Marketing and Sales Automation

The automation of repetitive tasks in marketing and sales increases process efficiency and the effectiveness of decisions. Despite these benefits, the digitization of marketing and sales has been slow in many industries. However, since the outbreak of the Corona crisis, which was accompanied by a reduction in face-to-face contacts and an increase in home office work, there has been a significant positive change in sales processes and, as a result, in attitudes toward the automation of marketing and sales processes. The digital transformation in sales and marketing is now progressing inexorably.

Marketing automation, like content marketing, is one of the big buzzwords nowadays. In many cases, the perception is shortened to software solutions. Thus, the scope and relevance of marketing automation is often underestimated. Accordingly, many companies approach the implementation of marketing automation tools naively. This chapter is intended to give you an insight into how you can approach the topic sensibly and successfully introduce and operate marketing automation. This article presents seven steps and the most important milestones on the way to marketing automation.

Right at the outset, it is important to dispel widespread misperceptions:

With Marketing Automation (MA), companies can take into account the prospective customer behavior characterized by anonymous and comprehensive research well before a purchase decision is made. The mutual appreciation of the disciplines of sales and marketing and their effective dovetailing leads to the optimal utilization of leads that have been significantly improved in terms of quantity and quality through marketing automation. In conjunction with the mechanisms of sales automation, the path to sales success and profitable growth for the company is effectively taken.

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are already widespread in Germany. Their focus is usually on managing the field sales force to ensure customer loyalty. Increasingly, this also includes support from the customer service and marketing sides. Marketing automation systems (MAS), on the other hand, are designed to increase efficiency and effectiveness in marketing. In the B2B area, lead management plays the decisive role. The latest CRM software attempts to take this aspect into account by integrating lead management functions. However, a key lever for improving profitability and growth is in any case end-to-end IT support for customer orientation through standardized processes and databases in marketing, sales, and customer service. However, this requires not only suitable software, but also an adjustment of the role model and responsibilities in marketing and sales. The focus here is on a holistic view of the customer, from the customer’s perspective and not just from the company’s perspective. The term “customer experience” has become established for this purpose, as has the term “customer experience management” (CXM).

Marketing automation is one of the big new trends in marketing. The term suggests that it is an innovation for marketing and merely about automating existing processes. But far from it. First of all, the goal of marketing automation is not to automate existing processes, and it’s not just about marketing. Marketing Automation has a very decisive impact on sales. Sales benefits from the successful implementation of Marketing Automation, but it also has to adapt to a new way of working and a new quality of leads. So the term “PreSales Automation” would actually describe much better the way the platforms work. This article shows what lies ahead for sales, which tasks they must prepare for, and how they can benefit.

This paper clarifies and distinguishes B2B and B2C sales and marketing and what social selling is about as this is the basis for then elaborating these matter areas in the context of marketing automation. The paper recommends not automating personal interactions. A good use of automation tools can be in background operations such as CRM systems. In any case, a user should always adhere to the social media platform rules and regulations which in a B2B environment is most likely LinkedIn.

This case study describes sales and marketing automation at its most operational and applied level in the context of B2C eCommerce. Based on a real showcase of the “Minimal Fashion” company, realized in the month May to July 2022, the article describes the project, the challenges, the operational tasks, and the realized outcomes of a pure eCommerce online shop in the fashion segment. After only 2 months with 5000 euros investment, the test company realized a 100,000 euros sales and 30,000 euros profit based on the rigid application of and compliance to basic principles of conversation-rate-optimized (CRO) marketing and sales automation.

Outstanding product performance can be an important growth factor for companies. But the surrounding aspects of the product—for example, buying advice and customer service—are also an important success factor. And the user experience will only be positive if the functionality of the product matches the expectations, attitudes, and goals of the target segment. So to launch products (or services) as successfully as possible, it is important to build knowledge about the typical expectations and goals of target customers. The goals buyers want to achieve are equivalent to the problems they want to solve. In other words, it is the job they want to accomplish using a product (or service) that customers are really interested in—not the product (or service) itself. The name chosen to denote this customer knowledge is not important. Whether companies use the name buyer behavior research, segmentation studies, buyer insights research, experiential research, etc.—it basically does not matter. What matters is that the relevant expectations, desires, attitudes, approaches, and goals of the people who make up the target segment are mapped in these studies. And the best existing customers are not always the right addressees. For example, in disruptive problem situations, it can be disadvantageous for established companies to stay close to their best customers, as they are usually not potential buyers of disruptive products (or services).

