As I was taking a briefing this morning by the CMO and team at Act-0n Software, I really saw the connection that is sorely needed between Marketing and Sales and Customer Service. Sales can often be found complaining that they’d have more sales if Marketing gave them better leads. And Marketing can often be found saying to Sales, “You’d have more sales if you just acted on the leads we provided.”
What I saw in Act-on’s presentation was the fact that Marketing and Sales both benefit from marketing automation software. It’s not just Act-on’s software that provides this. What is really important is whether most of the money spent on marketing activities especially B2B marketing where a lot of money is spent on educating the buyer via webinars, white papers, case studies, etc… is generating sales and great customer interaction experiences.
Marketing Automation is Not Just for Marketers Anymore
The point is really to make a great customer interaction experiences. Marketing and Advertising let customers know what is new, exciting and available. But once that is done, how many Marketers know the marketing “activities” really drove sales? Of if the Marketing Automation platform can connect with the CRM database is to see if someone, who is receiving the marketing message, is a customer already?
What helps Sales is when they can see what the prospect (who is either a current or potential customer) has done with the company – i.e., what interactions they have had with the marketing content they were sent. Did that prospect open the emails, download the white papers, watch videos — i.e., that behavioral data is key to determining buying signals from a customer.
And today, the marketing funnel is not so linear. Someone who is having a customer service issue might display, right in the middle of a marketer’s campaign #fail with respect to the service they got (or lack there of) and can detour a customer from either turning from a prospect into a customer or turning from a current customer to a defector.
Software that connects separate databases and connects the ability of Marketing, Sales and Customer Service to connect and understand the behavioral data of prospects and customers is key to a company’s success — because it all drives great Customer Interaction Experiences.
And that’s how I see it.
@drnatalie