace this emerging technology due to certain perceptions such as cost of implementation, the difficulty of merging with legacy systems, and questions of utility and future expansion.

The issues that drive the need for an enterprise marketing automation solution are related to an organization’s increasing requirement to be efficient and accountable. Efficiency is best realized by providing focused messaging to the right prospect by means of the appropriate channels. Employing a manual approach to this process is not effective in a large business. A comprehensive marketing software tool incorporating a resource library is therefore required. Accountability is realized through effective tracking and analysis of results. Without an automated means of providing this data, campaign effectiveness and departmental ROI are nearly impossible to determine.

Useful communication with potential clients is essential to the success of a business. Customer relationship management, or CRM, needs to contain the information necessary to provide marketers with the tools they need to conduct highly targeted, relevant communications with prospects and customers. Precision marketing such as this is efficient and effective.

Once the need for an enterprise marketing automation solution has been identified, a careful examination of the company’s marketing processes needs to be made, and areas of desired improvement noted. The software solution chosen must be able to address specific objectives that improve the marketing process such as improving contact response rates, lowering the sales cycle timeframe or reducing operational costs.

After the specific marketing objectives have been identified, they need to be developed into functional requirements which will be addressed by the software. Future requirements should be determined as well to ensure the system remains relevant as your business grows. The system will need to accommodate the scope, size and segmentation of your data as well as storage capacity requirements.

When an organization makes the decision to employ a large-scale marketing software solution, several departments within the company will need to be actively involved. Success would typically hinge on the marketing and sales, customer service and IT departments playing an active role in the choice, implementation, training and management of this software system.

There are several ways an enterprise marketing automation software system can be deployed. The first is through an on-premise installation which provides the greatest flexibility of use and highest level of security. The downside is that this solution requires the highest initial investment since there are up-front hardware and software purchase costs, plus the cost of training internal personnel involved in addition to the maintenance costs. A second deployment method is a popular option known as Software as a Service, or SaaS. With this model, the vendor maintains the hardware and hosts the software and data. The up-front costs are generally lower but the long-term management costs can vary widely depending on the vendor and level of service required. Another model that is gaining in popularity is referred to as “mid-source”. Businesses that use this method maintain their contact and sales data in-house but outsource the technical and data processing functions to the vendor.

Once the decision to employ a software system has been made, a committed central contact point or “owner” needs to be determined in order to maintain good vendor relations and ensure the successful day-to-day operation of the system.

A well researched and implemented enterprise marketing automation solution which is actively and earnestly used by all required personnel can make a significant improvement in the efficiency and profitability of a marketing organization. This will be realized by an increase in qualified leads, more refined prospect targeting, improved customer relations and better overall client satisfaction which then lead to improving a business’ profitability.

About the Author
Kristin Hambelton is the Director of Marketing at Neolane: http://www.neolane.com
Neolane provides the only enterprise marketing automation software specifically designed to manage, automate and optimize programs across traditional and emerging channels including direct mail, email and mobile.

Tags: Marketing Automation, campaign management software, marketing automation solution