Marketing and sales have high expectations of new methods such as Big Data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and predictive analytics. But following the “garbage in—garbage out” principle, the results leave much to be desired. The reason is often insufficient quality in the underlying customer data. This article sheds light on this problem using the data quality and value pyramid as an example. The higher up the value-added pyramid the data is located, the higher its quality and the more value it generates for a company. In addition, we show how the use of monitoring systems, such as a data quality scorecard, makes data quality visible and improvements measurable. In this way, the actual value of data for companies becomes obvious and manageable.

There are a number of misconceptions circulating about account-based marketing (ABM). For example, there is a widespread view that ABM is a further step toward the almost complete automation of online marketing. This is only partly true: ABM is a joint marketing and sales strategy in which automated processes cover a large part of the numerous tasks, but only a part. Nevertheless, it remains a resource-intensive marketing concept that only makes sense for companies whose target accounts promise a sufficiently large ROI.

In Germany, digitization in companies is closely associated with the term Industry 4.0. Accordingly, the focus is primarily on application areas in production and logistics (Dirks & Rohleder, 2016, p. 6). According to a Bitkom survey, four out of five German companies now have a digitization strategy (Berg, 2018), but only around half have a digitization strategy for marketing and sales (Hannig et al., 2019b, p. 16).

Marketing automation is a promising solution for personalized customer approaches, and the basic principles, applications, and optimizations have been researched accordingly, but the KPIs on the customer journey are usually only considered in the context of operational optimizations of content and design. In contrast, although customer centricity is embedded in promising corporate strategies, it must also be taken into account in the automated touchpoints.

The relationship between marketing automation and customer loyalty should therefore be explained in greater depth in order to raise awareness of the effects. Three levers of impact are relevant here: The range of possibilities of marketing automation, the adaptation of the customers, and the legal restrictions.

The findings are taken in addition from research and expert interviews. At this point, thanks go to Mathias Elsässer, Urs Frick, Scott Brinker, and Prof. Uwe Hannig for sharing their expertise.

CREATION - AUTOMATION - PRODUCTION At markenmut, CREATORS develop the driving success factor between (advertising) costs and (additional) sales. From corporate identity and sales-optimized packaging to high-impact omnichannel brand communication, while our MARKETING ENGINEERS ensure significant increases in efficiency in the day-to-day marketing and sales business. They plan, migrate and operate individual marketing engine rooms with leading marketing automation technology expertise and years of experience. Last but not least our technology-supported production and distribution of complex marketing campaigns is handled reliably, cost-optimized and sales-oriented by our COORDINATORS. With our three main service areas and our unique satisfaction promise, markenmut AG not only stands for reliably creative marketing. In the combination of our services, we guarantee a cost-efficient, automated and sales-oriented implementation of data-driven and customer-centric marketing strategies, based on the latest marketing technology.

An ever-changing disruption in marketing and sales suddenly seems to become the new normal. The hard law “If you don’t move with the times—you move with the times” applies. More than ever, this applies to both the brand and the company. Is this where automation, marketing, and sales can help you from surviving this dilemma? Yes—but it depends! It is important here to know the rules of the game and to start thinking about the future today. Customer habits have changed drastically. It would be naive to believe that this has no impact on marketing and sales automation strategy. With the affordable use of AI (Artificial Intelligence), the tasks of automation are expanding significantly. It is no longer enough to optimize business processes. It counts just as much to play out relevant content, perfectly prepared on the right channel predictively. Chatbots have already been in use in the last 25 years and avatars will replace them. Hardly anyone notices that more than over a billion people already use and trust avatars.

