How to Avoid Pitfalls When Launching

Marketing Automation8 key steps to successful marketing automation

execution for CMOs, VPs and Project Leaders

Assign a project manager ▶ Should NOT be a contributor

▶ Should only police deliverables, due dates and communicate project updates

Evaluate and refine current processes

▶ Document your current marketing, sales, and lead nurturing process

▶ Review your current content development and data acquisition processes

▶ Identify how they will be automated

▶ Remember: marketing automation can’t fix broken processes

Use project management software to keep track of all the moving parts

▶ Don’t depend on memory (record meetings to help write the status updates)

▶ Avoid he said/ she said conversations

▶ Assign deliverables and due dates to all contributors and ensure all understand the ramifications of missed deadlines

Analyze and clean data ▶ Ensure accuracy before moving data into

your marketing automation system

▶ The cleaner the data, the better your results

Measure, monitor, and adjust ▶ Don’t just collect the data, analyze the results,

list insights, create action list for optimization

▶ Do a reality check (time, resources)

▶ Optimize for the best results

Schedule weekly team calls

▶ Address any speed bumps, make changes and keep moving

Follow your work plan, approvals, reviews and timelines

▶ Clearly document strategy, deliverables, due dates and instructions for all contributors

▶ Outline the review and approval process for all elements

▶ Build content, copywriting and legal approvals into the timeline

Start with a simple pilot ▶ Run a pilot to test your people, pro-

cesses, programing and reporting

▶ Make sure you are capturing the data you expect to capture to optimize the campaign

▶ Apply learnings from the pilot to campaign launch

▶ Don’t let glitches in the process ruin your launch

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

1