No thanks, I have no desire to understand if my #marketingautomation is working
The graphic shows that in a recent survey by Findthebest’s SoftwareInsider (Venture Beat, July, 2015) only 6% of people looking for a Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) vendor search on the term “Reporting and Analysis”.
My reaction to that was a draw dropping WHAT?
One of the biggest benefits to implementing a MAP is that it turns Marketing from a magic blackbox whose results are difficult to quantify, into something that can be measured, managed and shown to contribute to top-line revenue.
The same 6% shows for “Sales & CRM Integration”. Again, WHAT? If you don’t have the integration with Sales & CRM, you are doing your marketing in a vacuum. Prospect activity needs to be tracked from initial acquisition right through to the sale. Without that kind of tracking, it is very easy for sales to cry the universal, “The Leads are Weak” when sales dip and the boss is looking for someone to blame.
Horizontally Integrated Marketing demands that we track and measure the entire Buyer’s Journey and constantly refine our marketing by investing in those activities that are generating sales and retire (or modify) those that are not.
Without Analytics, Reporting and Integration with Sales & CRM, Marketing Automation will be reduced to just the latest buzzword that the C-Suite dismisses as marketing’s latest attempt to justify their budget.