The task now is to discover automation innovations in this environment in a smart way to create relevant leads for marketing and sales. Those involved will lose their fear of contact with the technologies and will soon no longer want to miss this progress.

Email marketing is an established tool in the marketing mix of many companies. But in the course of the sales process, email marketing is often only used in the form of a newsletter. Today, in the age of digitalization and individualization, companies need a modern approach to lead management that can be implemented in practice. Modern, automated email marketing supports marketers not only in generating new leads, but also in developing them to sales maturity. Using comprehensible examples, it becomes clear which central role email marketing plays in lead management and how it can increase sales with new and existing customers.

The growing influence of customer experience strategies poses major challenges for B2B companies in many industries. The traditional success formula of being in the right markets at the right time, offering superior products and services, or being the lowest-cost producer is no longer enough to secure a sustainable competitive advantage. Customer experience is becoming a critical success factor. The article presents a touchpoint evaluation tool that allows industrial companies to survey the impact of their measures at the individual touchpoints.

Winning a customer is many times more time-consuming than keeping one. Therefore, the management of customer relationships from the first contact to the maintenance of existing customers is of great importance. Only if Lead Management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) are efficiently linked with each other can it be ensured that the leads generated are qualified in such a way that they are processed further at the right handover points. The following article shows how the seamless and efficient handover and evaluation of leads is ensured through close cooperation between the marketing and sales teams.

The objective of lead management is to find the optimal balance between quantity and quality of leads passed on from marketing to sales to maximize sales conversions. Even though most companies use Marketing & Sales Automation (MSA) to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their lead management, in many cases they end up with either too many low-quality or not enough leads passed on to sales. In the first case, this results in sales being spammed, leaving them having to follow up on too many leads that they are not able to turn into customers and, thus, wasting their time. The latter will lead to a low return on investment and doubts about the effectiveness of marketing’s activities. Both will quickly result in the non-acceptance of MSA and undermine its success. Therefore, implementing strategies to improve the quality of leads passed from marketing to sales is of crucial importance for any company following a lead management approach with MSA. This article provides some simple but very effective best practices to systematically increase lead quality.

Especially in Anglo-American countries, the support of sales is considered the most important task of marketing. In Germany, however, marketing has built up a different self-image over the years and sees itself as the master of market-oriented corporate management, with sales as subordinate element. Over the decades, this has led to an increasing demarcation and distrust between marketing and sales. Nevertheless, the digital transformation is now forcing the two departments to work hand in hand. This is most evident in the automation of lead management, as shown in the following article.

“The Internet has radically changed the buying process!” How many thousands of technical articles or lectures in recent years have begun like this? So by now, word should have spread to the last technology denier that customers get their information on the Internet and often make their first preselection for their purchase there. Nevertheless, it is still astonishing how many companies ignore the changes in buying behavior. For example, companies that market their products through sales partners. Just a few years ago, the first place customers looked when looking for a new bathroom, car, or furniture was at nearby dealers. Today, customers configure their dream bathroom or next car on their sofa. For many products, manufacturers’ digital platforms are the first point of contact and no longer the dealer, installer, or consultant. How do you now connect customers, manufacturers, and sales partners in such a way that you can rightly speak of a positive customer journey? How do you create the often-cited 360-degree view of the customer when he is being handled by sales partners? How do you get the data from the sales partner’s lead processing in order to launch perfectly fitting follow-up actions or cross- and up-selling programs? The article is dedicated to the challenges of organizations with indirect sales on the way to the digital enterprise.

Year after year, management is dictating higher targets. The pressure on sales is continuously growing and marketing activities are always expected to achieve a higher ROI with a lower budget. Competition often has a severe effect and value chains that have been proven for decades are disrupted from one day to the next. Therefore, the marketing imperative is continuous optimization of ROI based on data and facts. A funnel model across all departments with automatic sales and marketing processes that are controlled centrally has proven its value. The following article describes how a successful funnel performance management can be set up, expanded and how feedback loops can be used to transparently measure and specifically optimize the entrepreneurial contribution to success.

In B2B companies, lead management and new customer acquisition are becoming increasingly complex. Potential customers who want to improve their online marketing are coming under pressure: falling conversion rates, disappointing access figures to the blog and website, and fluctuating quality of the leads generated. This paper explores based on latest research how customer-led growth can help to overcome most of the problems when it comes to B2B lead management.

Data science is currently on everyone’s lips. Buzz words such as machine learning, business analytics, deep learning and artificial intelligence are now familiar to most, but without knowing exactly what is behind them or to what extent these technologies can be transferred to their respective business to provide additional benefits. The following article uses three use cases to show how predictive intelligence contributes to success in B2B marketing.

AI has arrived in the economy. AI is becoming an important economic factor at an unprecedented speed. 91% of the marketing managers surveyed in 2021 within the study “AI—the future of marketing” in D-A-CH say that AI is already important for marketing today—an increase of around 12 percentage points compared to 2019. This paper for the first time uncovers and critically discusses how AI can and will revolutionize the matter area of marketing.

As a megatrend, artificial intelligence (AI) is profoundly shaping the economy and society and changing the way we live and think. According to a survey conducted by Deloitte in 2019, 79% of German companies already consider AI as a crucial factor for sustainable business success. (Cf. Deloitte GmbH (State of AI in the enterprise – 3rd edition. Ergebnisse der Befragung von 200 AI-Experten zu Künstlicher Intelligenz in deutschen Unternehmen 3rd ed. (text file). Internet: https://​www2.​deloitte.​com/​content/​dam/​Deloitte/​de/​Documents/​technology-media-telecommunicatio​ns/​DELO-6418_​State%20​of%20​AI%20​2020_​KS4.​pdf 2020), p. 6–8.) Especially in the financial sector, AI technologies have been increasingly implemented in recent years. There are multiple reasons for this—to name the most important ones: The financial sector is subject to more stringent regulations, as it has a significant impact on the overall economic function of a state and it deals with sensitive customer data. As a result, financial organizations have no choice but to accept this challenge and adapt AI among the entire value chain (and customer journey) as quickly and efficiently as possible. This will be demonstrated by the example of banks, since they, compared to other financial institutions, are more advanced in the implementation of AI technology.

The history and development of marketing and sales automation has been shaped by the reciprocation of technological advancement, organizational adoption, and contextual application. It was modern computing and the adoption of Internet services by consumers, that enabled Marketing and Sales Automation as known today. However, hurdles of organizational technology adoption have created imbalances between an organization’s state of technology adoption versus its environment. These imbalances extended through the involvement of the human factor in marketing and sales automation relevant decision-making processes. Utilizing the Human Activity Assistive Technology Model allows to acknowledge these imbalances through contextual dependencies. Balancing novel technologies alongside an autonomous decision-making versus a technology interaction sphere, permits to rank technologies by their potential efficiency and effectiveness impact on marketing and sales automation. While it is impossible to discuss every technology’s impact on marketing and sales automation, smart glasses provide the next efficiency frontier by enabling real-time contextual analytics, as well as CRM-based predictive or even prescriptive outputs. Algorithmic Commerce on the other hand completely substitutes the human factor by combing autonomous decision-making processes with autonomous technology interaction models. The autonomous organization is the result of the next evolution of marketing and sales automation through value chain integration. Despite the fictional and slightly dystopian nature of these predictions, companies like SHEIN have already made these developments a de-facto reality. Organizations are thus advised to evaluate their state of marketing and sales automation to identify contextual shortfalls and how the next wave of technological innovations can strengthen their marketing and sales automation landscape.

Communicative crises and shitstorms have increased extremely in recent years. The reason is simple as the contingency situation is dramatically changed. During the recent decades, we moved from 1-2-1 communication channels to All-2-All (A2A) interaction arenas. This requires 24/7 automated, digitized, predictive institutional interaction. Conversely, this means that the reengineering of corporate communication is more than overdue. Marketing and Sales Automation provides a perfect basis for this. This article reflects the results of an international research project evaluating and exploring how marketing and sales automation can and must be used as an enabler and lever for Reengineering Corporate Communication (RCC).